My friends at Socialinsider have asked me to highlight some of the key points and key takeaways from their most recent Instagram study.
They have uncovered exciting data that will help you, the social media professional, implement an all-new Instagram stories strategy for 2022!
If you are not using Instagram stories yet, you should go check them out.
The key insights of this study include:
Instagram Strategy Should Include Instagram Stories
Your Instagram strategy should be based on data - to create a strategy for stories, you need data on stories.
If you need to convince a client or you need to talk to a client about stories, maybe you want to do more or less or change your strategy around stories, you will need data from a case study just like this one.
Once you have data to present to your client you can say, "These are the changes we're going to make and this is why."
6 Key Insights: A Instagram Stories Case Study
1. Major brands have doubled their Instagram stories usage in the last year.
That is big. That means that brands, not just people, not just creators, but brands are seeing the benefits of Instagram stories. Which is if you are working for a large brand, a corporation, you should be showing the behind-the-scenes more of the personal, the human side of your brand through stories. Stories are a great way to tell that narrative, right?
2. Posting up to five stories per day ensures a retention rate of 70%.
The next key finding that they found at Socialinsider's is posting up to five stories per day ensures a retention rate of 70%. Now, stories are identified as either a card, that's a story, or a video. So we're going to talk a little bit more about that in just a second.
So five stories could mean five cards that together tell a story. So up to five stories ensures a retention rate of 70%. And a retention rate means that somebody goes through all five of those cards. 70% will go through if you have five of them. Instagram users are more likely to tap forward sooner for an image story. So that's maybe how you retain them. So they read the story, they see the card, they see what's on it and they tap forward to get to the next one. Some people might be faster readers, right? So you want to give them that opportunity to do that.
Let's look at these two together.
If you are creating videos you might want to make them shorter or you might want to put a video at the end. Just know that if you do only video stories, that people were going to exit longer. You might want to test for your audience. Do a couple of stories that are at least five cards, a couple of stories that are two to three videos in a row, or maybe four cards and a video, maybe two cards, a video, two cards. Experiment with what works for your audience. Socialinsider has found that people exit a little bit faster from those video stories. The other part that they found is image slightly outperforms video stories in terms of reach.
A really nice image that people can react to, and take time to look at, outperforms video cards. Imagery with text gives you a little bit more time to hone in on the actual story.
6. Instagram stories have a lower reach compared to posts in the feed.
This fact surprised me because I really thought that Instagram stories would give a little bit more of a reach than those in the feed. But maybe that's because not everybody uses a bunch of hashtags and on feeds, you can still use hashtags to get found.
Interpreting Data to Create an Instagram Strategy
I invite you to dig or dive into this case study by Socialinsider. Use this data to create a strategy for 2022 for yourself as a social media manager, for your clients, or for you, if you're a brand.
How should you utilize this? Take this data and then go experiment.
Examples:
Make a couple of stories that have at least five cards. Make a couple of stories that have some video and some cards and vary the content, and then go look at your data. You could just go to your phone, click on insights and see which stories do better.
What color are the pictures that you share?
What story are you telling?
You have to go experiment. Data from case studies like this is a great starting point for your strategy. That does not mean that this is the end of your strategy, but the starting point!
Take this data, start experimenting in January, or maybe even earlier, now in December, and then create a strategy around what works for you.
If you have any questions about Instagram stories or creating a social media strategy, hit me up and I'll be happy to help you out.
~Dorien
Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Socialinsider. As always, all opinions are my own.
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