What is a Good Instagram Stories Engagement Rate?

Why do we create social media profiles? It’s usually because we want some kind of interaction with our family, friends, and followers. There aren’t too many people who are “just watching“.

Depending on how big your profile is, and if you’re a celebrity or not, the engagement on your account can vary. Instagram stories are, according to marketing experts, an excellent way to communicate with your followers and increase engagement on your profile.

So, how will you know if you’re successful? Here are some guidelines that may give you a useful insight.

Is My Engagement Good?

As the marketing industry grows, there are more and more analytics tools that help you measure your success on social media. These tools help us measure the engagement rate on someone’s profile, compare the data, and determine what we can consider a good engagement rate.

In 2019, the average engagement rate on Instagram was 4.7%. This included posts and stories and was considered pretty good. In 2020, it’s 4.21% (for now), but it’s still better than other social networks.

One of the most important metrics to measure and evaluate engagement is the swipe-up option. This is a CTA that directs followers to your website, where they can become your customers – this is why swipe-ups are vital. Other than swipe-ups, an important engagement indicator related to Instagram stories are replies.

According to some published stats, 15-20% of your followers will swipe up your story if you offer this option and add a CTA to your story. This is a great engagement rate, and when you add replies, reactions, sticker clicks, question sticker responses, etc. you get a successful Instagram story and a great engagement rate that will bring you new followers and more conversions.

Where Do I Check My Stats?

Switching to a Professional profile will allow you to check your stories statistics two weeks after the story’s been published. Here’s where you can see the insights:

1. Launch the Instagram app on your smartphone.
2. Open your profile and tap the hambruger icon in the top right corner.
3. Tap on Insights.
4. You have three options: Content, Activity and Audience. To check your stories, tap on Content.
   
5. Scroll down to the Stories section to see the insights.

Another way is seeing individual stats for each story by opening a story and swiping up. You’ll see how many replies, profile visits, impressions, new follows, etc. this story brought you.

What’s Good Engagement Rate on Instagram Posts?

Calculating the engagement rate is actually easy and you don’t need to be a math expert.

1. Take a look at all the posts you’ve created within the last month. Let’s say there are 15.
2. Add up all the likes and comments you’ve got on these posts.
3. Divide this number by 15 – the number of posts.
4. What you get is the average engagement per post.
5. Divide this number by the number of followers you have.
6. Multiply the number you get by 100 to get a percentage. This is your engagement rate!

As these numbers are typically somewhere between 0-10%, anything less than 1% is considered low engagement, while a score above 6% is considered very high. A percentage between 1-3.5% describes the average engagement on Instagram posts.

Tips for Increasing Engagement on Your Account

It’s not that uncommon that an influencer who has fewer followers has a higher engagement rate than someone who has thousands of people following them. The number of followers means nothing if you don’t know how to approach your audience and communicate with them. Here are a couple of tips:

1. Ask questions. If you ask a question in your story, there’s a higher chance that someone will reply to it. You can use plain text, or polls and question stickers.
2. Mention people and use hashtags and locations. Your reach will be bigger – the more people see your story, the more likely someone will engage with it.
3. Create stories that will make your followers want to share them with others – relatable content works very well, as well as sharing your opinion on different topics, or interesting statistics and data.
4. Post multiple stories a day to boost your visibility.

Set a Goal, Create a Strategy

It’s important to know what engagement means to you and how much you value it. Why do you want more engagement and who do you want to engage with via your stories? One of the most important marketing rules is to determine who your target audience is.

Setting a clear goal will help you create a strategy and make the first move towards increased engagements on your Instagram page.

How much do people engage with your Instagram stories? Are you planning to do something to boost the engagement? Share your experiences in the comments section below!