There’s no reason to be afraid of link stickers unless the only goal you track is engagement. Remember: “Success” doesn’t always need to mean a high number of comments or likes. So if they did that: congrats! You optimized for your goal, and achieved what you wanted to achieve! Presumably you included a link URL because you wanted people to click-through to something else. (In science speak: “duh.”)īut that’s ok! Don’t freak out! Not all posts need to have this specific kind of high engagement. They lead to a drop in replies, reactions and shares… because they ask your followers to leave Instagram. TL DR: Yes, Instagram Stories with URL stickers reduce engagement. Need help figuring out your engagement rate? Check out our engagement rate calculator here.Ĭan you even believe I have a communications degree with this sort of professional, basically-ready-for-a-peer-reviewed-journal science content?! If anyone wants to give me some sort of honorary Science Diploma please just slide into my DMs. While some Stories with link stickers did make the cut in my top 20 most-replied, most-shared, and highest-reach Stories, the vast majority of “most engaging Stories” were those without. (Of course, I’m strapping on my lab goggles and gloves first, for safety.). Now, I’m going to compare the top 20 posts for replies, reach, shares and see what percentage included links, and what percentage did not. Over the past few months on my personal Instagram account, I’ve posted some Stories with URL stickers, and other stories without. How have my Stories with URL stickers been performing compared to non-sticker content? Methodology So we’re going to put this hypothesis to the test by crunching some real world numbers.

After all, when you share a URL, people are prompted to click through to a website off of Instagram rather than reply, react or share the Story itself.īut you know how the saying goes “When we assume, we make an out of my Instagram analytics.” Hypothesis: Adding links to Stories reduces your engagement rateĪs soon as Instagram announced the availability of URL stickers, the rumors began to swirl that engagement with Stories started dropping. Calculate it on a post-by-post basis or for an entire campaign - for any social network. Bonus: Use our free engagement rate calculator to find out your engagement rate 4 ways fast.

Stories down instagram