So if you’re reading this I am going to guess that you have seen a recent drop in your story views or you are feeling completely out of touch with how to increase your efforts in your stories and how to find new people to watch your stories.
Instagram stories are a great way to connect with your followers, increase your sales and create a long term lasting personal brand but there are six main ways that I think you can increase your story views.
1. Hashtag your stories
You can use up to 10 hashtags in your Instagram stories. But don’t just go tagging randomly, you need to get strategic with how your hash tagging them and what you are doing with those hashtags. Firstly, you need to make those hashtags fit in with your story. It is no good covering an Instagram story with hashtags and leaving them there, firstly, it will make your story look really odd and secondly, those hashtags may not work for that story. The first thing you need to do is use the text tool to write your hashtags, it’s no good using the sticker. Once you have finished writing your hashtags, then squeeze them smaller to make them fit in with the picture, or make them small enough to put a sticker on the top of them. You don[’t want to make them so small that they become illegible because Instagram analyses them and I wouldn’t necessarily hide them in the colour either. Both of these may have worked about a year ago but Instagram is wise to this now so will not show you in the hashtags if you make them too small or illegible but there is no harm in squeezing your hashtags to make the text smaller and fitting them somewhere discreetly in your story picture. Make sure that your hashtags make sense. Don’t throw out a whole bunch of hashtags, ensure they are relevant for what you want to be searched for or come up in and secondly, that they are relevant to the picture in your story. If they are irrelevant hashtags you will not get shown for them. You need to make sure that they are the right size. When you search for a hashtag there is a little number that comes up under the hashtag. That number is important. If the number is too small you won’t come up in stories or that hashtag as not enough people are using it, viewing it and searching for it. If the number is too big you may come up but you will only pop up for a quick 20 seconds rather than a whole day. I would therefore try to find hashtags that are between 150K and 750K to make sure you are hitting the mid range of the hashtag being big enough to be relevant but small enough to keep your content in there for a significant amount of time.
2. Use the location tag
The location is very important for location specific business but it can also help you find people who you want to put in front of your business in the right area. Remember you should be location tagging the nearest city or biggest town to have the most impact, don’t go hash tagging your tiny hamlet on the edge of the small village. No one else will be looking for that location. So instead choose somewhere where the population is big enough and active enough to be looking at location tags in Instagram. If you are in a huge city, I would perhaps try to niche it down a little and go for a specific area to again, make sure that you are not hitting something that is too big but again is popular enough to get you the story views. Why not get creative with your location tag and not necessarily tag where you are at that specific moment but tag where you think your followers be. If, for example, you are trying to attract followers in an area where you don’t live there is absolutely no harm in location tagging that area rather than where you actually are. Remember it is always about being strategic.
3. Share and @ tag
To get new people looking at your stories try to get your stories shared with other peoples stories. This means remembering to @ tag any account that you mention or talk about in your stories to encourage them to share your story because you will pop up in their DM’s. Also, you can take someone’s post and share it in your stories remembering to @ tag them. To be able to share and view different content but also to try to encourage that person to share you in their stories and thereby attracting their followers to your account. You don’t always have to just share their post, you can talk about them, discuss what they are doing, talk about the podcast you’ve listened to, anything that you do to interact with that account you are very welcome to talk about it and share them but do not forget to @ tag them. The idea here is to share the love but also to encourage that person to share the love back and attract new eyes in your account through their stories.
4. Being Consistent
When you post a story it will always refresh as a first view priority in someones account who habitually looks at your content regularly. If you only post once a day, once that person sees your story they will not see you for the rest of the day. If you post multiple times in the day, do stories multiple times in the day and you space it out throughout the day then every time your loyal followers log on to the app they will be shown your content. They will get used to seeing you and what you are doing so they will actively look it out or talk about what you do in your stories to other people. Consistency is key here. Posting to stories regularly give you a chance to be seen multiple times during the day, however, I would refrain from doing more than 7 stories during the day because the drop off point after 7 stories is around 70% so don’t go to heavy into, just keep a regular consistent narrative.
5. Get Interactive
If you encourage your followers to interact with you in your stories they will come back and be interested in what you have to say next. It is a known thing that people love giving their opinion so let them give their opinion to you. You don’t have to take it all the time but if someone feels as though they are helping you or interacting with you, or able to have a conversation with you in your stories then they will come back and do it again. So use the question sticker, use the sliders, use the polls, ask your followers what they want to hear from you, ask for their opinions on a few things and get your followers to get used to interacting with you regularly. Even better, if you can create a very engaging, reactive audience to view your stories and ask them to share you in their stories, maybe through a competition or challenge then you will be able to attract their followers eyes into your stories too through word of mouth. So don’t neglect those interactive stickers. They may be a little cheesy sometimes but they are great for encouraging more views on your stories.
6. Check your Insights
Don’t run wildly into the wind, figure out what your followers like looking at and do it again for them. You may love talking about the food you eat but they may not like it, they may prefer to listen to your bedtime routine! So talk to them about the things that they want to listen to. You will find in your Insights a section which describes your stories. You are looking for retention rate and profile visits. The higher the figures the better the stories. This means that they are actively watching through to the end of your story and they are actively clicking into your account to find out more so do not neglect your insights. They are there for you to see what your followers are after. If you can supply your followers with what they want then you will get more people looking at your stories and stopping and engaging with you more regularly.
So there you have it, my top six ways to get more views on your stories. Please remember, that as with all of Instagram, it is not a numbers game. It is a quality game. It doesn’t matter if you have 10,000 followers if none of them are interested in buying from you. What matters is that you have followers who regularly interact, regularly engage and are regularly interested in doing business with you. So concentrate on the quality, pay attention to what people are watching and what they need from you and serve a content that delivers to those people.
Until next time!
Inge x
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