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5 Tips to Get More Views on Your Instagram Stories
We are all constantly striving to be seen on social media, and if you say you aren’t, then I would say I don’t believe you. Attention is the whole point of being on social media. Getting seen. The more eyes you get on your content, the greater your chances of building a loyal following, which is great for your brand and your business.
The tricky part is that views are getting harder to come by due to the sheer amount of people on these platforms, but there is a spot that people are missing and where you can thrive. If you didn’t already guess it, it is in your stories! This can be any place with stories like Facebook, Snapchat, or even Linkedin, but today we are going to focus on Instagram!
Instagram stories have been highly ranked by influencers as the most effective content format. Not to mention, 20% of stories posted by businesses result in a direct message straight to your inbox! It’s a format to really make a large impact if you are doing it right…
Instagram announced that 85% of its platform’s users watch videos without sound. That makes closed-captioning your videos crucial! This lets people still watch your videos and understand what you are talking about even with their sound off. Plus it gives them an opportunity to turn the sound on once they realize this is something they want to hear. This is also beneficial for the 466 million people in the world who are deaf or hard of hearing. Captions are also incredibly beneficial for regular social media video posts, which is why we create them custom for every video we produce.
If you’re on a budget, you can use apps like Threads and Clips (they are FREE) to record your stories with the closed-captioning and then upload to Instagram like normal.
Recently I have been seeing different brands or influencers tell a long-form story in their stories, and I think it is genius! This keeps your watcher’s attention on you because they want to keep watching to see what happens. The one I watched was a reenactment of how two people met and fell in love. They dressed up and did voiceovers and released it in their stories, and it was very exciting to watch. Another great example that actually got the person on TV was an Instagrammer creating her own version of the bachelor for her brother and releasing it on her stories. Talk about a great way to get lots of views.
For our fitness and healthcare industry readers, you could reenact your first visit or journey to finding your passion in health or fitness. Our midwives out there could do a storytime of their most exciting delivery or anything that would warrant a few laughs from your followers. The whole point is to leave them wanting more so they want to just keep watching and not click off.
We have all seen by now the interactive story tools like polls and question boxes. This isn’t anything new, but I do think how we use these interactive tools can become better. How about using the question boxes to let people ask personal questions or ask for feedback? Or if you are starting a new service, you could first talk about it and tell a story and then drop in a question box telling them to ask any and all questions they might have about said service.
Your followers feel the personalization of things like this and they know you are invested in them, which allows them to be invested in you! You could also use the polls to do a fun ‘this or that’ challenge and then show the ultimate winner at the end! Maybe it is a ‘this or that’ for a new interior feature or a new product on your shelves, or anything else that is specific to your content.
Much like in your feed content, you want to give something back to your followers. I think stories are a perfect place for fitness professionals to thrive! Do a series of how-to’s or training tips so that when your followers come into your gym they feel like they are already coming in with knowledge. This will also help them feel more comfortable about coming to a new environment. Another good idea would be to do a series that continues week to week. An example is doing a stretching routine where they know that if they come back to your stories every Monday, they will get a new routine to stretch out sore muscles.
Other options for giving something to your followers can be showing a behind the scenes into your daily life or offering coupons or discounts for your services.
We have talked about how going live is a useful strategy for your business before, but I think it warrants being mentioned again. Live videos are a great way to ensure an enhanced relationship with your audience, and it allows for easy communication back and forth in real-time. If you need tips on going live, check this out!
A fantastic way to use going live to get more views on your stories is to tease something new in your stories. Get your followers excited, maybe use the question interactive tool, and then say, we will answer all of these questions and more on our live tonight! Hook, line, and sinker.
We hope all of these tips help you increase your Instagram Story views in a major way, and if you need any help with your approach to social media and content marketing, let us know!