How to increase your Instagram stories views
Want to increase your Stories views? I’ve got you!
It’s one of the most popular questions I get asked, and I can completely see why. Let’s face it, we spend so-much-bloody-time on our reels and photo posts that usually, Instagram stories are sidelined to the “omg, what shall I even post about today?” camp (and trust me, we’ve ALL been there)
But by the time you’ve read this blog post, I want that to have changed for you. You’ll have a mini plan of action you can follow to increase your stories views, in a way that’s easy to manage. The first step? We want your mindset to change.
First step: let’s make it a priority
If you want to increase your stories views, we need to see stories as an important part of your content strategy.
The more you casually wing it, the more you’re leaving it to chance. Example for you - do you know what your most popular stories “topics” are, that get you the most stories views? (What do your audience want to hear you talking about?). If not, that’s case in point but I’ve got you covered - we’ll nail that down for you.
I’d look at these three areas to get us started:
Conversation: Why do your audience follow you and how can you catch up with them?
Cultural relevancy: what’s going on in the world right now that’s relevant to your audience? (TV, books, sport, food and drink etc)
Behind the scenes: What does life look like for you? What would you like to share with people?
If you’re a business owner, brand or a creator with products there’s a forth one too - your products/selling them.
The joy of stories is that they are spontaneous and we don’t want to take that magic out of them, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do prep work! The more you know, the better chance you have of doing a good job.
The three categories in detail:
Conversation
Not sure what to talk about today? This list should help:
If you was to ask a friend what they think you’re best known for online, what would they say? This is one thing I ask the creators I work with all the time and it’s important to have it in the front of your mind!
What would your audience want to hear you talking about?
Do you have a story from the last couple of days that you could share?
Has something unusual/surprising happened to you recently?
Do you have any advice you could give?
How can you help them in some way - perhaps refer them to something you’ve found useful recently?
Cultural relevancy
Personally, I bloody love this one. If we’re following you, we want to HEAR from you. Now depending if you’re a creator or a business you’ll know how far you want to stray from your niche and what’s appropriate, but here’s where I’d get started:
What things are people talking about right now?
What TV show are people watching? What books are doing the rounds? What music are they listening to? (How could you make that relevant to what YOU do?)
What’s coming up that you’re looking forward to? Could you build the hype within your community too?
Getting to know somebody through their shared interest is the secret sauce. Think about Taylor Swift fans - if they know you’re one, they’re going to want to hear what you have to say!
Behind the scenes
This is the category that most people think of with stories but it generally links up with our biggest insecurity: that showing everybody what we do each day is boring.
First of all, 99% of the time we’re all in our own heads (I’m going to tell you inner thoughts to be quiet right now, you are NOT boring!) and to hit the nail in the coffin, let’s make sure it’s not!
The way you show us your life doesn’t have to look the same each and every time. You could take a photo and write text on top, talk directly to us, voiceover a video, add music to a video - you can keep shaking it up.
Are you travelling soon? Could you share your change of scene?
What’s a big part of your daily routine you couldn’t do without?
What have you learnt over the past month that you could potentially pass on?
And from there, these are the more technical things you can do to increase your stories views. Use this as a checklist!
Please use interactive features on the first frame
Question boxes, polls and quizzes - any of the features which encourage your audience to physically press on the screen and interact with your stories boosts your visibility, so they’re a huge win.
It’s so important you do this on the first frame though - we know stories views only go down from the first and we want Instagram to see immediate engagement.
Another way you can do this, with text
If you’re encouraging your audience to hold down on the screen because you’ve written text on it, this really helps too!
Tip: make sure it’s broken up into smaller paragraphs so it’s easier to read and add a very clear hook/title at the top, so they know straight away if it’s relevant to them. Text should be a huge part of your Instagram stories strategy and most creators and brands don’t use it enough!
Try and keep the balance right (don’t post too many!)
Unless it’s a really special circumstance - a huge trip your audience want to see, a wedding, etc - please don’t post 25 stories and expect your audience to click through them all.
Instagram check your retention rate (how long you keep people interested) on your stories, so if they see a big drop off early on, they’ll push it out to less people.
Getting the balance right is really important here. In general I’d try not to post more than eight-ish across stories a day (again, unless it’s something a bit more special!) and I’d try and have stories gaps across the week, so they’re not “always” live. It’s a bit of a sneaky trick, but if you let your stories expire Instagram will usually push your stories to the front of the stories grid (to those who regularly watch) so keep that in mind.
Instagram have their own Stories backgrounds too
If you want to shake up the design of your stories too, Instagram give you the option of adding GIFs to your stories as backgrounds.
If you open up your stories camera and then choose the option “Create” (the Aa button in the menu) you should then see the GIF option in the bottom menu.
From there you can search for the best option for you (it’s a handy option if you want a background to a Q&A or something!). Just as a heads up though, it’ll duplicate the same GIF three times across the screen to make the background (like the example here) so best to choose an option which doesn’t ‘flash’ too much!
Get other creators/brands involved too
Most of the time our stories views come from our audience, but if you’re tagging another creator in your stories (maybe you’ve shouted out something great they’ve done, or you’ve been with them that day) then they might share your stories on theirs too. This is such a simple way to increase your Instagram stories views but it often gets overlooked.
Cross promote your stories!
This is another one which is so underrated! If you’re posting something on the grid, don’t be afraid to shout out your stories from that day. You’re widening your audience, and you can always make a stories highlight with that “thing” in it so it’s still available for future audiences of your grid post to see.
Ask questions, always
Instagram loves seeing that your stories are sparking conversation, which - linking back to my original points on the topics of your stories, comes in so nicely. If you’re getting lots of DMs this = interesting for Instagram, so ask a question, make that font bigger than the rest on the screen and talk about something you KNOW others will want to chip in on.
Once you start looking at the topics that are performing well, make the mindset shift of stories being AS important as the grid AND you’re using these tricks to increase your stories views too, you’re on the right track!
If you’d like a personalised stories strategy - perhaps brands are asking for your stories views and you want to increase them, we can make one for you together! I run a social media and content creator consultancy and on my 1-2-1 strategy calls, we can build a stories content strategy - you can find out more about my different types of calls here and my availability, here.