Want to Increase Your Instagram Story Views? Five Quick Tips From An Influencer

Instagram Stories are so important to Influencers AND BRANDS! Influencers make money on collaborations because we give brands access to our audience. That’s what this career is all about. They’re paying us to create digital content that will entice users to invest in their product. When you swipe up, share, purchase, comment (thoughtfully), or “like” a photo/story, you help Influencers and make brands happy. I’ll get into the behind the scenes of creating content in another blog post, but just know this is WORK!!

A couple of weeks ago, I heard an Influencer say she charges brands more for Instagram stories than for Instagram posts. I thought, WHAAT… why would someone charge more for that? THEN, it HIT ME… Instagram Stories are so much more personal to me. I’m more authentic, more vulnerable and it’s where I feel most connected to my community. It’s a behind the scenes to my life. Sometimes, I don’t post on my feed for a couple of days, but I’m in my stories shopping, sharing good sales, posting morning style INSPO and eating pastrami and egg sandwiches.

Over the past few months, I almost doubled my IG story views by following a few tips I’m going to share down below. When someone watches your IG stories, they give you their full attention.   For that reason, my story viewers see a different side of me and I absolutely love it. Don’t take this for granted because brands can’t get their attention and use YOU to get it for them. If you don’t follow my stories, there is so much about me that you would never know.

To be honest, IG stories took quite a few Influencers out the game. When it first started, I was excited that I would be able to actually watch some of my favorite Influencers and man was I disappointed. It exposed some bland personalities and showed communities that not everyone is who they “post to be”. And this could also be because of stage fright. Talking on IG stories makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Another reason could be IG stories generate A LOT of DMs and not everyone has the time to respond to DMs If I post 10 IG stories per day and those 10 post generate 20 DMs each, I now have 200 DMs to respond to. Now, think about the larger followings… some of my stories generate 30-50 DMs. It can be a lot to manage and for that reason some larger accounts don’t do it.

Before we get into the Five Tips, you should definitely think about what you want from your audience. What’s the purpose of your page? Your stories should compliment your in-feed posts and be more of a behind the scenes. It should be a blend of content and while it’s definitely beneficial to have a routine (especially at the start of the day); nobody wants to see the same thing everyday. Never be afraid to go of course because viewers LOVE that!

OKAY, So let’s get into these Five Tips to Boost Your IG Story Views:

(1) They don’t call it an Instagram STORY for nothing… It should have a beginning, middle and end (just like your day). So many times I click on stories and see someone setting up to cook a meal and then nothing. No finished product. Or I just see some random shot with no context. I took a class by Kaye McCoy called “Cool Story Bro” that was so helpful. Kaye said sometimes when watching stories you feel like you turned on a movie right in the middle. You have no clue how it started and the ending probably won’t make sense. You don’t have to post everything in real-time. I do a mixture of both: real-time and curated. If I’m going shopping, I record and then curate afterwards. If I’m cooking a meal, I will record and then curate afterwards. This way, all the stories are posted together. If you spread them out too far - it will not make sense when one story expires and the others are still there. Try to record 3-5 stories at a time to make a story! Anything more than that might force your viewers to exit out. If you have a morning routine - make 3-5 stories of it When someone taps into your stories you want to find a reason to keep them there!

(2) Get your audience into a consistent routine, but still keep things versatile. For the past couple of month, I have been posting a few images of style at the top of my day. This let’s my audience know that my day has started and they actually look forward to it!
Remember: not everyone is in your same time zone and their morning isn’t your morning. Sometimes I’m watching someone’s stories and I can’t tell if we’ve entered a new day which can be super confusing.

(3) TALK.. Simple right? But you wouldn’t believe how many people are afraid of speaking in their stories. They share images all day, or share posts from their feed and that’s about it. Learn to get comfortable talking to your audience. It’s how you connect with them.

(4) Have a theme. Use apps like CANVA, Mojo or Unfold to create some sort of consistent theme with your page. It’s time consuming, I know… but if you’re trying to grow your brand and increase your views, you have to understand that work is required. Instagram has a lot of effects and sometimes it’s overkill, while it’s nice to switch it up day to day… switching it up every story just seems all over the place for those on the outside looking in

(5) Show-up and incorporate content into your stories that are valuable. Examples: a sale, behind the scenes of work, skincare or daily workout routine, favorite products and why, books that you’re reading, shows that you’re watching, accounts that inspire you, etc.

**BONUS TIP: Use ALL the features of Instagram when posting to your stories. Use GIFs, music, boomerangs, layouts, picture in picture, polls, picture in picture, q&A, etc. Not all at once, but definitely switch it up and utilize as much as you can.

Most people will make a decision to follow you based on your profile page, not your IG stories. If you post about food on your feed and I’m not interested in food, I probably won’t follow you. If you’re trying to grow your audience it’s important to post quality in-feed content to your page. There are quite a few people that have killer IG stories with smaller followings, because they rarely post to their page.

Thank you for reading and I hope you found this information helpful! Please leave any questions/comments or suggestions in the comment section below.