With over 400 million active daily users, Instagram Stories are nothing to be taken lightly. With so many potential viewers, it’s more than okay to dream that you can have a large audience for your Instagram Stories as well.
In fact, the main focus for most of Instagram marketers right now is to utilize Stories to the best of their potential and more and more engagement out of them.
So, without further ado, these are some methods for your Instagram Stories to increase engagement.
1- Tell A Story:
Well, the first thing that you can do is use Instagram Stories to actually tell a ‘story’. I’m not saying that you describe ‘The hare and the tortoise’ through your Instagram Stories. A story is when you give your audience context about what is happening in your photos or videos with a proper beginning and end.
It’s very tempting to just upload an image just for the sake of uploading. But, Instagram Stories are not something that you should take lightly. You should spend your time in creating an engaging as well as well-detailed stories that get the point across and makes the experience better for everybody.
2- Swipe Up Feature:
What Swipe Up ‘to learn more’ feature does is that when people buy Instagram story swipe up, they get directed to your website where they can take a look at your products and services that you talked about in your story. It will not only build your authenticity but it will also get you more website traffic which will improve your search engine ranking.
But the catch is that this ‘Swipe Up’ feature is only available for Instagram accounts with more than 10,000 followers. If you have that many, good for you but if you don’t you can make it a target to grow your Instagram account because it’s a good milestone to achieve.
3- Add Captions:
‘First, I needed to caption my Instagram posts and now, I need to caption my Stories as well?’
Let’s be honest. Captioning some image or photo is hard for a lot of people. Figuring out the best combination of words, hashtags, and emojis can be really challenging. But, it’s a very clever little trick to get more engagement out of your Instagram Stories.
Captions are especially important when your Story can’t be understood properly without the sound on. That’s because most of the Instagram users have the sound turned off because they are in a public setting, office or class etc. The best way to overcome this issue is to caption your Stories and if they can’t be properly explained via text, tell them to turn the sound on.
4- Use Stickers:
There are all kinds of stickers that you can use in your Instagram Stories. They are a fun little way to make your Stories more interactive and boost their engagement rate. You can utilize these stickers for serious business-related feedback as well.
For example, you can use poll stickers so that your followers can choose the product, service or feature they like better than the other. Or you can use the question sticker to get people to ask you questions about certain products or services etc. Location stickers will get your Story to show up in regional searches.
In short, there are several uses for Story stickers besides making your Story vibrant, fresh and attention-grabbing. So, use them to their maximum potential.
5- Screenshot able Content:
These are Stories that people feel compelled to screenshot so that they can use them later with their social circle of friends, family, and followers.
They can be branded wallpapers for mobile devices which Instagram users can screenshot and use on their phone or tablet. A good way to post them would be to design a couple of good wallpapers and then design a graphic that gets them excited for some cool wallpapers that they can screenshot. Any business can do it.
You can also share lists with people with tutorials, recipes, checklists to follow or something else along those lines. Present them in such a way that people get excited and they feel like they have something to lose if they don’t screenshot your Story.
6- Prompts:
Sometimes, you need to prompt people to get them to do what you want because they need visual cues. For example, if you have a Story that has multiple photos and they all relate to each other, you can tell people to ‘tap for more’ on the bottom right of your Story so that they know that there’s more to come. Also, it gives people a sense of control that everyone wants.
You can also post images that people have to really look at in order to find something or understand it. Then, you can encourage them to ‘hold to read or view’ so that they know that it’s important that they do it or else they will miss out.
Also, as I mentioned in the screenshot able posts section, you need to get people excited by telling them to ‘get ready to screenshot’. You can use these prompts to get people more invested in your Stories so that you can get good results.
7- Get Creative:
Last, but probably the most important of them all, is that you need to get creative. Instagram is a visual platform that rewards people who think out of the box and make their content visually appealing. The photos and videos shared on this platform are the main focus.
Not to mention, Instagram offers countless features and filters that are at your disposal so that you can use them to make your content stand out. Get creative and experiment with those options and have fun with your Instagram marketing.
I work at Likes Geek as a marketing researcher and journalist with over 5 years of experience in media and content marketing. With a demonstrated history of working in the international news and financial technology publishing industries. I manage content and the editorial team at Likes Geek.