Right now, at this time in Instagram’s history, Stories are the most watched of all their features. This bit of data comes from Instagram themselves. So, getting more (like, lots more!) views on Stories is clearly essential to growing your brand and deepening your relationship with your audience.
The 3-Step Process To Get More Views on Instagram Stories
Step one: Take a break.
Sounds crazy and counterintuitive, but it’s true! Don’t post any new Stories for about 24 hours. It doesn’t have to be exact (12 to 24 hours will do), but aim for a full day.
Step two: Post a this or that style Story with a poll sticker.
The best part is that it doesn’t require much thought because Stories don’t have to immediately relate to your niche.
- Is a hot dog a sandwich, yes or no?
- Leg day or arm day?
- Beach or mountain view?
People love engaging with this particular kind of Story because they love sharing their opinions! Not to mention, humans are basically addicted to pressing buttons. Hence, the votes start pouring in!
Again, it doesn’t have to relate to your niche, just something that:
- everybody has an opinion on
- doesn’t take much thought
Step three: Go back to posting as normal.
Continue throwing up Stories every couple of hours and using those engagement stickers — to just keep the engagement up!
Now, how frequently should you do this 3-step process?
No more than once a week. And definitely use it with intention.
For me, personally, if I know I’ve got a really big promotion coming up and I want everyone to see my Stories, then I’ll take a 24-hour (or sometimes a little bit less than that) sabbatical from posting on Stories.
And then I watch those views explode the next time I post!
The Reason This Works.
There’s an algorithm literally just for your Stories, and what it cares about most (just like the algorithm for your Feed) is people’s attention.
The best way to show Instagram that people are paying attention to your Story is by having said people vote (engage) with your Stories!
Let me explain further…
When the algorithm sees no story/no views/no engagement (during your time off) and then — all of a sudden — sees a Story getting tons of votes and clicks and interactions, it’s thinking,
“Oh hey, something good is going on here! Let’s show it to more more people and make sure everybody sees this!”
In a nutshell, that’s how the Instagram algorithm works and why it shows that individual Story to so many more people.
For 6 additional Instagram hacks that’ll bring your engagement back to life, check out this episode of Build Your Tribe:
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