Creating engaging Instagram stories are important for content and digital marketing. Of Instagram’s 1 billion monthly active users, 500 million of them view Instagram Stories daily. Their widespread use makes them a great tool for marketing your business and engaging your followers. However, just because a lot of users are viewing Stories, they may just be clicking through them quickly and not actually taking in the information that they see. Here are some tips to help you keep your followers engaged in your Instagram Stories.

What You Should Post

One way to make sure your followers are seeing and actually paying attention to your story is by posting content consistently. This does not mean you need to post every hour of every day, but sticking to a schedule such as every Monday, Wednesday and Friday will allow your followers to know what to expect from you. You could also do a weekly series that fits within the context of your business such as tips for success in your industry. People enjoy learning new tips, tricks, and facts, so this will have your followers returning to your story each week to learn more. Other content that will engage your followers is posts about promotions you are having that are exclusively found on your story and posts giving viewers a behind-the-scenes look at your business, so they know what it is about.

Ways to Gain More Views

There are a lot of users posting to their stories daily, so people do not want to sit through 20 different posts on your Story alone when they are viewing so many others. Keeping your Stories short will make sure people don’t just skip over yours. Posting 10 stories at a time is a good way to make sure you say everything you want to while keeping your followers’ attention the whole time. A good way to make sure your followers see that you have posted to your story is to post all of your stories at once, so they appear and expire at the same time, then posting something about every 4 hours to keep your story at the front of the news feed. 

What Makes a Story Good

People are not going to sit through a boring Instagram story when they could just swipe to the next account’s story, so what makes an Instagram story a good one? Users enjoy watching an entertaining story arc. Your posts should connect and not just be random and unrelated to one another. The final post of the day could be a summary of everything you have posted throughout the day because everything will flow together. Your stories should also stand out from others, so users stop to look at yours if they are simply clicking through the stories in their feed. An easy way to do this is by making sure your followers can recognize that it is you posting such as by seeing your branding if you use a certain color scheme or font in every post. You should also add captions to your stories, because not everyone is watching stories with the volume up. Take the time to carefully pick different elements to add to your post such as stickers or colors to make your story look good.

Ways to Use Stories for Engagement

There are many different ways to get your audience to engage with you via Instagram stories. Instagram offers the option of creating polls, quizzes, or asking questions directly on your story.  Followers can respond to these by clicking on them in your story and you can easily respond to them. This and all of the tips above can allow you to connect with your audience and make your Instagram stories engaging for your audience. 

Need help creating engaging Instagram stories or other digital media? Contact iSocial PR, the best content and digital marketing agency in the Detroit Area.