Make Your Instagram Stories Interesting With 10 Simple Tips
With the technological advancements making headways in the 21st century, social media has seen an immense surge in daily users. According to reports, Facebook was the leading social media platform in 2020, with over 2.7 billion active users.
Other platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and many more follow closely behind Facebook in terms of active users. Therefore, these social media apps need to come up with innovative ways to keep their audience engaged.
Instagram Stories: A Step To Bring You Closer To Your Followers
Instagram Stories allow you to share short video clips and photos on your profile for 24 hours, after which the app deletes it automatically. However, you can always view these in your archives.
Instagram launched the Stories feature in August 2016, and the feature has seen immense success in its early years, with over 200 million daily users of this feature in early 2017. Now, almost five years later, Instagram Stories boast an astounding 500 million daily engagements on the application. As a result, every business and influencer has been quick to adopt Stories into their marketing approaches.
Why Use Instagram Stories vs Posts?
Even before the launch of Instagram Stories, you could always post a photo or video on your page easily. So, why would you need something that doesn’t even stay on your profile for more than 24 hours?
For those unfamiliar with the history, it was Snapchat that had first introduced this concept of “ephemeral” posts, that is, “stories” that won’t last forever on your feed but that your followers could view for a limited period. Instagram was quick to adopt this feature, and now it has surpassed Snapchat’s daily users by miles.
• Less formal approach
Amongst the recent trends on Instagram, it is now most common to see people push for a more aesthetic feeling on their pages. A lot of thought goes into the making of a post, whereas Stories are more informal. They’re like the behind the scenes of your favorite sitcom.
• Testing out the waters
Sometimes you might want to try out something new with your page but can’t decide whether it would be the right choice. For example, if you’ve already made a name for yourself as an essay writer, you might wonder what your followers would think if you were to expand your business into other academic help services.
Stories are the best method to try out such experimentation. It doesn’t stay on your page and gives you an entire day to gauge people’s reactions and decide based on the responses you get.
10 Effective Ways To Make Your Stories More Interesting
The Instagram algorithm places much importance on the engagement you get from the Story feature. Therefore, if your followers tend to skip through your Stories, it’s bound to affect your reach negatively.
You can use Instagram Stories for many things. For example, if you have a small business, you could post short behind-the-scene snippets, fun interactive quizzes, and much more. However, unless these are interesting and immediately appeals to your audience, there is less chance that they’ll engage with your stories at all.
On that note, let’s go over ten ways you can improve your Instagram Stories.
1. Use pictures as your background
Sticking with the default single-color background for your stories makes it feel drab and uninteresting. So instead, you can use any picture from your camera roll as your background. This makes the Story more pleasing to the eye and increases the probability of people checking out more such content.
2. Keep your pictures and writing aligned
Instagram already helps you to stay within the proper parameters of the Story. However, it is best if you maintain caution as well. The top and bottom parts of your Story is covered by your username and interaction options, respectively. Therefore, your followers cannot view any information that you place in those sections. Thankfully, the app will warn you if you get too close to the borders.
3. Use consistent brand recognition fonts and colors
As various businesses adapt to social media to engage with their followers, it becomes more crucial to add a hint of uniqueness to the Stories. For example, if your brand has a well-recognizable color scheme or font, add it along with your posts. This way, everyone would immediately recognize your post without having to look at the username.
4. Incorporate boomerangs
A boomerang is a fun way to stir up your Stories. Instead of posting simple texts and images, you can create brief 1-2 second clips that loop. Instagram has incorporated Boomerang directly onto its app. So, all you have to do is open Stories and click on the infinity symbol on the left.
5. Don’t limit yourself in colors
When you open Stories to the text or drawing mode, you can automatically access about 27 color options. But that doesn’t mean you have to stick with these all the time. If you ever feel like exploring something other than the available ones, hold down on any color for a while, and it will open a spectrum where you can choose any shade you like.
6. Stickers and GIFs make your Stories pop out
Instagram has an excellent collection of stickers and GIFs that you can use to add some humor and emotion to your stories. Increase or decrease their size according to your preference and make these little add-ons fill up any space that seems too empty in your Story. It’s a guaranteed method to add some pop and fun to your Stories and make them more visually appealing.
7. Provide a call-to-action for followers to engage with
Instagram has a feature where you can access the Swipe Up option in your Stories once you’ve crossed the 10,000 followers mark. This makes it easier to share links with your followers. However, if you haven’t crossed this mark yet, you can put the CTA to click on the link in your bio in your Story and draw an arrow to your profile icon on the top left corner. This visual representation makes it easier for everyone to understand where to do.
8. Post short video clips from time to time
One segment of a video on Instagram Stories usually lasts for 15 seconds, the perfect length to intrigue your followers and redirect them to the more extended version, if any. However, if you wish to post the entire video on Story, the app will divide it into multiple segments of 15 seconds.
9. Share multiple responses in one Story
The question sticker is another trendy yet helpful tool on the platform. For example, suppose you run an essay help service. If you want to ask your followers about feedback, all you have to do is post the Question sticker with your query, and they’ll be able to reply there.
However, this feature limits you to share one response in the Stories, making it slightly inconvenient for your followers to continue tapping on the right until they reach the end. Instead, you can share one response, take a screenshot of it before posting, share another response using the earlier screenshot as the background, and so on. This is a better alternative than sharing 50 answers and clogging up your Stories.
10. Add fun music to your Stories
Instagram lets you share short snippets of songs on your Stories to liven things up. Once you have selected your picture or video that you’d like to post, all you have to do is search for the music sticker in the Instagram Stories sticker tray and select your favorite from various options.
Summing it up,
Instagram Stories are a fun way to make your profile more stunning with creative takes on images and videos. Your audience is more likely to actively engage with your content if you provide polls, questions, and other interactive forms of communication. Furthermore, with the help of these ten simple tips, you’re bound to see better results quickly.
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