Instagram stories are runner-ups after Instagram Reels popularity-wise. They are appealing since the content published in them is created on the go, isn’t polished too much, and is more engaging than regular feed posts. Watching stories makes you feel as though you’re getting a peek at what your friends and favourite celebrities are doing just now.
Through recent years, Instagram users have been paying more attention to stories than regular feed posts, so no wonder when the stories views drop, it affects your overall Instagram stats.
In this post, we’ll uncover several actionable insights on how you can grow your stories views.
How Instagram Ranks Stories: The Algorithm Behind Your Stories Views
Instagram determines the order of the stories you see first, just like it does with feed posts. If your story circle is placed in the tail of the stories line, your followers will unlikely watch it at all. Instagram prioritises stories of the accounts with whom you engage more often and who might be interesting to you.
You’ve also probably noticed that your friend’s stories are often among the top ones, even if they rarely post the stories at all.
Signs of Healthy Stories Engagement
To assess if your stories are successful, check if other users:
- Watch your stories till the end (watch-through rate).
- Watch a whole lot of your stories or swipe to get to the next account.
- Watch your stories more than once.
- React to your stories and reply to them.
- Send your stories to other people.
- Hold your stories when watching.
Important Instagram Stories Metrics
Each slide of your story has its own metrics — interactions, navigation, and activity.
Here are other ways to track how well your stories perform:
🟣Watch-through rate
This metric tells you the percentage of people who watched your stories from beginning to end.
❗️Note that this applies only if you have two or more story slides.
To calculate this metric:
Watch through rate = number of all story slides views / first story slide views x 100
🟣Story slide completion rate
This metric tells you the percentage of viewers who watch the entire length of the slide.
Slide completion rate = number of impressions – number of exits / impressions
Keeping that in mind, let’s see how you can increase the views of your stories.
How to Grow Instagram Stories Views: 9 Tactics
Note that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to boosting your social media marketing metrics; Instagram stories views aren’t an exception. How people view your stories depends on your audience and the interaction you have with it. If your followers are mostly bots or people who aren’t your target audience, it’s barely possible to make them watch your stories more.
If you know for sure that there's a loyal, engaged, and relevant audience among your followers, feel free to try the tactics we’ve revealed below.
Take a Break from Stories
Yes, try this: just stop posting stories for some time if you’ve recently experienced views and engagement drops. How such stories detox might help you get the views back, you wonder. The thing is that Instagram wants to have you back posting on the platform, so after you share stories again, you will get more views than you usually obtain.
You’ve probably noticed on your personal Instagram account that when you share a story after a long silence, you typically get more views. Besides, when you share a story after a while, Instagram sends a push notification to your followers saying that you’ve finally shared something.
What’s more, Instagram places your stories in front of others, so you get this extra reach organically.
After the Break, Come Up with a Consistent Story Routine
After the detox and reminders to your followers about yourself, it’s time to join the story game on a regular basis. If you don’t want to share stories manually all the time, you can use Combin Scheduler — a free Instagram content planner and schedule stories there in advance. The tool automatically publishes stories for you without sending you any reminders.
Combin Scheduler can help you make sure all your stories are planned ahead and will be published in time. Follow the steps below to schedule posts to your Instagram account:
- Install Combin Scheduler. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
- Log in to your Instagram account within Scheduler.
- Once you are logged in, click Stories at the upper left corner of the application.
- Click Add New Story at the bottom of the application window to start planning your story.
- Drag and drop images or click Choose Photo to select pictures for your stories.
- Select the posting date and time. Scheduler synchronises with the timezone of your OS.
- Click Post Now. Your stories will be published at the scheduled time.
Keep Combin Scheduler launched until your Stories are on Instagram. If the look of the opened Scheduler window annoys you, leave the application running in the background instead of quitting it.
At the menu bar, click Tools and select Preferences. Enable the setting Run Combin Scheduler in the background when it’s closed. After that, Scheduler will be minimised when you click X to quit it.
You can schedule as many stories as you like with Combin Scheduler and even prepare them in bulk to be published at any hour. Note that Combin Scheduler currently supports only images, no video stories.
Share a Location in Stories
Tagging geolocation in your stories may attract viewers from that place, which is extremely important if you have a local business focused on customers from a particular area.
Keep Your Stories Engaging with Stickers
Make your stories tell stories (duh!), have games in them, add engagement stickers, and polls. Ask followers to answer your questions or enquire about their opinion on a recent event.
Add Captions to Stories
Many users watch stories and Reels on Instagram without a sound, so to keep these users interested, add captions to your content. If you share a video story, highlight your main thoughts with captions. This will not only increase engagement but make people hold watching your story and studying it. Instagram will detect this interest and will push your stories in front of the line more often.
💡Suggested read: 8 Ways to Make Instagram Content More Accessible & Inclusive
Add Music to Your Stories
You can add parts of a song or the entire track into your stories to make them more entertaining. This will let your content more diverse and emotional. Besides, Facebook shared stats indicating that people watch stories with music 80% more than those without a sound at all.
Don’t Create Too Many Stories During a Day
When someone opens your story and sees about 20 episodes to watch, they will likely skip it and turn to the story of the next account. Especially if those stories have no plot or idea. It’s just dull. So the solution is to share a few engaging stories a day.
Build Communication
Consider your Instagram stories as an opportunity to connect with your followers. Share your ideas, thoughts, and reply to their DMs showing this in stories (if they don’t mind).
Leverage Re-Shares
Share someone else’s stories if you find anything interesting on Instagram, tag the original creator, or share your thoughts about the story subject. They can then re-share it and attract some of their audience to your content.
Try these hacks all at once or pick the ones you like the most — you'll see the result in no time!
💡Try Combin Scheduler to be consistent in your stories routine and never miss a day of posting 👇