Instagram Story Engagement Low? Try THIS Super Secret Strategy to Increase Your Engagement
Are you struggling to get views on your Instagram Stories? Or maybe you have noticed recently that your Instagram views (or overall analytics) are WAYYYYY down
Don't worry, you're not alone. We have definitely felt this lately in our own social media strategy, and many small business owners face the same challenge. But we have a super secret strategy that can help you increase your story views and engagement.
As a small business owner you might rely on social media to promote your products, services, and offerings, and a decrease in Instagram story views can be especially frustrating. Even if you have a small following on social media, you want to make sure that your content is being seen by as many people as possible.
Low story views can lead to a lack of engagement and ultimately feel like it is impacting your business's success. However, there are ways to combat this problem and increase your Instagram story views without having a large following.
We are giving away our secret sauce today, and we'll share this little-known strategy and other tips and tricks that can help you get more views on your Instagram stories. By the end of this post, you'll have a better understanding of how to increase your Instagram Story views.
The Super Secret Instagram Stories Strategy to Boost Engagement…
It’s simple… create an all black background with white text. Yup. It is THAT simple. But let’s break down exactly WHY it works!
Typically when we post an Instagram Story, we like to keep it as on brand as possible, and we are sure that you do the same. You might design an Instagram Story in Canva to use your logos and graphics. Or if you create in the app you are going to use your brand colors for the fonts, backgrounds, and any elements that you might add. And for us this looks like using our bright and bold colors!!
So when we disrupt and shock our users with something that is a bit “jarring” from our usual content, they are more likely to pay attention to what the Instagram Story says, take an action, interact with the story, head to our profile and more. Not only does this help with a boost in overall engagement - the Instagram algorithm will LOVE this and continue to push our story to the top of people’s Instagram Story feed.
How to Create a Disruptive Instagram Story to Shake Up Your Engagement and Views
Ok, but how exactly do you accomplish this:
STEP ONE: Make sure you let all of your other Instagram Stories expire. Meaning, you want to let all of the content reach the 24 hour period so they disappear from your profile.
STEP TWO: Create an Instagram Story by taking a photo or uploading one from your camera roll, it doesn’t matter what the image is
STEP THREE: Select the draw tool in the top right corner, select the color black, then tap and hold on the screen to turn the Instagram story into a solid color
STEP FOUR: Add white text to the screen to have enough contrast for your viewers, we recommend using the classic font so that it is easy to read.
STEP FIVE: You can add in a link to direct your viewers towards a call to action if you want. We suggest this if you are promoting a product!
Here are a few examples of how we have used this in the past:
Test and Analyze Your Instagram Stories
While we absolutely love using this strategy to draw attention to important information and content, to bring awareness to the end of a sales campaign, to talk about an affiliate product, and so much more… make sure you test out this strategy and see what works best for you.
Once you have implemented these strategies to increase your Instagram story views, it's important to track your results and see what's working and what's not. Instagram provides a built-in analytics tool that can help you measure the performance of your stories.
You can view metrics such as the number of impressions, reach, and engagement on each story. To access this feature, simply tap on your profile picture on the top left corner of the screen, and then swipe up to see the analytics for your stories. Or you can head to the insights tool to customize reports to see all of your stories at once.
We recommend that you use this story design strategy sparingly so that it retains its effectiveness, and helps draw attention to the things that are most important in your Instagram Stories content.
We link to look at the following analytics when determining the effectiveness of this strategy:
Reach - the total number of accounts reached through your Instagram Story. We look at this as a measure of (1) how many people saw the story, and (2) if it is significantly higher, we know the algorithm favored that Story, and pushed it to the top of the Story feed for our followers to see
Link Clicks - the number of people that clicked in the link in our Story. Again, this is the most popular call to action that we use in this strategy, and we typically direct people to a piece of content or a product. We want to see a significant increase in this number when using this strategy to know that more people took further action on the Story.
Then you can take that data and compare it to stories that you post on the regular and see if there is a significant difference or increase in your analytics. Keep in mind, you can take a look at other metrics if they are more important to you, your social media strategy, and your overall business goals!
Manu Muraro is the founder of Your Social Team, an Instagram training membership and content shop to help social media managers and Instagram savvy women entrepreneurs to beat the algorithm and grow their organic engagement (yes, even in 2021).
This year she also launched Your Template Club, a Canva Template subscription to provide social media managers and Instagram savvy business owners with content templates designed for engagement in their inbox.
Born and raised in Brazil, Manu moved to the U.S. in 2000 right out of college to work for Cartoon Network, where she made an award winning career in creative and strategy. In 2017, Manu started Your Social Team with the mission of helping women entrepreneurs and social media managers grow engagement and sales through Instagram without the overwhelm.