Instagram Stories - How to and Best Practices
Written by Baylee Martin
What Are Instagram Stories?
If you’re not one of the 500 million people using Instagram Stories on a daily basis, you’re not using Instagram to its fullest potential. Instagram defines Stories as a way to “capture moments with ease,” as a quick way to share moments using text, music, stickers, and GIFs to bring your story to life.
On August 2, 2016, Instagram made the official announcement of its newest feature, “Instagram Stories.” Instagram said in this announcement that stories are a way to “share all the personal moments of your day, not just the ones you want to keep on your profile.” With the unspoken rule of “over posting” on the platform, Instagram has marketed Stories to be a more relaxed and casual way to use your creativity to post whatever, whenever you want with the luxury of the post expiring after just 24 hours.
Instagram Stories are the type of temporary content that brands are finding to be most successful in engaging with an audience. Here are some of the features that make Stories so successful and fun to use:
Instagram Story Best Features
Camera Effects
You can make any moment more exciting and engaging with different filters, camera effects, and Boomerangs. Recently, interactive filters such as a game of “Would You Rather,” choosing between celebrities, different foods, and assigning cartoon characters have grown in popularity.
Boomerangs aren’t photos, and they aren’t videos either. Think more of a GIF, but with a unique twist. Boomerang takes a burst of photos, and then stitches them together into a high-quality mini video that loops forward and backward. This is a great way to bring moving objects to life without taking a video!
2. Conversation Starters
Other effects like stickers and GIFs can be added to story posts to make them more interesting, aesthetically pleasing, and more YOU! The questions, poll, rating, and multiple-choice stickers are what really makes posting to your story a great way to interact with your audience.
3. Highlights
Although Instagram Stories are considered to be a “temporary” post (lasting for 24 hours), there is an option to pin your favorite stories to your page for your audience to go back through to watch again and again as a Highlight. This feature is great for using the “link” feature to link products, websites, and songs that you might want your audience to have access to at all times by just going to your page!
Instagram Story Analytics
Another great thing about using Instagram Stories is the ability to track your analytics on your page easily and accurately. Using story features like hashtags, mentions, and public access can allow anyone – not just followers – to see your content. To view your analytics:
Viewing Instagram Story Analytics Step-By-Step
Go to your Instagram profile.
Tap the menu icon in the upper righthand corner, and then tap Insights.
Scroll down until you find your stories.
You are then able to select to view all Stories posted over the past 30 days.
Select either “Reach” or “Impressions” to see the actions for all stories.
Swipe up on an individual story to see individual analytics.
So, you’ve taken these steps – but what does this mean? Instagram Story analytics are divided into three categories.
Discovery
Reach: The number of accounts that saw your story.
Impressions: The total number of times your story was viewed, overall.
2. Navigation
Forward Taps, Backward Taps, Next Story Swipes, Exit Story Taps, and total actions taken from that particular post.
This is how you can tell what is holding your audience’s attention the most, and what isn’t.
3. Engagement
Profile Visits, Replies, Follows, Shares, Website Visits (from link in bio), Sticker Taps, Calls/Texts/Emails/Getting Directions, Product Page Views, and total interactions.
By simply combining using the available Instagram Story features, and tracking your analytics with our other articles on social media best practices, your page will be booming in no time – while having fun too!