Do you know this feeling? Have you spent so much time recording and editing your stories that not many people see them? Here are some ideas for increasing views on your Instagram Stories so that your efforts produce the results you want for your brand and business.
What are Instagram Story Views?
Instagram Story Views is a metric that tells you how many people viewed your Stories in their feeds. This applies to both regular followers and anyone who saw it in another user’s story. This means that, depending on user settings, non-followers can also see your Instagram Stories.
If you change your account to private, only people you accept as followers will be able to see your stories and other content on Instagram. Views are a good way to measure the success of your content: the more views and viewers, the better.
Why are my Instagram stories getting so few views?
Many Instagram creators ask themselves this question – and it’s not always beginners who just create an account and expect big stories from the start. Even experienced YouTubers can fall into the trap of consistently low view counts, which is difficult to escape.
There could be many reasons, including:
- You post stories infrequently and on random days, and the Instagram algorithm pushes you to the end of the story queue so your followers may not see them at all. Furthermore, your Instagram followers are not used to seeing your stories and may even forget that they are following you.
- Sometimes you post when your followers aren’t on Instagram, so your stories don’t get the push they need to stay at the top of the stories list.
- Post content to your stories that your followers don’t find interesting or relevant. If you post a series of stories, people might view one or two, but then quickly move on to another Instagram account because they’re not interested, especially since the first story doesn’t grab their attention.
- First, you don’t have an engaged audience. (I sincerely hope you haven’t bought followers!) This is a common problem on social media: your audience may be large, but engagement requires constant work, and if you simply don’t have time every day, your stories can fail and don’t work (not until you finally publish them, of course).
- Some people also view Instagram Stories anonymously, for example through other Instagram accounts or with a third-party Instagram Stories viewer, which makes it even more difficult to get enough engagement, which can lead to lower reach (due to Instagram’s algorithm).
4 Ways to Increase Your Instagram Story Views in 2024
Add an extra story at the end of the day
This proven tip comes straight from Later’s Head of Social Content, Lindsay Ashcraft. Add a new story from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., just before the other stories expire, further increasing the number of Instagram views. We’re not sure why this works so well, but it’s worth experimenting with.
Later’s social media team also tried to take a short break to see if this affected the opinion on the story. Result? Not much. We didn’t see anything unusual,” Lindsay said. “Many people recommend it, but we haven’t been able to reproduce the results consistently.
Post your stories regularly
Inconsistencies in social media posts are one of the biggest reasons why people and brands don’t get the engagement and reach they expect. This is the nature of social media: algorithms value and reward consistent posts with consistent reach. I guess that’s the calculus of social media. So plan your Instagram presence, including your Instagram Stories, so you can post without long silence.
Even if you can’t post every day, try to keep a consistent frequency, maybe three times a week, at set times that people can get used to. This way, your followers know when they can expect messages from you and the algorithm knows how to show your content. The Instagram app lets you create, edit, and even schedule stories for later.
First, open the Instagram camera and take a photo or video. With just a few clicks you can add filters, stickers, GIFs, text overlays, music clips, and more. Once you create a story, you can save it straight to your camera roll with just a few clicks. Ideal for optimizing your content strategy and ensuring you’re continuously creating and sharing stories that your audience will enjoy.
By tracking, analyzing, and optimizing views on your Instagram Stories, you can maximize the impact of your content and reach more people.
Publish high-quality, relevant, and engaging content
I know that’s easy for me to say. But even good timing won’t do you much good if the content of your Instagram Story doesn’t match the interests of your audience.
One way to combat this problem is to know your target audience well. What do you want to see? What content interests them? What content do they love so much that they send it to their friends on Instagram? What do they communicate with in competitor profiles?
Again, you should look to Instagram Insights for answers to your questions. Combined with the right timing and frequency, this significantly increases your chances of getting noticed by more people.
Run Contests and Giveaways
Running contests or giveaways is a great way to increase engagement and get more viewers interested in your stories. You can also use this opportunity to collaborate with other brands or influencers with a similar audience. Many major influencers run contests that require you to follow other accounts to qualify. These could be brands or just their influential friends.
This is a great way to collaborate with others in your niche and help each other grow your accounts. Besides, people like free things. If you regularly run contests and offer giveaways, your audience will become more engaged over time.