Instagram stories are temporary content that is available for 24 hours on the platform. The feature was released in the year 2016 and is used by almost a half-billion people every day. You can find Instagram stories at the top of your news feed from various creators. Instagram keeps releasing new features for stories; hence you can keep innovating your stories to get more followers.
This article has been crafted to boost your Instagram follower count. Let us understand how an Instagram story can help in boosting your follower count on the platform.
How to Use Instagram Stories to Boost Your Follower Count?
1: Use highlights
On Instagram, highlights can be used to enhance your stories’ reach and increase their visibility. Highlights are a great way to help your audience get content that might be useful for them shortly. A new user can also view your story in the highlights even if the story has expired on the platform. Posting your stories in highlights helps the users to access your content whenever they want to. Highlights are a great way to promote your brand and make the audience aware of what your brand is all about. Using highlights for your stories can help in generating traffic to your sales website as well. Plus, when a new user can learn all about your brand through your stories on highlights, they are bound to follow you on the platform.
2: Plan a story takeover
Since Instagram is a social media platform, it is understandable that you need to connect with fellow creators on the platform. One way to promote your brand is by approaching influencers to do a story takeover to promote your products. You can also take over other influencers’ stories to approach a new audience base. Both these methods can help in increasing the reach of your brand and create awareness among the audience. Planning a story takeover can help you in several ways such as networking with relevant influencers, cross-directing followers, and creating more exclusive content for your followers, etc. You can also plan a live Q&A session with an influencer and your account will automatically appear in that influencer’s story.
3: Polls and quizzes
Polls are a great way to keep your audience engaged, but have you ever thought about using them for conducting research? You can use polls to understand what kind of content your audience is interested in and get new ideas for your next content. You can also encourage your followers from other social media platforms to participate in the poll by watching your Instagram story. You can also host a quiz session by going live to keep your audience engaged. A live video is prioritized over other influencers’ stories, hence giving your brand that extra edge in promotion. This will also attract the attention of new followers. Another way is to use questionnaire templates to keep your audience engaged.
4: Use GIFs and stickers
GIFs have been insanely popular on almost all social media platforms. You can use personalized GIFs in your Instagram stories to attract more followers. GIFs make your stories look cool and they are in trend. You can also use different types of fonts in your stories for your texts. Using unique and beautiful fonts can make your stories more eye-catching. Another way to gain more followers is to stickers. Stickers make your stories more engaging and expand their reach to new audiences. You can opt for different types of stickers from the list below:
- Poll stickers: for quiz
- Location stickers: location tag
- Emoji stickers: expressing emotions
- Question stickers: feedback
- Link stickers: website links
- Countdown stickers: upcoming launch or event
5: Shoutouts
Helping each other on Instagram can go a long way in creating an environment where even competitors work together. Mention another brand in your stories and appreciate their product. This in turn will lead to that particular brand returning the favor. They can either create a story of their own by tagging your brand or they can simply repost your story. Both these methods are guaranteed to enhance your brand’s visibility and increase its reach. This in turn will lead to more followers on your account. This technique is generally known as shoutout in the social media world. You can also encourage your followers to follow a particular brand by giving a shoutout to that brand in your Instagram stories.
6: Recycle and reuse
You can always reuse your reels and get them featured in your stories. Post your old viral reels in your stories to gain more followers on the platform. You can also post long video content in your stories despite the 15-second rule. Do you know how you can bypass this 15-second rule? Simply use tools to slice your long videos into smaller parts and upload them on stories. Just make sure that they seem seamlessly cropped. You can also post information about your upcoming reels in your stories. This will keep your audience engaged and curious about your next content.
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7: Invest in Instagram Story Ads
You can utilize Instagram story ads to generate leads for your brand. This will help drive traffic to your website and help your brand in gaining more followers as well. Integrate Instagram story ads between your regular stories and reap its benefits.
8: Offer subscriptions
Last but not least, you can encourage your followers to subscribe to your account to gain more benefits. For a monthly subscription fee, subscribers can get content that is specially curated for them. They will get a subscriber badge, live videos, and stories that will be exclusive to them only. This can create a sense of being exclusive and they will encourage more people to follow your brand.
We hope this article will help you to get Instagram followers. You should also keep an eye on Instagram story analytics to understand how your stories are performing on the platform. You can use this data to research what kind of stories gain popularity on your account and create future stories accordingly. So, goodbye till we meet again with our next article where we will come up with some more tips and tricks for your successful social media journey.
