← Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
How To Get MORE IG Story Views | New Instagram Algorithm 2025 - 824
00:36:35
In today’s episode, Brock Johnson discusses strategies to get more views on your Instagram Stories with the new Instagram algorithm in 2025. I’ll break down the latest changes to the Instagram Stories algorithm and share effective tactics to help...
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The most consumed content on all of Instagram is not Reels. It's not Instagram Live. It's not photos. It's Instagram Stories. According to Instagram CEO himself, Instagram Stories is the primary place where people go to consume content on Instagram. And this is awesome, because compared to all the other kinds of posts on Instagram, Instagram Stories are arguably the most diverse. And what I mean by that is that Instagram Stories can serve different purposes. You can accomplish different goals on different days, or even multiple different goals on the same day, thanks to Instagram Stories and their unique use cases. Now, I do need to let you know, before we even get started, some bad news. In case you didn't know, Instagram Stories will not help you grow your following. Instagram Stories are great for making sales, they're great for engaging your current followers, they're great for increasing your own engagement, they're great for numerous things, but they're not so great when it comes to growing your following as and that's because they primarily only reach your existing followers. And so it makes sense. If 99 to 100% of the viewers of your content are existing followers, well then you're probably not going to gain many followers from said content. And so Instagram Stories, like I said, have many great use cases, but growing your following is likely not one of them. Maybe you knew that already, but if you clicked on this, it's because you're ready to learn how to get the most views possible on your Instagram Stories. In today's episode of Build, you'd trust I'm going to be sharing with you direct feedback from our internal experiments, and I'm going to be sharing with you some tidbits of information that the CEO of Instagram himself has said regarding how to get more views on your Instagram Stories. Now, if Instagram Stories don't help you grow your following, why would you want to get more views on your stories. Well, like I mentioned earlier, maybe you want to make more sales and so you want more views on your stories because more viewers could mean more customers. Maybe you want more views on your Instagram stories because you use your Instagram stories to build relationships and build trust and allow your audience to really get to know you. Regardless of why you want more story views, today I'm going to help you figure out exactly how to get more Instagram story views and I'm super excited to announce. Speaking of Instagram's CEO, make sure you subscribe to this podcast because coming soon is going to be an exclusive interview on Build you'd Tribe. Between myself and the CEO of Instagram, I can't share too much much information or too many details just yet. But I am going to be having a sit down, one on one conversation with him where I'm going to be asking him to expose all of the Instagram secrets and tell us everything he can about the Instagram algorithm and how things work behind the scenes. So make sure you subscribe for that upcoming episode in the future. But let's get back into today's episode and how do you actually boost your Instagram stories views? Today we're going to be talking a lot about the Instagram stories algorithm. And to understand the algorithm I like to simplify it down to basically a math equation. On one side of the equation is all the different variables, likes watch time, how many people clicked on your story? Are people engaging with your story? Are they replying to your story? Are they exiting your story? Right? There are so many different variables that help Instagram determine is this a good story or not. And we're going to talk about what those different variables are, which ones matter and which ones don't. That's one side of the equation. And the other side of the equation is basically is this story going to be shown to more people? Is it going to be pushed out to a greater percentage of your followers? Or is it going to be buried down the line, down the queue and the likelihood of someone ever watching it? Pretty low. One way to think about all of those different variables that go on the one side of the equation is positive forms of engagement and negative forms of engagement. Of course positive forms of engagement help you. They help Instagram think, oh this is a really good post. The negative forms of engagement with Instagram stories are pretty self explanatory. They're most commonly skips, taps and exits. Skips are when someone is watching your story and they swipe from the right to the left Thus skipping the remaining stories, those little bars at the top or remaining time in the story that they were watching, they skip it and they move on to the next person's Instagram stories. That's what a skip is. Taps, also known as tap forwards, are what they sound like. It's someone tapping on the right hand side of the screen, skipping only the remaining time in the story that they were viewing. So let's say they were watching a story clip of yours that was 17 seconds long, and at the three second mark they decided they're bored, they're over it, they're going to tap on the right hand side of the screen to skip to your next clip. So they're still watching your story and any clips that you've added to your story from the last 24 hours, but they're just skipping whatever that last frame or that last clip or that last segment was. It's called a tap forward. And then third exits make sense. Exits mean that they are closing Instagram stories as a whole. They're either swiping down or they're pressing the X in the upper right hand corner and they're leaving your story altogether. These are the three most common negative forms of engagement, and all three will hurt your story views. So the more skips, the more tap forwards and the more exits that your story is having, the less people your story will be shown to. Now, you might have been able to assume that those were negative forms of engagement, but what you likely aren't able to assume is the five things that will kill your story views. The five things that most often result in in the most skips, tap forwards and exits. These are things that, like I said, they hurt your story views. And yet these are super common practice. I would be willing to bet that a lot of people who are listening to this episode right now have one of these five things, if not all five, up on their Instagram stories as we speak. And these things kill your story views. Now, don't worry, once we get to the end of these five, I will tell you the one saving grace. But without further ado, the five things that will kill your Instagram story views, according to our own research and experimentation, number one is talking head stories. Now, not to give you too much of a history lesson on Instagram, but when Instagram stories were first announced, they could only be up to 15 seconds long. Then a few years later, Instagram said, hey, we're now going to allow you to record up to 60 second long Instagram stories, but we're still going to automatically add cuts every 15 seconds. So it made a little bit easier for people to skip through. So basically, one way you could think about it is if you recorded a 60 second talking head story and then you posted it, Instagram would automatically split it into four different 15 second clips. But then fast forward to 20, 25 and now when you post a 60 second story, Instagram doesn't cut it at all. And so what's happened over the last few years is we've become long winded. We think, hey, I have 60 seconds, so I'm going to take up the full 60 seconds. We see that little bar going around in a circle at the bottom where we're holding down the record and we think, oh, I have some more time. So I'm going to fill in some more space. I'm going to tell a little side story here. I have 60 seconds, so I'm going to use the full 60 seconds. But it's not the easiest for consumers to consume. It's not the easiest piece of content. In fact, I would argue it's one of the hardest pieces of content for viewers to watch. And here's why. As a Viewer Watching your 60 second story, my only thing that I can do is sit there and not touch anything. Anything. We live in a day and age where consumers are used to having total control, where they can fast forward, pause, rewind, slow down, speed up. Think about when you're watching TikTok or Instagram Reels. How often do you pop into the comments section or begin reading the caption while the video itself is still playing? None of that is possible when you're watching a talking Head Instagram story. And you add on top of that the layer that most Talking Head Instagram stories are not short and concise and punchy. They're not planned out or scripted. They're free flow, extemporaneous. They're just kind of rambling, bumbling. You're talking about this story and this side story and this sidetrack. And so as a viewer, you're that much more likely to get disengaged or to get bored. And when you do get disengaged or bored, the only real option that you have is to tap forward, to skip, or to exit altogether. The least likely option is that you're going to go back, tap back, as it's known on Instagram, and start the entire talking head story from the beginning. That is very unlikely. And that is why talking head stories typically will hurt your story views. Along those same lines, the second thing that will hurt Your story views is just long video stories in general. And if you want me to put a number on it, I would say longer than 10 seconds. The normal text post or photo Instagram story is up for anywhere from 3 to 10 seconds. And so when you post a video story that's longer than 10 seconds, every additional second, every additional millisecond is just more time that increases the likelihood that someone is going to get bored, disinterested or unengaged. And like I said a moment ago, the only way that they can engage with that story is to skip forward, to exit the story altogether, or to tap forward. It's not very easy or intuitive to pause an Instagram story. There's no way to fast forward or rewind. So if there's one part of the video that they missed or that they were really looking forward to see, there's no easy way for them to navigate the video and get to that point. So in general, talking head videos, or long videos in general that you are posting on your Instagram stories, they're going to lower your views. And again, in case it isn't clear, it's not necessarily because Instagram hates video or Instagram hates video stories. It's simply that the algorithm is always responding to what the audience prefers. Rather than focusing on the algorithm of Instagram and the algorithms on social media, I want you to focus on the audiences. And as an audience member, it's not very easy to watch long Instagram stories. Whether it's a long video or a long talking head video, it's not easy for the consumers to consume. And so of course, the negative forms of engagement are going to become more prevalent, and thus Instagram will want to show your video to less people. The third thing that can hurt your Instagram story views, and according to our studies, on average, it leads to a 39% reduction in story views, and that is using the link sticker. Again, not to be an Instagram historian, but back in the day, you had to get to 10,000 followers in order to unlock the ability to add a link sticker. And actually before the link sticker, it was just the swipe up feature to your Instagram stories. At that time, it was the only way that you could share a link on Instagram besides your link in Bio. Eventually, a few years later, Instagram decided that this arbitrary 10,000 follower mark was not necessary. And so they allowed all people, all of us, now we can add a link sticker to our stories whenever we want. And so of course, small business owners and content creators went Wild. And we started adding link stickers to every story, every Amazon product that we recommend, every podcast that we love, every link, every website, every blog that we want to link to. We started adding link stickers to our stories. But according to the most recent data, that is hurting our Instagram story views. And I believe it's again going back to those negative forms of engagement. When you have a link sticker on your Instagram stories, the three primary options that people have are to skip, to exit, or to tap forward. Of course, there is a fourth option, which is clicking on that link, but even that is kind of like leaving Instagram, right? Oftentimes, I know myself when I do click on a link sticker, I will tap on the link. I won't continue navigating the site in Instagram because I know that Instagram might crash. There might be a glitch, the site might not work properly. I don't always have my credit card info and my contact info saved on Instagram. So I will open in an external browser, which is the same thing as an exit. I have now left Instagram because of that link sticker. So while, yes, you did get a link click, I've ultimately left Instagram, and so now your story will be shown to less people. I also know as a consumer, I don't like opening links on Instagram, especially on Instagram stories, because if I get distracted, if I have to go run and grab my credit card from my wallet, if I have to go check with Tay, my wife, about, like, the date and time of something, if I get away from that link for any reason and that link disappears, let's say I, like, close my phone for a minute and then I open it and the app has refreshed in the background. Well, now that story is gone. And because I viewed that story, Instagram's not going to show it to me again. And the likelihood of me finding that link is pretty low. And so as a user, it's just not super easy. And later today, I'll talk to you about what I would recommend doing instead of using said link sticker. What you can do to actually boost views when you're trying to make sales, and what you can do to distribute the link without having to use the link sticker. But again, like I said, on average we're seeing about 39% lower views, 39% less views when using the link sticker on Instagram stories. Hey, I know I've been talking about the Insta Club Hub, and I know some of you may have joined the Insta Club Hub in the past or you may have done a trial with us before, but I wanted to let you know that we've spent the last 10 months and we've spent tens of thousands of dollars making the club brand new. We've renovated. It's a total home makeover for the Insta Club Hub with all new features to make it really streamlined for you to have success on Instagram. One of my favorite new features is as soon as you join, you take an assessment to kind of gauge where you're at on Instagram. And then based off that assessment, we recommend a customized playlist of videos for you to watch in sequential order so you can get to growing faster and you don't have to figure it out on your own. We also just launched the Insta ClubHub directory, which is a private members only directory where you can advertise your services as a social media manager. You can look for someone to hire, you can look for people to collaborate with, you can even search out other people who are in your industry to see what they're doing so you can find other Insta Clubbers who you can then network with, collaborate with, hype each other up and even possibly do business together. So the Insta Club Hub is totally redesigned and it's our goal, like I said, to get you growing on Instagram and get you making money on Instagram in as little time as possible. You can check it out. Best part, for only $7, you can join a two week trial for only $7. That's 50 cents per day for two weeks. And all you have to do to grab that trial offer is go to instaclubhub.com trial again, that link will be down in the description. But right now, while you're listening, you can just open up your Safari browser or whatever Internet browser you use and just go to instaclubhub.com forward/trial. Now, the fourth thing that is hurting your story views is one that pains me to say, and I wish I didn't have to report to you the facts and I'll explain why in a minute. But the fourth thing is sharing feed posts of any kind and from anyone to your stories. So whether it's a photo, a carousel or a reel, and whether it was posted by you or by someone else, when you take a feed post, you tap that little paper airplane and you share to your story. That usually leads to a decrease in views. And this is coming directly from the CEO of Instagram himself. He said this on his Instagram stories about a year or so ago. And basically the reasoning he gave was that their own internal studies and their own internal focus groups at Instagram had concluded that the average Instagram user, and again, I say average, you might be an exception to this, but the average Instagram user does not go to Instagram Stories to see posts from the feed. They go to the feed to find feed posts and they go to Stories to consume stories content. Content that is not just reels and photos and carousels that have been re shared from the feed.
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We try and rank stories based on how interested we think the viewer is in them and the things that we predict. As a proxy for thinking you might be interested. Are are you going to tap the story if you see it? Are you going to like the story if you open it? And are you going to reply to the story if you open it? But those are kind of the major ones. That's the vast majority of how the ranking system works for stories. The thing about stories is there's way more stories than there is time to consume them. And so it's much more for people's friends, reciprocal follows people who you follow, who follow you back. It's less of a meaningful distribution tool or channel for creators, though it's a meaningful one.
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But I told you that pains me, and here's why. Because shares are one of the best ways to grow on Instagram. We've done multiple build you'd tribe episodes recently about how when you get more shares, you get more views. And so of course I want more people to share my posts to their stories, because that helps me. But I have to tell you the truth, which is that that won't really help you. In fact, that'll probably hurt your story views. And so I often get a lot of confusing questions when I bring up this topic because ultimately there are different strategies for different goals. If you clicked on this episode, it's because you want to maximize your story views. And so if you want to maximize your story views, I would recommend not sharing any feed posts to your stories. However, if your goal is not necessarily maximum story views, and it is instead maximum feed post views, you have a reel that you want to make sure people see, you have a photo that you need to make sure gets seen by all of your followers, you have a carousel that's really, really important to you, or you find a post from someone else that is really that valuable and worth sharing, then go ahead and share it to your stories. Of course, that will mean less story views on that day, but it will mean more views and potentially more engagement for the feed post. So different strategies depending on what your goal is. And also from an algorithmic perspective, sharing feed posts to your stories, of course isn't likely going to get very much positive engagement, because the three primary ways that people are going to respond or interact or engage with that shared post when they see it on your stories is either they're going to exit your story altogether, they're going to swipe and skip your story, or they're going to tap forward, thus moving on to your next story. The best form of engagement that you could even get from that story is someone tapping on the feed post that they shared. But that in and of itself is an exit of your story. They're leaving your stories to go view that feed post. And so just like the link sticker, when you are sharing feed posts to your stories, you're normally going to see less views. And then the fifth and final story view killer, the thing that will hurt your story views the most is posting multiple stories in one day. And in fact, I can't give you a general number. Like if you go more than three, you're screwed. If you go more than seven, forget about it. No, as you post more stories, typically your views go down. There is a direct inverse correlation between the number of stories you post and the number of average views that you will obtain. And this is a direct change from a few years ago. It used to be a best practice to post multiple stories in a day. And the algorithm really favored things like recency and relevancy. And how many times have you posted your stories today? And each time you posted a story, it moved you back to the front of the queue, back to the front of the lineup. They really used to value how recently have you posted a story. And so it really used to benefit you in the past to post stories all the time, so that you were always recently posting a story. But now it's beneficial to actually do the opposite. Less is more when it comes to Instagram stories. To say it another way, and we'll talk more about this strategy in just a little bit. Posting just one Instagram story is actually how you maximize views. Now, I did say that there was one saving grace for these five story view killers, and that is that Instagram stories have a really nice way of that they can clean their slate every single day, basically every single 24 hour period when your stories expire. It's kind of like a clean slate like Instagram and the algorithm, specifically the Instagram stories algorithm, have wiped themselves Clean and they've forgotten about the equation from yesterday. So if today you have a talking head story that is more than 10 seconds long and you have a link sticker, and on the next story slide you have shared a feed post and then you posted 17 more stories today, if you've done everything, quote unquote, wrong Today, just let 24 hours go by so that all of your stories expire. And guess what? You've started over, you've hit the reset button and the equation is back at zero. And I think that might be my favorite thing about any algorithm on social media, because rarely do you get a reset button. Usually day after day, your posts, they add on top of each other. Usually day after day, the engagement that you're receiving affects the engagement that you're going to receive. The views you got influence the views you're going to get. But on Instagram stories, there's this nice reset button that you can press at any time by allowing your stories to expire or yes, even deleting the stories that you currently have posted. And so, like I talked about earlier, there are different strategies for different goals. If your goal is not necessarily maximizing views on your stories, but instead you want to maximize views on your reels on a specific day, then maybe you're going to take that reel and you're going to share it to your stories. If maybe there's a day where you don't care about maximizing your story views, but you really want the people who are viewing your stories to get to follow along in your day and really see a behind the scenes look at what you're doing on a specific day, then go ahead, knock your socks off, post a bunch of stories throughout the day. Vlogging and documenting your day. If you have a video that absolutely must be posted on your Instagram stories and it's 48 seconds long, then go ahead and post it and just accept that, hey, your views might be a little bit lower that day, but you had to post the story and you got it out there anyways. Now, we've spent enough time talking about the negative forms of engagement and the story view killers. Let's now at least swing things back to the neutral side of things and talk about things that you might think are going to make a difference with the story's algorithm you might think are great positive forms of engagement. But through our own internal experimentation and from Instagram CEO himself, they actually don't matter that much. The first one is watch time. Now, this is surprising because on almost every other algorithm on every other platform, even the other algorithms. On Instagram watch time matters. The amount of time that people are watching your content and the percentage of your video that people are watching, those matter. On Instagram reels, that stat matters on YouTube, that stat matters on TikTok. But on Instagram stories, according to Instagram CEO himself, that doesn't really matter.
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There is no sweet spot. Now, I want to be clear. We focus on shorter form reels on Instagram, shorter form being three minutes and less. But everyone's audience is different. Some people do explainer videos which are going to take a bit longer. Other people do jokes which might take less time. You have to experiment and figure out what works for your audience.
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And so that kind of makes sense when we're thinking about those long, you know, 60 second stories, those don't really matter because Instagram doesn't care how long people are watching your stories for. They care how people are interacting with your stories. Now, something that used to be very beneficial in terms of interaction that now doesn't really make as big of a difference is those engagement stickers. So you know how there's like the poll sticker, there's the slider bar sticker, there's the question sticker where people can submit their own questions or comments to your Instagram stories. Those stickers used to be a great form of engagement and Instagram used to weight those things very heavy in the positive sense. Now they're not as big of a difference maker. In fact, you could get a ton of story clicks and story sticker engagements and it might not translate to any additional views. And so while having someone watch 100% of your story and or click on one of those interactive stickers, while that might not hurt you, it doesn't necessarily help you as much as we may have thought or as much as we may have in general in the past. So now let's talk about the positives. What are the positive forms of engagement? The three biggest keys for getting more views on your Instagram stories. And this is coming directly from Instagram's CEO himself. He has said this actually numerous times over the last few weeks on his own Instagram stories. And we've put all of these things to the test and we can now report to you that the third best kind of engagement for your Instagram story is a like. Now, likes were added to Instagram stories in 2024 and they appear as a little heart in the bottom right hand corner. Getting more likes helps you get more views on your Instagram stories. After hearing this information about the power of likes on Instagram stories. I put it to the test myself. I used a formula that I'm going to be sharing with you a little bit later. It's a formula I've shared here on Build. You'd try before, called my STD strategy. I know it's got a funny name, it's got that funny name so that you remember it. But anyways, I used this strategy and all I did was I changed out the call to action. And instead of asking people to do something again that I'll tell you a little bit later, I asked them to like the story. So for all intents and purposes, all of the variables were kept the exact same. It was a story with text that I have posted previously, and even though it was my most liked story ever, with almost 2000 likes on a single story, it was only my 22nd most viewed story of the last 12 months. So of the hundreds, if not possibly thousands of stories that I've posted within the last 12 months, this was the 22nd most viewed story. So getting a lot of likes on my story definitely helped me get more views, but it didn't push it to the top. It didn't make it my most viewed story, despite it being by far my most liked story. Now, the key form of engagement that is in second place is the one that unfortunately we have the least control over and that we have the least amount of stats or reporting on. And it is clicks. Now, a lot of people get confused when I say clicks because they think I'm referring to clicking on those engagement stickers that we already talked about. That's not what I'm talking about. When I say clicks, I specifically am referring to someone choosing or selecting your story from the queue of stories available. So if you open Instagram right now and you see that there's that long list of little circles up at the top where it's all of the new stories that you could watch. Whichever one you choose to begin with, that is the story that gets the upvote, if you will, that gets the positive form of engagement of a click. Because you chose, of all of my different options, this is the one I want to watch. It's kind of like when you go on YouTube or when you go on podcasts, maybe before you listen to this podcast and you saw a bunch of other recommended episodes, maybe from different shows, you chose to listen to this one. And if you chose to listen to it first, that is a very strong positive form of engagement. Same on Instagram. When it comes to Instagram stories, when people are hunting down your story and choosing it from all of the different options of stories that they could watch, that is a really strong, positive form of engagement. Now, like I said, unfortunately, we don't really get to see that number. We don't get to see a percentage or even just a total number of people who started with our story, who selected our story from the queue. And also, like I said, we can't really control that, but we can slightly influence it by making our stories, can't miss stories by making our stories. The kinds of stories that get people addicted, that get people wanting to come back and wanting to watch day after day. And you do that by making sure that your stories are high quality. Now, there's an important conversation that needs to be had here, which is that Instagram stories were created, created as a way to be off the cuff, to be raw, to be imperfect, and to be in the moment. And that very much contradicts a lot of what we're talking about today. And I understand that. I definitely think that there are times and there are places and there are people who are going to use their Instagram stories to not do anything I've talked about today, but to instead just share all the real moments, share all the in the moment happenings, document their day. Raw, real, imperfect. And that's awesome. And plenty of you are going to have success by not doing anything I've said today and instead sharing those raw, real, off the cuff, in the moment type of moments. And that's totally fine. It's really up to you. And it can vary from day to day. Like I mentioned earlier, that's one of the best things about Instagram stories is it could vary from day to day. You could have three days in a row where you're raw, real, imperfect, off the cuff, in the moment, it's super authentic, it's super vulnerable. And then you let your stories reset, you let all of your stories expire, you have a clean slate, and then bam, you hit them with an STD strategy like we've been talking about today. And like I'll talk about in just a little bit, you do just one single story, you avoid all those story view killers and you maximize your story views, maybe so that you can get more sales or get more link clicks or whatever. But again, just generally speaking, creating can't miss stories, only posting stories that are super engaging or super captivating, that's what gets people coming back. And generally speaking, if you're posting a bunch of talking head stories, you're posting 17 stories per day, showing us every little moment. What used to be considered a best practice on Instagram, stories that might not be, can't miss content that might be very easy to miss content, and thus the kinds of content that people are not going to click on and choose to watch in the future. So something to consider. But with all of that being said, with everything we've talked about today, the best form of engagement to maximize your Instagram story views, according to our own research, according to Instagram CEO himself, is story replies. When someone clicks on that little bar down at the bottom of your Instagram stories and sends you a direct message, thus replying to your story, that is the peak of engagement in Instagram's eyes. And it makes sense both algorithmically and audience, if that's a word, audience wise. It makes sense because if someone is taking the time to not skip or fast forward or exit your story, not just tap on a little sticker and vote, but to actually tap on the reply button and send you a message, even if it's just a single word, that is a heavy form of engagement. Like that person is invested, that person was paying attention, that person is highly engaged. And not only is that person sending a message, the likelihood that this is now going to become a conversation is super high. At the beginning of today's episode, I told you what the most consumed kind of content on all of Instagram is. It is Instagram stories. But Instagram stories are not the place where the average Instagram user spends the most amount of time. The place where the average Instagram user spends the most amount of time on Instagram is in the DMs in the direct messages. And I think that is what Instagram has realized, that is what Instagram has learned and that is why to now speak algorithmically. That is why they put so much weight into a reply. They know that that reply is going into the creator's DMs. And if the creator replies, now there's a conversation, now there is a full on friendship, a relationship, a conversation happening in the dms, it's getting people to spend more time on Instagram, form better connections on Instagram, and thus enjoy their overall Instagram experience that much more. And from our own experiments, this is true as well, both on my accounts and on numerous Insta Club Hub members accounts as well, where we've tested this over and over again and proven that the more replies you get to an Instagram story, the more views that story is going to receive. Now, without further ado, I would love to share with you my STD strategy for your Instagram stories. This is a strategy that is named in a way that you will never forget it. The S stands for the word single. Like we talked about earlier, the more stories you post, the less views you get. Or conversely, the less stories you post, the more views you get. And that is true all the way down to just one single story. So in order to get maximum story views, you are going to post one singular story in a 24 hour period. You're not going to keep posting stories throughout the day. If you already have stories posted, let them expire or delete them or archive them, which is a new feature, by the way. You can now archive Instagram stories. So little free breaking news for you there. But anyways, delete, archive or let them expire. So you only have one story posted in that 24 hour period. That's the S single. The T stands for text post. So text post, Instagram story. What does that mean? It basically means an Instagram story with a lot of text on it. It's not a talking head, it's not a video. It's either a photo or just a solid color background, like a still image graphic that has a lot of text on it. And when I say a lot of text, I'm talking multiple sentences, if not multiple paragraphs. That text is what gets people engaged. It's what gets them to stop their scroll, pause their Instagram stories and either skim or speed read, or take their time and fully read whatever text you have typed out. And then the key thing, arguably the most important part of the STD strategy is the D, which stands for DM automation. DM automation is essentially a tool where people can reply ding, ding, ding. The best kind of engagement, they reply with a keyword, you tell them what keyword to reply with, and then when they reply with that keyword, they get something in return. So when I want to make a sale or get someone on our email list or convert someone from a follower into a customer, I don't put the link sticker on my Instagram stories. I basically create a story as if I was going to put a link sticker at the bottom. And then instead of putting that link sticker at the bottom, I just write reply blank. And I will send you blank reply. Cool. And I will send you the discount code reply guide. And I will send you the free guide reply news. And I will send you the link to our newsletter. On average, when using this STD strategy, we see that views are increasing by 4x if not more. We've seen some people 10x or 25x or 50x their Instagram story views thanks to this strategy and it can work time and time again. I use this strategy as frequently as three times a week and it consistently boosts my story views for that 24 hour period, thus allowing me to get the most possible eyeballs on whatever it is that I want to get the eyeballs on. Now one bonus tip that I want to give on top of this strategy is that you can actually schedule these stories in advance using my favorite scheduling tool, Metricool. Metricool is today's partner and they are what I use to schedule 100% of my posts on Instagram. One of the biggest problems that's stopping people from growing on Instagram is lack of consistency. And I believe that lack of consistency is caused by because people are flying by the seat of their pants, they aren't using a scheduling tool. So use the one that I use. Use the one that I recommend. They have a free version so you can try it out for yourself indefinitely for free and get to know how to use it. Or you can use code brock B R O C k all caps and when you use that at checkout you can get Metricool Pro for free for a month. So you can use all of their advanced features. Use all the different tools and trackers and schedulers that I use on a daily basis. You can use those for free for a month and see if it's worth it for you. But I highly recommend using a scheduling tool. Metricool is my go to and like I said, you can even use Metricool to schedule your Instagram stories. So you could create an STD story, schedule it in advance on Metricool, and then you could even set it on like a reoccurring basis so that maybe once a week you have this STD story going up for you and then you don't have to worry about it. You're maximizing your Instagram story views without even having to open Instagram at all. So again, I will put the link and the discount code for Metricool down in the show notes below this episode, but I want to thank you so much for listening today. Give the STD strategy a try if you want to maximize your story views. Stay away from those five story view killers and don't forget to subscribe to Build you'd tribe for my upcoming interview with the CEO of Instagram himself. And until next time, happy networking.
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