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- [00:01]
Michael Stelzner
The most successful marketers invest in staying ahead. And that's exactly what happened at Social media Marketing World 2025, where industry leaders shared their proven strategies to AI implementation, organic social growth, and a whole lot more. If you couldn't attend in person, I have very good news for you. Every single session, keynote and workshop is available only through Friday, April 18, after which you won't be able to get tickets. Make the investment in your personal growth atsocial media marketingworld.info and watch 2025 be the year your marketing career reaches new heights. Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, Hello, Hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads and more sales. Who doesn't want all that? Today I'm going to be joined by Michelle Gifford and we're going to explore Instagram Stories strategy. If you are just randomly doing stuff with stories or you've just kind of overlooked stories on Instagram, today's episode is for you. It is chock full of solid gold. Also, if you're new to this podcast, be sure to follow this show so you don't miss any of our future content. Let's now transition over to this week's interview with Michelle Gifford, helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Michelle Gifford. If you don't know who Michelle is, she's the founder of Michelle Gifford Creative, an agency designed to help women influencers, creatives and businesses increase their following and grow their revenue with content marketing. She's also host of the Social Strategist Podcast. Her membership is the Insta Social Society and her course is Grow the Gram. Michelle, welcome back to the show. How you doing?
- [02:11]
Michelle Gifford
Hey, I'm excited to be here. We get to talk about some fun stuff today. I'm ready.
- [02:15]
Michael Stelzner
I'm excited that you're here. Today. Michelle and I are going to explore how to develop Instagram Stories strategy and we're recording this just a few days before Social Media Marketing World. This is going to come out after the conference. I'm going to see you in San Diego and lots of other people. That's a little tangent. Talk about Instagram Stories because we don't talk about it very often on this show. Why should marketers focus on Instagram Stories. And why should they have a strategy? Because I feel like this is the overlooked stepchild of Instagram that a lot of people are just ignoring, you know?
- [02:51]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah, well, we should always be focusing on Stories because I think marketers like to make money, right? And they like to convert people followers to buyers. And Stories is the best place to do that, especially on Instagram. All the other platforms have tried to duplicate the success that Instagram has in Stories. Facebook has tried, TikTok has tried. And Instagram Stories, because of their history and because of how people are using them and have used them throughout, like the history of Instagram, they are the most powerful place to convert because real people and real relationships happen in Stories. So if you could segment your list, like your email list, and you could segment it into the people who really love me and who are really going to buy without doing anything, you would probably like market to those guys a lot. Right. And that's what our Instagram stories are. They are self segmented people who are like, hey, I don't even need to have a hook or to even have a hint of what's coming on Michelle's stories, but I see her face, I see her stories in my feed and I'm going to click without knowing anything else. I know Michelle's going to offer value and I can't wait to see what she says. That is a powerful group of people for your audience.
- [04:06]
Michael Stelzner
Awesome. Okay, so there are a lot of us. I don't really mean us. I mean there's a lot of listeners. Because I'm not active on Instagram, I'm just going to tell the truth. But there's a lot of marketers and creators listening right now that have been using Instagram stories kind of a certain way kind of forever. And what I would love you to share are what some of the biggest mistakes as we're recording this in 2025 that you see a lot of creators and marketers making. With Instagra Stories, we're going to eventually reveal how to solve these mistakes. But what are some of the challenges that you see so many of us making?
- [04:42]
Michelle Gifford
So first of all is not really understanding what the power of stories, right? And so what do people who hate stories do? They just repost their stuff, right? They just repost their reel. They repost their content. And so you're training your story audience to not care, right? Because you're not showing up personally, you're not giving anything extra. There's not really a real connection to be made. And so people will Stop listening to your stories. And then it's like a self fulfilling, fueling prophecy, right? Because now it's like, oh, we didn't care about stories and so we didn't really post anything great. So now no one shows up and we're pretty mad about it. Another mistake is just showing up whenever you want. It used to be that you just kind of like showed up throughout your day, right? And you just kind of shared whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. And now because there's so many more people using stories and because people are using stories differently, we do have to show up in a specific way, adding some value. Another mistake is having too many stories. So we, we have too few where we'd never post and we have too many where in a day we're posting like 20. I don't know about you, but when I am looking at someone's stories and they look at the top right, you can see how many stories are coming. And if there's 20 and the dots are real small, I'm like, oof, sister, not today, right? It's just too much for us. So posting too many can really drop our viewership and then our views drop and then people aren't watching. Another one is too long of stories. Instagram changed a couple years ago that you can now post like a minute long video at a time. Remember it used to be 15 seconds. That was actually probably better for us because these minute long videos, it takes a lot to catch someone's and to keep someone's attention for a whole minute. And so using that whole minute is a big mistake unless you're really entertaining and you can, you know, keep people there. But I recommend keeping those long stories short to even if you're saying the same story, but cut it up into 20, 30 seconds to make it better. And then another mistake is showing up like you're on a vlog, right? You're just showing your day throughout the day and you're just like, hey, come with me. I'm not a celebrity. Probably you're not either. No one really cares, you know. And so yes, we want to show those aspects and let people into our lives. But if we feel like we're the star of the reality TV show, then that, then we're missing the point with stories because it's really all about connection and building that relationship. And then the last one is overusing links. Now remember when getting 10,000 followers is a big deal because then you got the link sticker and then they gave everyone the link sticker and everyone can Use links. Well, now when we use links, like, what does that do? It sends people off platform, and so that drops our story views. So if we're using links all the time, then it can really hurt our viewership.
- [07:26]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so I think what I'm hearing you say is because there are so many people on Instagram today, and because a large segment of those people choose to create stories, and also because we only have so much time that we spend on Instagram before we bail and move on to the next platform or the next app or whatever, we have to be a little bit more strategic about the kinds of things we publish on Instagram. And we also need to be very careful about the intent and purpose behind what we're doing. And if we're just showing up randomly, whenever, only once a year for me, when I'm at social media marketing world might not be relevant, you know, or we're just like constantly sharing everything about our lives. You got to put yourself in the position of your fan or your follower, right? They're not necessarily interested in that unless you really are a celebrity. And maybe, I don't know, but generally speaking, it's not going to work for most of us. So if everyone is making these mistakes, guess what? You're probably part of a pretty big group of people that are making these mistakes. And we're here to actually solve for that. So let's go ahead and explore for Michelle Gifford's first part, part of her stories strategy. Well, where do we need to start, actually?
- [08:42]
Michelle Gifford
Well, we need to start with understanding how the algorithm works, right? Because there is a difference here. And part of the reason people aren't doing well on stories is because they probably never thought about it as a strategic place on Instagram. But implementing stories with a strategy, it can convert, it converts better, Right? It really is a big deal. But we have to understand how it works first. So Instagram stories have a completely different algorithm than anywhere else else. Your stories are not organically shown to people who do not follow you. So in our feed, I mean, and when I came on last year and talked about it, we talked about, hey, how do we like, improve our reach, right? And how do we get those conversions from, like our reels? And we can do that. We can talk about that. Because our feed, our reels and our carousel posts, Instagram is actively pushing them out to non followers. That is not true for our stories. Our stories are pushed out to our followers. Can people who don't follow us view them? Yes, but they would have to go either be shared by someone else, or they would have to go to our feed and actively click on our story feed. So that rarely happens. So our story feed, if you went in as a user and looked at your feed up at the top, you'll see a bunch of stories and people who have done stories. Now, our goal is we want to get in front of people's story feeds so that every day when they look up, they see our cute faces, they click on it, and they want to know more about what we're doing today. But in order to do that, it's hard. It takes work to get on the front of people's story feeds, and to do that, we have to work with the algorithm. So the algorithm is always looking for engagement clues, right? It's just trying to match the right content with the right people. Do people care about Michelle's content? If someone does. If someone actively and usually is watching my stories, then Instagram is going to keep putting my stories in the front of their feed and they'll more likely see it. So we have to pay attention, because Instagram is saying, hey, this story that you just put up, how much of a percentage of people watched it all the way through, how many people engaged with it, and what kind of engagement is it? So it's paying attention to that because, again, Instagram's job is just to keep people on the app. So it doesn't want to feed people boring content that they don't care about. They want people to have content that they want to engage with, react with. And Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, has said that, like, where a lot of the engagement and interaction is coming is from DMs. I mean, think about how maybe you don't use Instagram that much, but how people use Instagram, they are finding content that they love and then they're sending it to someone's dm, right? So knowing that Instagram is like, okay, we DM people we're close to. So when we are looking for engagement in stories, there's different ways that we can engage, right? We can use an engagement sticker. So those are like the polls, they are like the question boxes, they are the sliders, those kind of things. Those are engagement stickers, and those are great. We use them. They're awesome. Another way people can engage, and I would say the highest form of engagement is to DM us from that story. So we are constantly trying to get people to engage with our content because those are triggers, those are signs to Instagram that this is valuable content that they want to Continue to see. And if a big portion of the people who see that piece of content also engage similarly, then it will start showing our content to more and more people who follow us. And so we have to understand how that algorithm works. So when I said we don't want to post too many stories, because think about that. If you had 15 stories and maybe only 10% got to the end, well, that's a big fall off. Right? And so we want to keep as many people engaged as possible for as long as we have them there. So we want to make those five stories a lot more strategic. Strategic, like, right, maybe we only post five to seven. But they're intentional, they're strategic, they're not too long. And then we have a higher watch time, we have less click through rates, and we have less exit rates. Okay. Then Instagram's gonna be like, that was great. And they engage with some of our content. Okay, we're gonna keep pushing that out to more people because if we do that, then we get a higher percentage of the people who are our loyal followers listening, following. And when we're ready, we can sell to them and ask them to take that next step with us.
- [13:04]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, well, let me tell you what I heard you say. What I heard you say is that the algorithm is totally different for stories. And no surprise, engagement is the important metric. And that means what percentage of people are getting through your stories? Just like YouTube looks at the retention graph, it's almost like, what's the likelihood they stick through all the stories? In addition, there's other engagement metrics we talked about, like polls and stickers and engagement stickers, which will trigger some more engagement. And then DMs direct messages are the big ones. And I think what I heard you say is rather than creating longer stories, try to create five to seven short and strategic stories. So let's talk a little bit about the, the content pillars thing that we were talking about when we were prepping this show.
- [13:50]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah. Wow. You do a great job at summarizing.
- [13:52]
Michael Stelzner
Well, I just take notes.
- [13:53]
Michelle Gifford
You're not as long witnessed as I am. Okay. So a lot of people just do not know how to start when they're talking about stories and actually building a strategy. So I like to start with some numbers and some percentages, and these are a great baseline to start with, and then you can adjust them as needed. But we should be adding value in our stories. We should be engaging with our audience and we should be connecting personally in some way. Those three things need to be happening. So in our Feed. The three things that I tell people to do is to create attraction content, nurture content, and sell content. Right now we don't do attraction content in stories because stories are not being pushed out to non followers. So we don't need to attract new people. But we really want to add a different kind of value than we do maybe in our feed, but add additional value and then have opportunities to engage and connect. So if you're just starting, I would say 50% of your content can be value. This is teaching, this is showing behind the scenes, this is showing examples or maybe before and afters or step by steps. Or if you're someone who does renovations or DIYs, you're like taking people on the process, right? And then 30% would be engagement. So how can I engage my audience and make them a part of my stories? And that would be those question boxes that would be engagement stickers, those. Those things that are actively getting people to engage with us. And then 20% would be connection. So this is going to be personal. This is going to be you figuring out like, what are your connecting points with your aud. So for me, I'm a mom to five kids. I am a softball coach to my two girls softball teams. So I use my softball. Like I will post about my games and you know, I'm taking my girls to softball. And this is a connecting point because a lot of my followers are women. They're moms. Maybe they aren't coaching softball, but they are heavily involved in their kids right now. And so I have that connecting point with them that they're like, oh, she's doing this like me. Right? And those kind of things are an important part of stories because it is really where we don't have to worry so much about keywords or SEO or whatever like we do in the feed, but we can show up authentically, share parts of our life and do it in a way that helps people connect with us and that is very, very powerful.
- [16:12]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, love this. I want to use you as an example. So you already shared how you do the connections, right? Where you said you share, but actually like just go through for you what kinds of stuff you posting on the value side and what kind of stuff are you posting? Let's get specific so people can wrap their heads around this.
- [16:31]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah, I love it. So for me, I teach Instagram and strategy. So last week I was talking about actually story strategy, and I said, hey, here are some ideas of how you can post today, right? So I'm like, hey, I know you're struggling. I know you don't know what to post. And so I will say, this is what you're going to post today. Or I will say, hey, do you actually know how the story's algorithm works? Right. And I could break down just a couple key points, and how would I.
- [16:56]
Michael Stelzner
Engage real quick on the value side of things?
- [16:58]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah.
- [16:59]
Michael Stelzner
How are you getting that done in just seconds? Like, give us an example, because teaching in only, like, 15 or 30 seconds feels hard. You know what I mean?
- [17:06]
Michelle Gifford
Sure, yeah. So one of the ways that you can do it is with a single image post and not even a video. So this is actually really great because I can write step one, and I can write it out. Right. Step one, step two, step three. And it's almost like a mini blog post. Right. It's just, like, really condensed. It's three bullet points, maybe five sentences. And people, if it's valuable enough, are going to hold down on the screen and sit on that story longer. What do you think that does for my engagement?
- [17:33]
Michael Stelzner
Ooh, that's a powerful engagement metric because they're tracking how much time. How much time do they have on an image post? Is it usually like 10 seconds?
- [17:40]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah, it's 15 seconds. I think I probably need to check on that. But if they're holding down, that is another engagement sign that people care, and this is valuable. So you will notice that a lot of the people who take stories seriously are doing less video and more slides because you can get more information, and it keeps people around longer.
- [17:59]
Michael Stelzner
How much text are we talking about? You know, because obviously, if you make it too much, it's not. They're not gonna be able to read it very easily without zooming in on or whatever. Right?
- [18:07]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah. So if I broke it down into three points, I could put maybe one or two sentences under each point. I'm just paying attention to. I understand how big my screen is, and I want people read it. So I'm just paying attention to, can I make this big enough for people to read? And something that you can do is with that image, it doesn't have to do with anything that you're posting about. So maybe. Actually, I did this this week where I posted. I took a picture of my daughter in the outfield. Right. She was sitting in the outfield. And as far enough away, I had plenty of room for text. So not only am I giving value, but I'm like, oh, I was at softball today. I didn't even have to say anything right. About that. But I added that connection piece, and it was to my value slide. So that's a really good value.
- [18:50]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, I have a couple more questions. Number one is, can you add music underneath it? Yeah, you can. Okay. And then number two, do you preview it with your face and voice and then show it or do you not just. You just get right to the image without your face?
- [19:04]
Michelle Gifford
Oh, so like do a slide at the beginning and then like, hey, here's.
- [19:07]
Michael Stelzner
Probably a challenge you're faced. I'm going to share with you my insights. And then boom, the next slide is it. Do you say that out loud or do you just leave it all the text and you don't even show up with your voice at all.
- [19:15]
Michelle Gifford
You don't even need to say it with your voice at all. You have to know, actually, this isn't a thinking thing. 85% of Instagram, when you're they're viewing Instagram are not listening. Right. They're doing it with the sound off. So I can actually get more to having an image post than a video post. I just know that that's going to keep people longer just in general because they can read it in a second and they don't have to watch to hear. I talk pretty fast, especially if you guys are listening on tune speed, but I don't talk faster than someone can read. Right. And so I don't even say anything. Like I will just have my first image back or my, you know, my first image of the, of the whole set, which I do recommend in, like, if you're going to talk about stories, like I talk about story strategy, don't post one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one in the evening. Post them all at once so people can get through them and know what they're going to get. And then you just start out with that image. You say, are you struggling with stories? And you could, depending on how you want to do it, but you could do struggling with stories. I know it's hard because on average you get 1 to 8% of your followers are watching you in your stories. That can feel really discouraging. Here's a strategy for you. And then my next slide could be like the actual strategy. And then I know we're not here yet, but I'm going to just give a little preview of how I would do it. My third, if I, I have like an opt in, then my third slide would be like, hey, do you want my story strategy broken down? DM this and I'll send you my opt in.
- [20:39]
Michael Stelzner
Thousands of marketers just experienced something incredible at social media marketing world 2025. Our expert speakers delivered game changing insights on AI marketing, Instagram growth strategies and so much more. Did you miss the event? Good news, you can still access all the recordings with a virtual ticket, but only until Friday, April 18, after which you won't be able to get tickets. Get the knowledge that's transforming marketing careers right now atsocial media marketingworld.info and make 2025 your breakthrough year. Okay, so that's how you're doing what you're calling your value. And this is half of your content. Right. So then what about the engagement?
- [21:22]
Michelle Gifford
The 30% engagement is really where I like. I want to hear from my audience and I want them to feel seen and heard. I mean, and stories is so valuable for doing product research or customer research or whatever. So I want to know what people are actually worried about. So in that stories set, I could like on my first slide I could have a poll that said, do you have a story strategy? Right. And it could be like kind of absolutely. I don't know what you're talking about or show me the answers. So I'm going to just explain that as a little tip, whenever you're doing a poll sticker, there are a huge majority of the people are watching actually don't want to tell you their answers. They just want to know the answer. And so if you give them a way that they can answer without voting, then you get more engagement. Right? Because they don't just skip on through.
- [22:09]
Michael Stelzner
How many options do you have in a poll?
- [22:12]
Michelle Gifford
Four.
- [22:12]
Michael Stelzner
Okay. And what was that last little secret ninja tip?
- [22:15]
Michelle Gifford
Sorry. Yeah, I'm going to, I'll go a little bit. So on a poll sticker, right, for me, if I said, how many of you have a story strategy? My first answer could be absolutely, I do every day or whatever. And the second answer could be kind of and sometimes. And the third answer could be never. I just show up whenever. And then I'm going to add that fourth option that's going to say I'm not telling. Show me the answer. I usually say something like that.
- [22:39]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
- [22:40]
Michelle Gifford
I like to be like a little wink.
- [22:42]
Michael Stelzner
So just out of curiosity, how many people pick that fourth one? Is it a lot?
- [22:45]
Michelle Gifford
I'm just telling you there's more than you think.
- [22:47]
Michael Stelzner
That's cool. I love it.
- [22:48]
Michelle Gifford
And so you'll see sometimes people, they'll just put like a popcorn emoji because it's like in the stands, I just want to hear the answer. But you just know that there's a lot of people who maybe they don't care enough to answer, or maybe they are nervous to answer. And so if you give them this option, then you just have. You're catching everyone, not just the people who care.
- [23:08]
Michael Stelzner
Well, and your engagement metrics go up too. Right, Right.
- [23:10]
Michelle Gifford
That's what I'm saying. You're catching everyone. More people are able to engage because you're including everyone. So that's how I would add that engagement to that story set I talked about at the beginning. Is that that first slide, I'd have, like, a way that people could engage with me because that gives me a lot of information. Right. Even if I just did that story set and I said, oh, you know what? Most of these people. If I said, like, oh, 50% of these people don't even have any story strategy, then that can guide a podcast that I do. Right. It can guide my YouTube. Right. It can guide whatever I'm doing. So that engagement is really, really powerful. So that's an opportunity for engagement. Another one is just like a Q and A. So I do this, like once a week where I'm like, hey, what Instagram questions do you have? Sometimes I'll say, hey, what non Instagram questions you have about life, about whatever I'm doing, And then I answer back. And people feel that connection. They feel like they've been actually answered, and it builds that connection.
- [24:04]
Michael Stelzner
And then on the personal stuff, like, give us a specific example of, like, the kind of stuff that you. Is it connected to your business or is just completely random stuff that you're doing with your daughter, like, at the soccer game?
- [24:13]
Michelle Gifford
Well, something that I try to do is think about my brand as a whole, and what is my brand trying to convey? People do not have to go this deep. But I like to say, like, what is my overall brand about? And I'm a mom. I have five kids. I have an agency, I have a business. And a lot of people, yeah, they want to learn Instagram from me, but they also are like, how in the world are you doing this? And so I have chosen to be like, hey, I'm going to show parts of motherhood, because that's part of the brand that I care about.
- [24:42]
Michael Stelzner
Well, and you're serving a lot of women who happen to be moms, right?
- [24:45]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah, I'm not giving parenting hacks. I'm not even doing anything. Like, that's not me. Popsicles is the best parenting hack I have. Just give Popsicles. But. But to say, like, my brand is like, I want women to know they can do it too. Even if they have kids or even if they feel busy or even if whatever. And so I'm going to build elements of that in my stories that show people what I'm doing and share that if I can do it, they can do it.
- [25:09]
Michael Stelzner
Love it. So 50% of our content is this value. Teaching examples step by steps. And we talked about how you can do this without any video. Then we've got this engagement 30 and you talked about a cool thing that you can do with polls. And then 20% is this connection stuff that ideally is strategically aligned with what your mission or objective is. Because you can choose to reveal whatever part of your personal life or even professional life. Right. You could just do behind the scenes stuff if you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to connect with other entrepreneurs. Right. So once we've got kind of this conceptually figured out, what's the next part of the strategy?
- [25:44]
Michelle Gifford
The next is to create a stories calendar for the week. So I mean, you do this probably for your other content, but maybe not for stories. So what am I selling? What content am I creating on other platforms? Maybe you have a podcast, right? And how can I use stories to convert those people into listeners? How could I tie in like my goals? Maybe those are sales goals or email opt in goals or whatever with the value engagement connection. Right? Like how do those interlock and when am I going to show up? When am I going to add value? Right? Well, let's give some examples. That's a lot easier. So for example, if I'm like, hey, I know that on Sunday nights I am going to put a question box and then Mondays are going to be my answer, the Q and A days. That's an easy thing to do. And that can check off some engagement and some connection for me. Right? And then Tuesday, maybe that's your podcast day and you're talking about Instagram stories. Let's make it about me, Michael. Okay, yeah, sure. Let's say I have a podcast that's talking about Instagram stories, right? Then I could do that whole three slide thing that we already talked about. Hey, do you have a story strategy? Here's this breakdown of my story strategy. And then my third slide could be like, guess what? I have a story strategy for you. I talk about it on my podcast. DM me this and I'll send you my podcast link. So then there's that value. Yes, I'm converting, but that's great because I added all that value. Then I think, okay, am I selling anything this week? Is there anything that I'M actually selling. And if there is, how can I show people the process of that? Or how can I, like, add value in a way that makes sense? Sense. So I have in the social society where part of that is my membership, where you get 10 to 12 trending audios every week so that you don't have to search for them. All right, cool. So on one of my days that I want to add value, I can say, hey, have you gotten my free trending audio for this week? Because I send that out as well. And then I say, okay, DM me this and I'll send you a link to that. And then my next slide can be, do you want 10 to 12 to choose from so you don't have to look at them at all this week? And then I send them to my product. So I'm just thinking about, like, how do I align my content with my goals in a way that adds value? This should not be that big of an adjustment for marketers, because this is what we do, right? We say we have value, we want to sell something. And how does that align with where our people are right now? The difference is that we're doing this in a. Just a slightly different way in stories where it's a little bit more personal and it's. It only lasts for 24 hours.
- [28:09]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah, I wanted to ask about that part because I. I just envisioned all these thoughts and concerns popping into everybody's brains. Who's listening? Like, the ethereal nature of stories. I'm doing all this work, and it's only there for 24 hours, and it's such a small, little maybe audience compared to what I can get through reels and stuff. So what do you want to say to people? Just to remind them maybe why this is more valuable than what they might be thinking.
- [28:34]
Michelle Gifford
So I will say, number one, that this is a process. Like, you might have 50 people watching your stories right now, and you're like, this isn't worth it. But if you invested in some time into this, and really the investment comes from building an actual strategy, the stories weren't working for you. Not because stories don't work is because you didn't apply an actual strategy to them. That's just the way it is. Right? People come to me and they're like, why aren't my reels working? I'm like, you have no strategy. You're just posting random stuff. Stuff. So of course your reels aren't working to attract the right audience. So just know that this is a time investment. About six months ago, I was like, hey, I really want to double my story views. And I have. I've actually tripled them. And so, yeah, it takes time. But the thing is, is just like any platform, the more you invest in it, and again, it can just be like, you just make a plan. This can take up 20 minutes of your day. It doesn't have to take up your whole life. It could actually probably take up less us. And you could find that it's actually a super fun and fulfilling place. Because at the end of the day, you have to think about this. We're just vying for people's attention. Like, let's say you have a hundred thousand followers and 5,000 people are coming into you and your stories. 5,000 people are choosing to show up for you. And these are the very people who are ready to buy. So that's pretty valuable.
- [29:50]
Michael Stelzner
Well, and I want to add something to this that I think a lot of people might be overlooking. How many customers do you really need to be successful? What's the value of a customer? People buy from those whom they know like and trust. And when you are top of mind with somebody, they might not be your customer, but they might know who your next customer is. And that's the other side of it. Like, what's their network? Right? What if One of those 50 people happens to know somebody who's your ideal customer and gives a glowing referral because they're one of the 50 who watch your stories? Right? And that is a reframe that a lot of us have to think about, because so many of us are used to just not thinking of them as humans, but thinking of them as metrics. And they're not metrics. They're people. And they're people that choose to follow you, and they're people that choose to watch this stuff. So I'm preaching to myself a little bit. But at the same time, this is also practice for you because like what you said earlier, you're already probably creating content in other mediums, and this is for a special subset of your audience, your super fans. Now, I think the next question people might be asking is, how frequently am I actually doing this In a week, how many days a week am I posting? Talk to me about that. And I know we're going to get into the content creation side in just a second, but how often are we doing this?
- [31:09]
Michelle Gifford
I'm usually posting in stories six days a week. But listen, I'm an overachiever when it comes to Instagram, so I like it because I think it's a really good testing ground as well. And it can be a place that you connect. Choose what works for you, and then push yourself about 10% more. Right. Because all of us are going to say, well, one day a week works for me. But if you want to make this a serious part of your strategy, then take it seriously and block out some time to actually make this work.
- [31:37]
Michael Stelzner
Are we posting all of these? Like, if we think about this, 50% value, 30% engagement, 20% connections, essentially, if this was 10 short images or whatever, we're talking about 5, 3, 2. Right. Or we're cutting it in half and.
- [31:53]
Michelle Gifford
It'S like, do six and then it's three, two, one. If you do six, it's three, two, one.
- [31:57]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah, three, two, one. Do you recommend doing these all together? Like, in what? Do you publish them all at the same time? I guess is what I'm asking.
- [32:05]
Michelle Gifford
You do not have to. So this is just like what I want you to do. And the percentages is I want you to get in the frame of mind that I'm going to be adding value. And I always like. And I make sure that when I'm adding value, I think about, is there a way I can engage or connect? But you do not have to do, like, value, engage, connect every day. You do not have to. But just to be thinking about this is what stories are for. Right. It's a different way to add value. And then how do I engage? It's really just a mindset shift because a lot of people really just post their reels to their stories and then they leave it alone, you know? And I'm saying, like, no, like, this is a different, different place that you can add value in a different way. So let's do it strategically. You get to decide if, like, okay, we are doing value, engagement, and connection every day, but that can feel a little bit overwhelming. So just say this is kind of the baseline and will help me guide my. My strategy going forward.
- [32:57]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah. And for people that feel a little squirmy about the personal stuff, I would imagine they could just do value and engagement.
- [33:04]
Michelle Gifford
Sure.
- [33:04]
Michael Stelzner
Until they feel comfortable enough with the connection stuff. Right.
- [33:07]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah. And I would say that personal doesn't have to be that personal. Listen, no one can handle all of Michelle Gifford. Right. That's why I don't share all of that online. Right.
- [33:16]
Michael Stelzner
Other than your family?
- [33:18]
Michelle Gifford
My husband, bless him, you know, But Instagram followers don't need all of that. I say, like, what parts of me and that could be. You are a marketer and you love Old cars. Cool. Show me. Like, did you go to a car show this weekend? Show that. Because what. What it's doing is. It's really just making a different type of connection because you become different. When I'm like, oh, guess what? I like old cars too.
- [33:44]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah. It's humanizing you, right?
- [33:45]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah. And you're not just talking at me, but you're like, oh, my gosh, I just did this today. And that's fun. I mean, I love it. It doesn't have to be like, tell me your deepest secret and all the things you struggle with emotionally. Please don't. That's too much. I can't handle it.
- [33:59]
Michael Stelzner
Awesome. All right, let's get to the next part of the process, which is the actual creation of the content itself. What tips and ideas do you have on that?
- [34:05]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah, so I work with a lot of creatives. I know that batching can be really hard, especially with stories. I think batching is a great plan if that works for you. And then I would. Either way, you're going to put it in your schedule, whether you're like, okay, today I'm going to batch my stories. And if you are batching your stories, I would do it in an organized way. So build a folder. Right? Just in your. Just an icloud folder. It doesn't have to be anything, but just put your stories. You're not like, searching through your phone with all the videos. So you can either batch them all in one day in one sitting.
- [34:36]
Michael Stelzner
Do you have a tool that you're using to create these image posts and stuff like that, or do you just use Instagram's native stuff built into it?
- [34:42]
Michelle Gifford
I would just use Instagram stories because you can add text. So once I create it, like, you can just download it.
- [34:47]
Michael Stelzner
Oh, I see.
- [34:48]
Michelle Gifford
If you create it in Instagram, you can actually put it to drafts in your story.
- [34:51]
Michael Stelzner
Oh, okay. So wait, so what I'm hearing you say is you can create a whole bunch of drafts if you want to, or you can download them. If you download them, they'll download as an image, presumably, and then you can re upload them from your camera roll. Is that what I'm hearing you say?
- [35:03]
Michelle Gifford
That's what you're hearing me say. Exactly.
- [35:06]
Michael Stelzner
What are the pros and cons of doing it daily versus batching it? Like, talk to me a little bit about that from your professional advice.
- [35:12]
Michelle Gifford
So I will say, like, with creatives and people who are like. Like, they get energy from creating. I mean, listen, I work with a lot of influencers, and for them to batch stories feels really overwhelming. I also think stories can be more off the cuff. They do not have to be edited. They don't have to be professional. It's just like, you going on your way. It can feel easier and more natural if you're just doing it in the moment. That said, if that's not your style, it's totally fine. But if you do want to do it in the moment, what I recommend is at least setting aside, like, a time of the day that you're going to show up and then schedule off 15 or 20 minutes so that you can you actually do it. Because if you don't put something in your schedule, it doesn't happen. Right. And the things that are in our schedule matter to us. So let's make Instagram stories matter to us, and let's put it in our schedule.
- [35:59]
Michael Stelzner
Any tips on all the little features that are available inside of stories that maybe people might not be familiar with that could create, you know, maybe a little bit more visually attractive story?
- [36:09]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah. I will say that, like, some of the most viral Instagram content right now is all these, like, Instagram, I don't know, story stuff where you have to, like, spend 30 hours creating a beautiful story. I am not behind that. I do not think that you need to spend a ton of time, like, crafting and creating this perfect story. So I will say that as just a little disclaimer. One thing that I try to do is if there are any videos, put the captions on. Just put the captions. Remember, most people are not listening with the sound on. I will also in my videos, because again, I said before that I want to make sure that people are watching my videos all the way through. So I'll turn my captions on. And I usually do like, a little snippet or a little hook about what I'm talking about, like that I type out so people, they know what they're going to get.
- [36:56]
Michael Stelzner
It's almost like the equivalent of a headline. Is that what I'm hearing you say?
- [36:59]
Michelle Gifford
Yep.
- [36:59]
Michael Stelzner
Even though you're creating a video, you've got a little headline that they can read.
- [37:03]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah.
- [37:03]
Michael Stelzner
And then the captions. I mean, for those of us that are incompetent, like myself. Is that a button or.
- [37:09]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah, it's just a button. Yeah, it's just a button that you can turn on and it pulls the captions from there.
- [37:14]
Michael Stelzner
Can you edit the captions if they screw up on the captions? I mean, is that easy to fix?
- [37:18]
Michelle Gifford
You can edit it. Yeah, you can click on it. And then scroll through and just edit the words and then all the poll stickers. I don't do much more than that. I'm going to not lie to you because you can do all these flashy things, and I just don't know that they matter enough to spend more than five minutes on it.
- [37:33]
Michael Stelzner
What about this reset concept that we were talking about when we were prepping?
- [37:37]
Michelle Gifford
Are you ready for this?
- [37:38]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah. Let's hear it.
- [37:39]
Michelle Gifford
Okay. This is one of the big things that I recommend doing at least once a week, and it is doing an Instagram story reset. Okay. So that means that you do not post anything on your stories for 24 hours. So what does that mean? Let's say today I posted a story at 3:00. I don't want to post anything until 3:00 tomorrow.
- [37:59]
Michael Stelzner
Oh, you want to wait a full 24 hours?
- [38:01]
Michelle Gifford
Okay, I want to wait a full 24 hours. So that. What does that do? It means that all of my stories have expired. There are none left. There's no more there. Okay. So if someone were to go to my feed, I would have no stories to watch. Okay, so my first slide back, and it needs to be an image, not a video. We've tested this over and over again, and it needs to be an image where we ask for some type of engagement. Now, there are different types of engagement you can ask for. The most powerful one we already said was dms. So if you can get people to DM you on that first slide, I almost guarantee that your Instagram views on that slide will be probably two times higher than they usually are. So you have a reason to DM you. Now, the reason to DM you has to be simple to do and simple to say yes to. So a couple options are that you could do a giveaway, right? Just comment this, and I'm going to send you $10 gift cards to Starbucks or. Or Venmo or whatever. So you're seeing more of those giveaways happen.
- [39:00]
Michael Stelzner
Now, real quick, when you say comment.
- [39:02]
Michelle Gifford
Yeah, there's like a comment section. It's just a dm.
- [39:04]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, got it. Okay. Yeah, because I wanted to make sure. Because I. I think there's a distinction. So it really is a comment, but it goes into a dm.
- [39:10]
Michelle Gifford
Thank you for the distinction. So you want people to DM you like their Venmo or just. So today I am doing my. Like when I go to the gym, I'm doing weightlifting, and I did my highest deadlift. It was a personal best. So I said, hey, guess what? My personal deadlift was today. And the person who gets spot on, I'm going to send you $25. Oh, that's fun, right? It says a little bit about me and it's fun.
- [39:35]
Michael Stelzner
Well, it's probably the first person, not all the people. Right. Presumably.
- [39:39]
Michelle Gifford
Well, so for this one specifically, when I'm like, hey, you have to guess the one. Right on.
- [39:43]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah. Okay, got it.
- [39:44]
Michelle Gifford
Then I'm going to choose that one. But just saying like, hey, here's an easy way to DM me. Right. So a giveaway. I said, the person who guesses it gets lunch on me.
- [39:52]
Michael Stelzner
Yep. Okay, cool.
- [39:53]
Michelle Gifford
Okay. So another way to do it is through like say I did this last week where I. It was just an image of me and I said, what should we talk about today? Leave a purple heart emoji if you want to talk about stories. Leave a red heart if you want to talk about CEO mindset. Or leave a blue heart if you want to talk about many chat automation. And so all they had to do was leave a dm. That is an easy DM to leave. Right.
- [40:21]
Michael Stelzner
Is there a way that they can push a button and the DM just comes through with the right heart or do they have to actually find the heart?
- [40:26]
Michelle Gifford
No, they have to do the right thing. So I know, because you could do a poll sticker, but remember, DMs are more valuable. Yeah, but they don't have to think about how something's spelled. They just have to be like purple heart. You know, they can just type that in and they can find it. So it makes it for an easy, an easy engagement. The third option is, my favorite option is DM Automation. So I use ManyChat, where you set up an auto reply and you can say DM this word and then it automatically replies to that. So those three things are the first slide back. You do one of those things on the first slide back after your 24 hour reset.
- [41:05]
Michael Stelzner
Got it. So that means you got to be real careful about when you, I mean, you can schedule these or can you not schedule these? I mean, because that's a little tricky, right?
- [41:13]
Michelle Gifford
What's tricky about it?
- [41:14]
Michael Stelzner
If you have a minute worth of stories and you publish at 3pm every day, you're going to have a little bit of an overlap. So you have to do 301.
- [41:20]
Michelle Gifford
Oh, yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter.
- [41:22]
Michael Stelzner
Can you schedule these things or not? I mean, that's the question.
- [41:25]
Michelle Gifford
I don't think you can schedule them, but I think you can put them in drafts. But what I was going to say is like, I don't think you need to say like every day I'm showing up at 3:00, right? Yeah, but I'm just saying that you.
- [41:36]
Michael Stelzner
Need wait 24 hours, ideally, because the benefit there is that they don't accidentally see your old stories and your new stories together. Is that right? Or is there something more to it?
- [41:45]
Michelle Gifford
So the actual benefit here is the most people to see our stories is our first slide back after not ever posting. So not post. You know what I mean?
- [41:56]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah.
- [41:56]
Michelle Gifford
So if you wait till you have zero stories, Instagram's going to show that first slide to more people than your second, third, or fourth slide.
- [42:04]
Michael Stelzner
Ah. And if you don't do that, then it becomes like your fifth or sixth slide.
- [42:08]
Michelle Gifford
Exactly. Yep, yep.
- [42:10]
Michael Stelzner
Wow, Michelle, this is crazy town. Okay, go ahead, say what you were gonna say. Go ahead.
- [42:16]
Michelle Gifford
So. Well, I was just going to say that if you do that, then your first slide back and then you get all of this DM engagement, then Instagram's like, whoa, let's show that to a bunch of people. And then they start showing your stories to more people.
- [42:30]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, Michelle, where can people discover you on Instagram? And then if people want to connect with your business, where do you want to send them?
- [42:37]
Michelle Gifford
You could come find me at a.m. michelle Gifford on Instagram. I have a podcast. You can find me there as well. Just search Michelle Gifford everywhere. But you'll find me. But come hang out with me in stories. Duh. And I also have a story strategy training, so if you want that, you can come comment. Because listen, DM automation is where it's at. You can come comment million dollar stories and I'll send you a.
- [43:00]
Michael Stelzner
Does it matter whether it's one word or if it's no?
- [43:03]
Michelle Gifford
Because I know, because automation is awesome and I can account for spelling errors and everything.
- [43:07]
Michael Stelzner
Michelle Gifford, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your insights with us today.
- [43:11]
Michelle Gifford
Thank you so much.
- [43:13]
Michael Stelzner
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@socialmediaexaminer.com 662 if you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a longtime listener, would you give us a review on what whatever your preferred platform is. And let your friends know about the show. I'm Elsner on Facebook, Stelzner on LinkedIn and ikestelsner on X. And do check out our other shows. The AI Explored Podcast and the Social Media Marketing Talk show. This brings us to the end of the Social media marketing podcast. I'M your host, Michael Stelzner, and I'll be back with you next week, I promise. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner, Social media Marketing World 2025 just wrapped and the insights were incredible. Did you miss it? You can still get all the recordings on AI strategies, organic social tactics, and a whole bunch more with your virtual ticket, but Only until Friday, April 18th. Visit social media marketing world.info and make 2025 your breakthrough year.