HOW TO IMRPOVE YOUR INSTAGRAM STORIES

       ALL ABOUT INSTAGRAM STORIES

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HI!! So incase you missed it I’ve been sharing all my instagram secrets in a weekly Instagram series called color me classroom. I’ve covered everything from how to brand your instagram, understand the algorithm & create killer content. I feel like over the past 10 weeks I’ve been able to give you a good baseline overview for how to build a great profile, but now I want to dive a little deeper, so I’ll be sharing more in-depth info on my blog each Tuesday, starting NOW!

Today on #colormeclassroom we’re going to cover instagram stories for the second week in a row, so in this blog post i’m giving you EVEN MORE INFO on how to create an awesome Instagram story & get more views. In todays post I’ll cover, how to shine on stories, how to increase your views & the outside apps I use for creating awesome stories!

AWESOME APPS – instagram is great but if you want stories that stand out from everyone else, you might want to consider outside apps, here are some that I use

UNFOLD – you’ve probably seen these before but I use unfold for templates, collages and unique instagram stories. There are a ton of great templates here and most are free! Its a great way to add a little edge to a story OR add some white space if you need to add text. I usually use templates for sponsored stories or series content so its clear it was recorded at a different time, opposed to my raw ones that I post without a template.
VLLO – this is basically iMovie for your phone and I use it to chop up stories, over lay videos, adjust speed & add sound. I think a lot of Instagram stories (like makeup ones) are boring and slow, so I use this to make them more dynamic and interesting. They also have a lot of cool graphics, moving images and borders you can add to your images PLUS you can adjust tone, light and color here too.
HYPE TYPE – this is really more of a template / font app but I actually only use it to add music. The music in Instagram stories never works for me and thats annoying, but hype type is always there for me to add music in my time of need
CHROMIC or VSCO – so I think you have pay for both of these but WORTH IT, you honestly only need one tho. You can use these to edit the coloring in your video in a pretty advanced way. They both have free versions that might work for you, but then you can upgrade to the purchased version to unlock additional features. I think I prefer VSCO here because of the extreme color control, but chromic is better for beginners

SO now that you know my favorite apps, I wanted to give you an overview on how to get more story views & how to create amazing stories to begin with. Lets start with the latter, because you can use all the growth techniques in the book but they wont work unless your stories are AWESOME!

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Wondering why no one is watching your stories?
Well here are the most common common stories mistakes & how to fix them:
THEY DON’T PROVIDE VALUE – stories need to provide unique & added value outside of your feed! Create exclusive story content, go beyond a feed photo and do more than just provide a swipe link to keep people watching!! For my stories I do weekly series content o like #waffleswednesday (where my dog takes over my stories) & show so much more of my relationship with paris that you might not see on my feed. Basically if you want to really know me you need to watch my stories!
THEY’RE UNAUTHENTIC – stories can be less serious than your feed, so take advantage and let your guard down. Showing unfiltered moments to let your audience in on your daily life will keep them watching and make them feel like they’re apart of your world. Be silly, show yourself without makeup, talk to the camera and don’t be afraid to be yourself!!! Thats what we want to see. If the story is crap, don’t stress it! It will expire in 24 hours!
THEY LACK STRUCTURE – think of IG stories as an actual story, they need to have a beginning middle & end so don’t start a story you cant finish and don’t just dive into one without setting the scene. Taking the time to actually develop the stories you want to tell will keep people engaged from the beginning to end and keep them from skipping past you
THEY’RE NOT VISUAL – most (60%) people watch stories WITHOUT SOUND so your stories should be more visual than audible. If you’re like me and like talking straight to camera you need to write out what you’re staying so they can read along, otherwise people feel excluded. Try to capture moments that don’t need music or sound to be enjoyable so everyone can watch!
THEY’RE RANDOM – stories should be a good mix of experiences and continued content that people can count on. Every so often you’ll see me at a one-time event but always you’ll catch me putting on makeup in the car. That kind of reoccurring content makes your stories feel more like a show and less like a random mix of clips. This consistency makes them easier to watch and more likely to keep people coming back.
THEY’RE REPETITIVE – although consistency is key, it shouldn’t be repetitive. Don’t simply posting the same thing over and over, bring NEW value in each post. Find ways to tell the same story with a different take away and in diverse ways

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OKAY so now you know WHAT makes a story great and what mistakes to avoid, but how to do you get MORE EYES on them? Well here is a how to increase your story views.

I’ll be honest, when instagram stories first started and I had 400K followers was getting 150K views on a story, but thats not the case anymore. So I started researching how to increase my story views 80% of what I read on the web didn’t work for me, so I made up a few things of my own, asked my friends & did even more trial and error, here’s what work

HOW TO INCREASE YOUR STORY VIEWS
You probably know these first few, a quick google search will direct you to these, but I’m spilling the T on what really works: 
GEOTAG – you can geo tag your stories to give yourself a small boost, I would say it only helps like 5% but hey thats 5%. I do get a bigger bump when I geotag DISNEYLAND or things like that. For safety I don’t post my instagram stories live, I usually lag about an hour if you have a public profile I wouldn’t recommend you posting live either, please protect yourself
HASHTAG – again small boost here but try adding relevant hashtags to your post – the more niche & relevant your tags are more reach
POST FREQUENTLY – every time you post on stories your’e pushed up to the front of someones feed, so it can increase your views. Think of it like breakfast lunch and dinner, aim for posting x3 a day

OKAY now on to the LESS POPULAR TIPS that you might not know
POST SINGULAR STORIES or MASS UPLOAD: because of how stories work, if you publish a bunch of single stories back to back it actually can decrease your exposure. If you wait 30 min between each story post OR use the mass upload (where you publish a bunch of stories at once) you’ll see your views go UP!
STOP THE SKIPPING: if someone skips / taps through your story it hurts your changes of that story getting seen, so I do tricks like cutting down my boomerangs from 6 seconds to 3 to prevent skipping. Keeping the stories interesting and short have decreased my taps & increased my views
KEEP IT INTERACTIVE: I started adding polls & questions to almost all my stories to help my get to know my community more, but something else happened. My views doubled! Adding a relevant poll almost always gets me MORE views because it tells instagram that my post is worth engaging on so IG shows it to more people
RESPOND TO DMS: responding to your community makes your stories a conversation, instead of you just showing off. No one wants to be in a one sided convo, so I spend hours talking to cuties all day and this keeps them watching my stories
MAKE SEGMENTS: you guys know this already because I said it before, but a weekly series can keep them coming back to a specific day to increase your views
USE APPS: again, we covered this at the top of this post but using outside apps can make your stories more dynamic and interesting to help you STAND OUT!

DID THIS HELP? I hope you learned something. Please let me know in the comments below! OR if you have a great story trick I missed share it!!!

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