Maintaining a presence on Instagram can be difficult.
Somedays I don’t post because I’m busy or that specific day doesn’t get good engagement or simply because I don’t have content to share.However, every day you are inactive on Instagram takes a toll on your account for two reasons:
1. Your current followers may start to forget about you or lose interest.
2. Because you are not being active on Instagram, potential followers will not discover your account.
How do you stay relevant and connected?
The answer: Instagram Stories.
The best thing about IG Stories is that they show up at the very top of both your news feed and the explorer page! This is the easiest way to stay connected to your followers and bring in new ones.
As to the order in which Instagram shows Stories in the explore tab, they seem to favor accounts that use Stories often and well, so be sure you’re giving Instagram the opportunity to promote yours.
So the question is, how do you gain followers with Instagram Stories?
- Watch other accounts Instagram stories. As I mentioned above, Instagram tends to share accounts on the explorer page that use stories often. Use, meaning posting stories on your own account as well as watching other account’s stories! So don’t just post Instagram stories, watch them too!
- Post stories every couple of hours. Instagram Stories show up at the top of both your news feed and the explorer page! This means that new users will be able to discover your account just from you posting stories. The more you post stories, the more they will appear on the explorer page, and the more followers you will get.
- Use the location tag. Whenever you tag a location (under stickers) in your Instagram Story, it will show up in that specific location’s stories. For example, when I visited the Grand Canyon, I tagged the place Grand Canyon National Park in my stories. As a result, over 200 random people saw them on the Grand Canyon National Park’s location stories. Those are 200 additional people that have now discovered @thelovelyescapist and may decide to follow.
- Use hashtags. Similar to the location tag, when you use a hashtag in your Instagram Story, it has the opportunity to show up on that specific hashtag’s story. You can use up to 10 hashtags per story and I would recommend using them all. The more hashtags you use, the more chance you’ll have of someone new seeing it. You might be thinking, “But won’t all those hashtags distract from the story itself?”. Here’s a little trick to hide those story hashtags: Once you write out the hashtag, you can control how large or small the font is with the tool on the left side of the screen. However, if you want to make it smaller, just hold two fingers around the hashtag and move the fingers closer together on the screen. You can make the hashtag microscopic so no one will see it. Then use the different text colors to try to match it with the background of the story. You do this by tapping the paint icon and then dragging it across the background till you find a color that will make the hashtag inconspicuous.
Looking for more Instagram Tips, check out my post ‘How To Beat The 2023 Instagram Algorithm‘.
Your advice only works if you’re still getting even minimal engagement. I worked very hard over 2 years to build my instagram up to 450 followers. Until 2022, every post I made would get me 20-30 likes and at least 2 new followers. Now only ONE of my followers is regularly seeing and liking my posts plus 1 or 2 randoms. That’s 2 or 3 likes for each post I make and I’ve gained just 2 new followers for all of 2022 so far. I don’t get enough engagement anymore to even put your advice into practice. I don’t get DMs or comments to respond to. It’s honestly infuriating because I worked hard to build the following I have. A following that essentially now means absolutely nothing. I haven’t found any good advice on how to get engagement back up
In essence, to achieve any growth on Instagram you have to have no life outside of Instagram. It must be a full-time job.
This is good info, but it seems that all of these help articles never show any statistics. I wish someone would do some simple tests like, “if I do this, I get this much exposure..” “but if I do this, I get this much..” etc.
my business account has 25k followers. and it seems everything we do only hits 10% of our followers. Even trying all of the things mentioned above.
Also, Instagram fails to understand that people chose to follow you for a reason. They want to see your posts! If they are only shown posts they’ve interacted with, then how do they become more interested in you?
I guess helping businesses grow doesn’t make them the money that trying to be a watered down TikTok does.
Give me a break! Anyone still on social media is clueless! Get off the phone, there’s an actual life out there worth living!
Some people have businesses, music/art projects for which social media is essential in raising awareness about them. Yes, there is a life to live outside of social media, but that doesn’t mean people don’t need it for promotion.
So if IG sees you as spamming and keeps your reach low, will it ever go back to normal? Or it’s forever going to keep the reach low?
They aren’t lowering people’s visibility specifically because of spamming. The new algorithm has drastically decreased the average person’s visibility by default.
It’s designed for the unemployed. How can anyone dedicate this much time to an app. It’s a shame. I loved Instagram but I need and app that works for me, not me work for it.
Thank you sooo much for this information I hope is going to help me I have been reducing my reach and engagement every day. But I hope I’ll improve thank you so much
Every one of my posts used to be trending on Top almost every hashtag I used, with an average of 5k views per post, and now I get around 800 views per post, and I don’t even appear in the Top at all! It’s so demotivating!
I agree with you that we can increase followers by posting stories, using location based hashtags. Also, I want to suggest that we can increase followers by using relevant trending hashtags. And post on these timings to engage more audience on Instagram.
Monday: 11:00 am to 5:00 pm
Tuesday: 5:00 am, 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
Wednesday: 5:00 am,11:00 am and 3:00 pm
Thursday: 5:00 am, 11:00 am and 3:00 to 4:00 pm
Friday: 5:00 am, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm
Saturday: 11:00 am
Sunday: 10:00 am to 2:00 pm
These are the best timings to post on Instagram.
I agree! I have a separate work account that I don’t even post stories or hashtags and I get as many likes on that page. This whole Instagram deal has me so frustrated. On my main account I also used to get 400 to 500+ likes and more it has gone down to 200 ish ????
I used to get 700+ likes on my instagram posts and around the same for my stories, and now I barely scrape 500 likes. I went through my followers and found I have around 200 bots in my account so I deleted them all, but I only get 22% engagement on my page still. What can I do to fix this?
From the last 3 days my post like dropped, Why, I don’t understand please help me out
So you’re basically saying we have to do all those things and more followers will interact with our account. Cause I had a popular account and I used to get 200+ likes on every post and I started getting Dm’s and comments on my post and I would never respond to them so Instagram thinks I’m not active on my account and they make more followers not see my post? I’m really confused can anyone respond and help me