Instagram Stories are a quick and easy way to increase your engagement and followers on Instagram.
In small business today social media is an important part of your marketing strategy. However, talking to a lot of small business owners, finding the time to post regularly to Instagram and Facebook is pushed aside for more important things.
The most common reasons why businesses are not posting regularly are;
- Don’t have time
- Don’t really know how
However, what can be more important than putting your brand in front of your followers right?
This is where Instagram and Facebook Stories come into action. With stories there is no need to write a caption, making it quick to post a product image, photos of clients, testimonials, event photos etc to keep your brand in front of your followers.
The added bonus with posting to your story is it also allows you to save the posts to your highlights, which are also a great way to showcase your brands products and services and keep your followers engaged with your Instagram account and your brand.
There are a few hacks on how you can increase the engagement with your Instagram stories, however, in this article we are focusing on adding hashtags. I have found adding hashtags to stories over 3 different Instagram accounts – has increased the number of views of stories significantly!
Here is how I manage adding hashtags to my Instagram story posts;
- You can add 10 hashtags to an Instagram story
- On my phone I have a folder under Notes called ‘Story’
- This is where I store sets of hashtags for different types of posts for easy access when posting a story.
- One I have uploaded the image to my story
- Tap on the Aa at the top right of screen
- Tap the home button on my phone to go to my Notes
- Open the ‘Story” folder
- Tap on the set of 10 hashtags I want to use
- Hold down on the screen until a black bar shows with Select / Select All / Paste shows
- Tap Select All
- Another bar shows with Cut / Copy / Paste
- Tap Copy
- Now tap done
- Press the home button on the phone
- Reopen Instagram
- Hold down on the screen
- A bar saying ‘Paste’ will pop up
- Tap Paste to copy the 10 hashtags
- Pinch the wording to shrink it as small as possible
- Move the text to somewhere in the picture where it is not visible
- Share the story
Don’t just take my word for it – try it for yourself and compare the number of people that view your Instagram stories when you simply make a story post without hashtags opposed to a post where you have added 10 relevant hashtags.
Happy hashtaging!