How businesses can take advantage of Instagram Stories

How does Instagram choose the order of Instagram Stories on your newsfeed?

Many users wonder why, among all the accounts they follow, it's only a handful of a few profiles that come back regularly, and suddenly, how to make sure to appear in this tight list to increase the coverage of their Stories. Here, we will discuss some effective ways to promote a better positioning of your accounts for Instagram Stories.

1) Understand how the Instagram Stories algorithm works

Instagram has been moving from a chronological thread to a flow based on the work of an algorithm for several years now, helping the social network to determine which accounts you like the most compared to the others.

A similar method applies to Stories, the people, and brands with which you want to interact the most are more likely to appear first on your news feed.

However, major differences exist between the two communication media in the operation of the algorithm. Instagram analyzes the behavior of the user and adapts it to the way he uses the application for stories.

The behavior signals are as follows:

• Interest: what research have you done in the past?
• Interactions (News - Alert): with which post have you interacted in the past? If you like, comment on or save posts mainly coming from the same people/brands, their Stories will be privileged when it comes to defining the order of these on the home page of the application.
• Your past experience: you may click on the same Stories as you use the application. As a result, Instagram takes it into consideration, and when there is a choice between multiple Stories, your past experience tells the social network what to show you first.

So, by taking into consideration the different ways for the algorithm to identify what you like, it is, therefore, possible to some extent to have an impact on the positioning of your Stories on the smartphone screens of your Instagram followers.

2) Foster interactions on your Instagram Stories

Taking into account the functioning of the Instagram Stories algorithm, it is necessary to think about the way in which you will be able to capture the attention of your followers more during their journey of Stories.

Here are some methods you could apply right now:

• use interaction stickers such as surveys, quizzes, private discussions, emojis sliders, countdowns, or questions
• Broadcast live video to generate notifications to your followers. It can, for example, go live on an event, a question/answer session with the founder of the company, sharing behind the scenes of the company, and many other important moments to share live.
• Identify other accounts close to your brand to arouse their curiosity/interest in your content. You can then go either through the sticker provided for this purpose called "@Mention" and thus identify a single account or go through the text functionality "Aa," allowing adding up to 10 usernames.

3) Share interesting and unique content

As we told you about in the first part of this article, user interactions on Instagram content influence the order of Stories displayed at the top of their home feed.

So how do you get your posts to generate more engagement?

First of all, it is important to know the different ways to increase the coverage of your classic post.

Here are some tips:

• post at the right times
• add hashtags
• appear in the "Explore" section

Beyond having your post displayed to a maximum of followers, the content itself will make it a success or a failure in terms of engagement.

A simple way to put the odds on your side is to analyze the performance of your past post in terms of interactions.

To do this, you will absolutely have to convert your profile into a professional account, and then go to the statistics accessible via the settings of your application.

You will then obtain a classification of your best post according to certain criteria, such as for example:

• the interactions
• the likes
• comments
• videos

4) Interact on the post of your followers

When you create an Instagram account, it is absolutely necessary, especially when you start to "get out of the woods," that is to say, interact on the post of other accounts of people or brands.

Setting up a regular routine of Instagram likes followers and comments for another users' content is an additional feature that is often underestimated but particularly powerful if done intelligently with the help of activeig’s tool. Instagram is one of the only social networks to allow brands to interact with the content of other accounts, especially since Facebook (News - Alert) has removed the "Comment as page" feature.

Being authentically interested in the content of others is positive because it will allow you to:

• to be seen as a more social brand/person
• to gain new followers
• to arouse the curiosity of users and thus increase the number of visits to your profile

5) Encourage your followers to contact you in a private message (and generate more traffic to your site)

This second idea aims to leverage the discussion window located at the bottom of the screen for the spectators of your Stories.

Instagram did not wish to give users the possibility of being able to leave public comments on this ephemeral content, only the opportunity to contact the sender account via its private messaging.

And the real advantage when you chat with your DM followers (private messages) is that you can share clickable links to drive traffic to your site, which is more difficult when an account has less than 10,000 followers.

Why should your followers benefit from writing you this way?

Here are some ideas about why they might want to trade with you:

• You will send them the link to download free useful content (white paper, downloadable tutorial, etc.)
• you want to collect their individual and detailed opinion on your products & services
• You need to communicate to them an offer specially reserved for those who make an effort to exchange with you.

In this case, you need to be clear in your text message on your photo/video, certainly adding down arrows to make the audience understand your desire to encourage them to go private.