TIP? Make the most of Instagram’s various fonts, GIFs, and emojis to create a captivating Story that will get you the most clicks.
2. Mention your profile in Stories
But why would you want to mention your own profile in your Story? Well, if you can’t add direct links to drive traffic on Instagram, mentioning your own profile in your Story is a good way to send people who view your Story to your profile (and to the link in your bio in particular).
While relying on the link in your bio has its limits, Stories and the link in bio go hand in hand. This is especially true if you’re looking to grow your followers . Just make sure that if you’re using Stories to promote the link in your bio, it’s relevant and, above all, up-to-date : there’s nothing more annoying than landing on a link that has no relevance to the Story and/or a broken link.
Also, remember that you can post as many Stories as you like in 24 hours, but you shouldn’t promote multiple links – stick to one link to generate as much Instagram traffic as possible before your Stories disappear (and most importantly, avoid confusing your followers).
3. Use Featured Stories
If you don’t want your Story to disappear after 24 hours, you can add it to your Highlighted Stories on your profile, where it will remain until you decide it’s time to edit or delete it.
Featured Stories are located under your bio in a new section of your profile .
But how do you add Featured Stories to your profile?
Once you’ve uploaded a Story, it’s automatically saved to your private Instagram archive (only you can see it). To access your archived Stories, tap the “Archive” icon on your profile, where you’ll see all your Stories (the most recent ones are at the bottom).
To add a Story from your Archive to Featured Stories, simply click the “+” circle below your Instagram bio.
Select the circle in the bottom corner of the Story you want to upload as a featured story, then select “Next.” Finally, give your featured item a name.
You can use Featured Stories to promote campaigns, products, blog posts, and more.
WARNING!!! Please note that only 4 Featured Stories are displayed when a user views your profile (on mobile). Beyond this number, your Featured Stories will be displayed on the right side of the screen and will only be accessible by swiping left. So, prioritize the top spots for your best Featured Stories!
Take a look at @cheerz ‘s profile and see how they organize their featured Stories by theme to promote their best content.
Whether you add links to the Stories themselves or use the techniques mentioned above to direct users to the link in your bio, Story Highlights are a great way to drive traffic from Instagram—take advantage of them!
TIP? If you’d like to further analyze your Stories, Iconosquare helps you assess their performance using various KPIs over the period of your choice.
4. Invest in Instagram Stories ads
If you have a budget to invest in your Instagram strategy, you should try ads. With more and more content (especially Stories) appearing on the platform, you’re facing a lot of competition. Advertising is a great way to get your Stories actually seen and control who sees them. If you haven’t started using Instagram Stories ads yet, here’s how to set up your first campaign:
Step 1: Set a goal
As with any regular ad campaign, you need to choose your goal. In this case, it’ll be traffic, but if you want to optimize for downloads or signups when a user clicks on your URL, you’ll choose conversions.
Step 2: Select the format
After selecting your audience as you normally would, go to “Placements” and select “Instagram” and “Stories.” Select only this placement, as your image size and formatting should be specifically optimized for Stories.
.