We’re all still learning about Instagram Stories and how to master the art of engaging our audience with them. That said, I have personally seen the impact of this tool and it is massive. We’re seeing more views on Stories than regular Instagram timeline posts, and large amounts of click-throughs to outside links that our clients are integrating into the feature.

1. Make it consecutive and consistent. 

They’re called stories for a reason. When you’re thinking about what content you want to post on your Story, don’t think about it as a bunch of random separate posts. Think about what message you want to convey your audience. It’s like a television series: Each “episode” needs to stand on its own, but there should be an underlying theme across each piece of content. Whenever my company is on site with one of our clients at a concert, we try to do everything we can to capture the entire essence of the event. We start with the content of the artist and fans getting pumped up before the artist hits the stage. We make sure we get the opening and closing songs (plus some good stuff in between), and then maybe post a video and video from the after party. It really captures the essence of the whole day, rather than just a few random posts from the concert.

2. Think about your first impression. 

When it comes to Instagram Stories, the post you upload to kick off your Story matters a lot. If your first post doesn’t catch somebody’s eye, they’re not going to watch the rest of your Story. I highly recommend adding a video as the piece of content in your Story, as this is often the best way to grab somebody’s attention. When analyzing data, we’ve found that more people go on to watch your second post within a Story when the first thing they see is a video.