Instagram stories can make a huge difference in expanding brand reachability amongst your target audience. And what better way than improving your organic reach to make yourself heard and seen more on social media.
With the changing algorithms and features, it has been quite a trick to keep up and front with your organic reach and keep expanding it. However, to work best in tandem with the changing algorithms, the best is to face it rather than fighting it. And to do so, you need to ascertain what your target audience wants and accordingly deliver content that they value the most.
For this, you need first to understand how this algorithm works. The Instagram algorithm rules out the number of followers that view your stories. Further to this information, it identifies the newest, best, most engaging, and most relevant content for each follower and then delivers similar content to the front of the followers’ story feeds.
From your business point of view, you need to reach out to those who might be interested in buying your stuff.
Here are some simple tips that can help you improve your organic reach on Instagram widely and extensively by sharing stories with your prospective followers and interested buyers at a time most relevant to them.
Table of Contents
1. Set a goal for your Instagram account
Having a goal for your Instagram account would help you define your posts well and even impart a connection to your potential followers, which they would look forward to. The most important step in this process is aligning your marketing strategies with your business goals.
2. Make sure your stories have a beginning, middle, and end to it
Next, you need to make a content plan for your Instagram stories. Whatever you intend to deliver to your target audience, it should have a start, middle, and end. To share stories about your business, you can:
- Highlight customer testimonials and stories
- Feature behind-the-scene content from special events and trips
- Display a story based on a day in the life of your business or staff.
- Share special announcements to ensure your stories click well with your viewers
- Highlight your brand values by showcasing community service or outreach activities untaken by you for your business
3. Know your hashtags
If you want to roll eyeballs to your account, you must focus on using good and relevant hashtags. To save time, you can keep a list of hashtags ready to copy and paste and keep looking out for newer hashtags that would broaden your reachability to your audience.
4. Post at the best time for engagement
For your stories to be seen by maximum people, you need to study the time zone in which your users are placed. Hence, posting at an optimal time in the time zones most relevant for your target audience would work out to be a good default. In other words, you need to tailor your post timings according to the time zones where you have your maximum customers.
The second thing to keep in mind is to post when the engagement on Instagram is the highest. This generally falls between 8 am and 9 am. Instagram stories are seen and followed on all days of the week. Hence, it is more important to understand the time of the day when the traffic is maximum, rather than the day of the week, to post your feed/story.
5. Post consistently
The algorithm on Instagram works only if you post quality content regularly that receives engagement. Rule out the best time to post and set a schedule. Also, use valuable Instagram analytics, understand more about your followers, and post at a time when they are most active.
6. Build trust and a following with UGC
You need to nudge conversations by adding user-generated content and tapping into other people’s networks. This is a known fact that consumers trust other customers, and user-generated content would build trust and attract people to share your stories, provided they find it positive and appealing.
7. Appreciate engagement
Always respond to engagement instantly to show customers that their comments and views are important, appreciated, and encouraged. Do not just like a comment, engage with your audience by speaking to them, following them, and thanking them for taking time out and responding to your posts.
8. Create unique content for Instagram
You may be running your social media advertisements on multiple social media platforms. However, if you post the same content on all social media avenues, people may start tuning your posts out seeing the same posts on every channel. This would affect your organic reach negatively. Therefore, you need to create fresh content to post on Instagram stories.
Sometimes you may be having some video or picture which you wish to share across all your social media circles, in that case, change the caption for Instagram so that people find it interesting to read even if they have seen the video or image before.
Final Take
To get a hold on your organic reach and to capitalize from it, you need to make sure your posts create a buzz amongst your audience. You can refer and take assistance from any social media marketing app, to create unique and exclusive videos and related content for your Instagram stories and feeds and make your presence felt extensively across various sites.
