Instagram Story Templates That Will Increase Engagement

“Stories are on track to overtake posts in feeds as the most common way people share across all social apps,” said Mark Zuckerberg, showing how Instagram Stories are fast becoming an important part of every Instagram user’s life. In fact, people under 25 years old are spending more time on Instagram because of Stories, specifically an average of 32 minutes every day. Users older than 25 years old, on the other hand,  spend an average of 25 minutes daily. 

If you need more proof, take a look at these numbers:

• 500 million people use Stories every day, up from 400 million in June 2018. That’s half of the one billion Instagram users worldwide. 
• One-third of the most-viewed Stories are from business accounts.
• 70% of watched Stories are with sounds on.
• 80% of users follow an Instagram business account.

Instagram Stories are evidently a hot iron that brands, businesses, and bloggers, need to strike. If the stats above still haven’t convinced you, get this: One in five Stories from business accounts results in a direct message. 

A direct message from customers is the ultimate form of engagement any business can get. You can build a relationship with your customers, and the best thing is that they initiated it. People often wonder which website is the best place to buy Instagram followers among other things at this stage.

Instagram Story templates

Creating Instagram Stories for your business can be time-consuming, as with regular Instagram posts. To avoid spending too much time on this, there are Instagram Story templates you can use. You can change the pictures on the templates to show your products or to make it more specific to your business. 

You may also play with the color combinations and apply filters, but keep in mind that these templates were created by professional graphic designers. Unless you’re also a graphic designer, it’s best not to modify them too much as there’s a reason why the artist made them as they are. 

With that out of the way, here are some of these engagement magnet Story templates from Easil:

This or That templates

Regular users on Instagram Stories are familiar with This or That. These are Stories that encourage viewers to take a screenshot and encircle or highlight their choices. Viewers can then:

Image: This or That Instagram Story Template. Photo taken from Easil

• Upload their answer as their Story: You can encourage them to post their answers as Stories and include the unedited template so that their network can participate. If you’re aiming for brand awareness, it’s a good idea to place your logo and a brand-specific hashtag somewhere on the template so when it spreads, people will know it’s from you. Ask them to tag you in their Story as well. 
• DM you the answers: Another way to drive engagement is to ask them to DM you the edited version of the template. You can even incorporate this with a giveaway contest. 

There are several This or That templates you can find on Easil or on any platform.

Shout out templates

Featuring other brands, tagging an influencer, or giving a shout out to a customer, are surefire ways to drive engagement to your account. There are a lot of templates you can use that allows you to tag another Instagram account,

Image: ShoutOut Story Template. Photo taken from Easil

The green bar (you can change this color, of course) is where the @mention should ideally be so it’s easily visible. Just place a text/tag over it so it can be highlighted and it will become a live link which means your followers can click on it and visit the other person’s profile. The person you tag will receive a notification, and they can share your content as their Story, further increasing engagement.

Instagram Story polls templates

Instagram Stories with polls work similarly as the This or That Stories, in that viewers are given choices. With the Story polls, however, you only need to add an Instagram poll sticker that viewers can simply tap to vote on their choice. They can also see realtime results, while you can swipe up to see how many votes each choice has received and who voted for them.

Image: Instagram Story Poll Template. Photo taken from Later

With Story poll templates, you can make eye-catching polls that will encourage users to participate. 

You can reuse the same poll regularly, making a few tweaks on the template if necessary. 

Instagram Stories engagement

There have been a lot of updates and features added to Instagram Stories, and all of them provide a better user experience and make Stories more effective for businesses and brands. Stories drive engagement, particularly these:

• Direct messages from followers
• Poll participation
• Tagged profile or live links click through
• Story views

Take note that story views are also a form of engagement, just like any comments and likes on Instagram, and it’s the one that counts the most. Creating attractive Stories is therefore important to increase the number of views and other engagement metrics, and hopefully, the suggested templates above will help you.

Date: September 25, 2019 / Categories: Engagement, / Author: Disturbinsilence