Absolutely! Instagram stories can boost your reach and page’s popularity, and so you should treat Instagram stories with the same importance as your Instagram timeline.

However, you should treat stories and timeline differently. Stories are hyped up versions of timeline posts. Whenever you post stories, you should take advantage of all the available stickers on Instagram, to encourage people to engage with you. Stickers such as polls and questions are vital for engagement. You can start with a simple ‘yes or no’ question that is related to one of your posts, or perhaps, add a swipe up functionality so that you can attach a link to it.

There is no such thing as too many stories. Stories do not appear on your timeline, so people won’t get irritated that your face is all they see on their feed. If they viewed your story, that means they voluntarily clicked on it, and that they are interested. We do suggest that you post something every 3 hours so that you will stay on top of everyone else’s stories. Influencers post a lot of stories every day, and your goal is to post more frequently so that your story is fresher than everyone else’s.

Another tip is to make use of story hashtags. Instagram posts allow up to 30 hashtags, however, for stories, you are only allowed to use up to 10. This doesn’t mean you maximize the 10 hashtags, though. That would be disastrous as it would appear spammy. Use only around 1 to 3 hashtags per story.

Stories are meant to be more personal compared to your feed. If you edit the photos or videos on your feed to make it look pretty before posting, stories are meant to be informal. You will see Instagram users holding their phones, ‘selfie-style’, while showing you how their sets look like, or perhaps, doing a quick video update while lying down on a couch, or boarding a plane. This is normal. However, there are boundaries. Don’t post on your story while you’re in the bathroom doing your business. That’s foul!

Ensure that you make your stories as personal as you can. As we have mentioned, stories don’t appear on your feed, so the people who view your stories are really interested in what you are offering. This is where you will build relationships with your followers, which will hopefully become paying customers in the future.