What to actually post on your Instagram Stories in 2023

Most of you already know how important posting on your Instagram Stories are for engaging and nurturing your community. And yet, there is still so much resistance in actually doing it. In my opinion, people look at stories and think they’re intimidating and time-consuming, but they don’t have to be. Today, I’m going to tell you exactly how I create my Instagram stories to be super engaging for my audience without taking a ton of extra time out of my day - if you’ve been unsure about how to best use Instagram stories in your growth strategy, then this is the episode for you, let’s do this!

How to measure the success of stories

Before diving deep into what you should actual post on your stories, let’s determine how to measure their success first.

Naturally, one of the first things we look at is Story views. Per jumpermedia.co - The Average Instagram Story view rate is 7.2% of your following. But, please keep in mind that in general, the smaller the audience, the higher the expected engagement or view rate.

The point of this isn’t to beat yourself up if the number that comes up is higher than you’re used to seeing for “views” - there could be so many reasons for that, and hopefully some of the tips I’m going to share in this episode will allow you to increase that.

Instead this can give you a general benchmark of what to aim for. If you’re already hitting that - awesome - see if you can increase it by 1% each week or something like that. Just small incremental changes toward improvement.

Something else we need to pay attention to is Story Interactions. I don’t have a benchmark number for you to measure from here - but just think about how many DM or sticker responses you tend to get to your stories a day - and see if you can create some content that might illicit some more responses. Interactions (aka engagement) is one the biggest factors determining the reach of your story. If more people interact, Instagram will push your stories to more people. So, by putting more focus on your interactions, your view count should go up too!

The ultimate Stories posting schedule

Before you just dive into posting stories, you might want to have a schedule or idea of how often you want to post each day or week. Just like your Instagram content, the best schedule is going to be one you can keep up with consistently - don’t say you will post 5 or more stories a day if that’s not something you think you can keep up with. If you overcommit yourself - this can lead to burnout and ultimately not reaching your goals.

Here is a great schedule that might be more manageable when you’re first starting out (and lead to a lot of interaction opportunities). You can plan to post three times per day. One in the morning, one around lunchtime, and a final story before you end your workday between 3pm-5pm. My suggestion, set an alarm on your phone for the three times you want to post - this will keep you consistent and if you’re anything like me - you need a little reminder at times.

The most common story mistakes

Okay, one last thing before giving you actual ideas to post on your Stories. Before we do that, there are a few very common Instagram story mistakes that I just don’t want you to fall victim to. I will keep this quick, so we can get into the goods.

Not using captions OR just talking for way too long
Not having a variety of content types (do some photos, some videos, timelapses are great, if you need to do more text go for it with a solid color background)
Only every posting re-shares (these get THE WORST engagement)

What you should actually be posting on your stories

Now, there are so many different routes you can take when it comes to posting on your Stories, but let me give you a few ideas that really seem to work for me.

Let’s start by talking about your first post of the day. In my opinion, especially being a personal brand, the first post of the day should include your face. This ensures that if someone is just tapping through multiple accounts stories, they’ll immediately know they have hit yours because, well, they see your face.

Now with this photo of yourself, the question is - what do you add to it. Here are some ideas for the first post of the day and any other posts you might make throughout the day too!

You can add a short sentence or two of text with a location tag (I am currently traveling, so this is something I have been doing a lot).
You could add your “to-do list” for the day and maybe add a reaction sticker and add some text that says “tap if you plan to have a productive day too” or maybe you can add a poll having them let you know how they’re feeling about their list of tasks for that day.
Maybe something is going on that day, like you have a YouTube video or new product launching, and you want to provide your community a little reminder using the countdown sticker.
Have a new video or product that just launched, tell them about it by having a fun image and using the image sticker to show the video thumbnail or product image plus the link using the link sticker feature.
Do a Q&A - allow your community to ask questions about you, a product, service, or something you’re knowledgeable in - then answer them the following the day. The background of these answers can be images of you, your environment or even solid backgrounds.

Beyond just the ideas of what type of stickers to use, you might also be wondering what type of content you should be posting on your Stories. I obviously have a personal brand, where I do spend time educating my audience on being a content creator and understanding social media, but you don’t see that too heavily in my Stories. My Stories are an opportunity to share more into my actual life. Sure, I might occasionally do a Q&A answering questions about social media, but otherwise - on my Stories you will see where I am currently traveling, coffee dates with a friend, what I am working on that day, my favorite coffee recipes, etc. Stories are an opportunity for you to dive deeper with your audience and show them a look inside your life.

Now, with business brands without a face - I understand this can be challenging. If you have a team, you can feature them in your stories - this is what we do over at Creatorly Media.

What we’ve been doing is… → getting the team to submit selfies, photos of them working at their desk, and timelapse videos - basically trying to build a small stock content library of the team → then, we try to rotate through our different content pillars sharing tips and advice based on those themes, and featuring our different team members based on their expertise

not doing constant takeovers - one person runs the account, but it shows our team, provides variety and gives value
we also sprinkle in announcements and product launches

But you can also create graphics in a platform like Canva and pre-plan some stories that are educational or entertaining - and you can also do some behind-the-scenes of your business too! If you want more advice on how to have a faceless social media, let us know and we can do a future episode just covering that.

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Okay, now that you’ve got Instagram stories under control, now it’s time to plan your content strategy (if you haven’t already) - I developed something called The Sustainable Instagram Strategy Planner and it’s completely free. It is absolutely essential that you make your Instagram Strategy something sustainable for you and your lifestyle. Which is exactly what we work through together in this guide - you can grab it in the show notes!