GET MORE INSTAGRAM STORIES ENGAGEMENT

Warning. The use of any of the tips that I'm about to share with you may cause your Instagram engagement to explode. You have been warned. Hey guys, and welcome back to my channel, where I help bridal beauty pros get booked out using Instagram. Wondering how you can start increasing your engagement on Instagram stories. In today's video, I'm going to be sharing with you guys my favorite tips on how I like to increase my views on stories, as well as build trust and excitement with my clients. So if that sounds like something you're interested in and keep on watching. Before we start, I want you to remember, when it comes to Instagram's algorithm, it favors three three things. Relevancy, relationships, and recency. Think of your stories as a way to build that relationship with your current followers, and then think of your feed as a way to provide that relevant and recent content with your new followers as well as your current followers. So because Instagram's algorithm favors relationships, you're really going to want to make sure that when you're utilizing stories that you're focusing on using all of those different engaging features that they have, such as polls, quotes, quizzes, a little heart eye slide, all those different things. I've talked about this in my previous video on how to book more brides. You want to have engaging stories, and I'm going to be covering all different ways that you can get engaging. But here's why. When someone engages within your story, such as if they tap on a poll or if they hit a quiz, or if they answer any of your questions, whenever you do the questions feature, what it does is Instagram's algorithm sees that that person has engaged with your stories. Post posts so anytime you post something on the feed, your posts are going to show up first whenever they open the app. So that is why you want to make sure that you're always utilizing all those engaging features within Instagram. With that said, let's head into the first tip I have for you, which is to use the quiz feature. I recently started using this whenever I'm heading out to a wedding, or when I'm on location at the wedding, or sometimes even when I'm just posting something new. As you can see right here, this is how I like to use the quiz feature. It's a more fun, exciting way to engage with my followers. A better interactive way to let them know that, like I'm heading to a wedding or I'm working today or something like that. I'll show right here exactly how you can do that. You're going to head over to your stories and then you're going to select the feature icon. Next you're going to select the quiz feature. Then you're going to type in whatever your question is. And this doesn't have to be my example. Remember, don't copy exactly what I'm doing. Make it and make it unique to you and to your brand and whatever you're doing within your platform. Right. So for me, the question was, where am I headed to? So I typed that in. And then below you're going to type in all your different answer options. For me, I just typed in four different ones. You're going to tap and hold the letter that's your answer until it pops up green. And then whenever someone selects the correct answer, it's going to pop up confetti on their screen. So it's a super fun feature to use and it'll look something like this. The next tip that I have for you is to stay on brand with colors within your stories. It's something that I love to do. That way I have a consistent feel and look across my Instagram feed within my stories. And I just love my brand colors. So I'll share my screen with you guys right here and I'll show you guys exactly how you do that. We're going to go to Stories and then you're on the left hand side, you're going to hit Create. Then at the top right, you're going to hit the next button button and you're going to go over and tap the Draw Tool. And down at the bottom where all the colors are, you're going to tap the color whatever is your brand color me, I go over to orange. I hold it in so all the colors show up at the bottom, all the different color ranges. And then you can drag across your finger across the screen, select whatever color is within your brand. Then when you've selected your color, you're going to go over to the background. You're going to tap and hold that in until the whole screen changes to your color. I also have a secret hack on how I do this to save time. Whenever I create something like this and it's col I love, I'll go to the top and I will actually save that image and I save it into an album within my phone called Story Backgrounds. Then whenever I go into a story, I can just go into the picture and then I can go into my album and select whatever background color that I want to use. So if I'm on the fly and I just want to create something really quick, but I still want to keep it consistent within my brand colors because all those little details matter to me. I can just simply do this. The next tip that I have for you to get more engagement and increase your views within your Instagram stories is to have captions on your videos. If you're talking on your stories like I do, sometimes I'll just post stories about different updates. Or maybe you want to go on there and talk about bomb makeup tips or awesome hair tips for your clients or something like that. Make sure that you're just using captions, because what happens is if you're not using the captions, people will honestly just tap through. Because Instagram automatically mutes stories, they don't have the sound turned on. So whenever you're in Stories, you physically have to turn your volume up, which most people don't do. So in order to have people not just pass and swipe through your story without listening to your bomb ass makeup tips, make sure that you're either writing it out or Instagram just came out with a feature called Caption. I'll show you guys exactly how to use this new feature. So how I like to use this is I will film whatever talking story video that I wanted to do and I will save all of them to my phone. Then I go over to Stories. I select all the different talking videos that I want to upload. I'll upload them into the stories. Then I go over to the features icon and you're going to select captions. Once you select captions, what it's going to do is actually transcribe your video like a closed caption would, kind of like on your tv. Might take a minute or two to load, but you can see that the captions will start appearing across your screen. And then at the bottom of your screen you can see different options so you can slide through. If you look at the different text options, there's a few that don't stay on the screen the entire time, which sometimes I feel people might find annoying because you can't read that quick. So honestly, I don't really use the first option because it's too quick and I feel like people don't read, so they wind up just swiping through. So for me, I'll either use the second one or the last one where the text will stay a little bit longer on the screen. Once I started using captions, I saw the views on my stories actually increase, not as people were just swiping through. And especially if you're Giving so much value within your stories. You're going to want to make sure that you're using those captions and I love that they added this new feature. That way you don't have to go through and type out everything you said. I mean, you still can do that. This is just a time saving hack for whenever you're on the fly and just want to add something quick to your stories. Next tip that I have for you to start building relationships and increasing your engagement on your stories is to use the Unfold app to create this or that polls fast. So first thing you're going to want to do is download the Unfold app. I believe it is a paid app, but honestly it's one of my favorite apps. I use it all the time to create stories and I just find it super useful. I think it's, I don't think it's any more than like 1999 for the year. So I'm just going to walk you guys through and I'm going to share my screen over here on how to use the Unfold app to create this or that polls. So you're going to open the Unfold app, then you're going to select the My Projects at the top right of the screen. Then you're going to tap the plus icon at the bottom right and you're going to select Story View. You have so many different templates to choose from, so you can honestly just scroll through and pick whatever one resonates with you and within your brand. It makes it super easy to plug and play your different photos within just a their templates that they have. For me, I use the Classico and even within that one they have like four different template styles. Just within that one I just like the classic and simplicity one. So that's just the one that I go with. You're going to select your template, then you're going to select your photo grid. For me, I choose the two photos, one at the top and one at the bottom. For the this or that poll feature, you're going to upload your photos from your camera roll. And for this demo I use the low bun and a low ponytail. So you're going to upload your photos, you can resize them within the grid however you like. Then you can change the background color to something more branded. Of course you're going to use the colors and you can select a color and then you can go over to the picker and you can drag and drop. You can get even more customizable within your brand. Then you're just simply going to repeat all these steps and create however many this or that polls that you want to add to your stories for that day. You can also add text as well. They have different fonts to choose from. Whatever font resonates with you and your brand and it'll look something like this. Then you're going to want to go and save them to your albums. That way you can post them over on your stories so you can save the whole story so you can save both of these pages. Then I'm going to go over to the Instagram app. I'm going to open up Instagram. I'm going to go to create a story, I'm going to select both of these photos, I'm going to upload them to my story. Then I'm going to go over to the feature icon, I'm going to select poll, and I'm going to resize and drag the poll to wherever I want it within my story. That's how you created this or that super fast. And using the this or that, you can use it in so many different ways. This is just one way that I like to use it on the fly, just to up the engagement within my stories. Whenever you use something like this, I find my engagement really explodes. Pro tip for the Polls Whenever you're using a poll on Instagram, make sure that you're not placing it too close to the bottom right of the screen. This is where everyone is swiping through to the next story and you don't want to have inaccurate results for your poll. Though if you notice with mine, I kind of place it up higher and over to the left. You also don't want to make your poll feature too small because then people won't be able to click the right one that they want. I don't want to get you inaccurate results and have people clicking on the wrong side just because they're swiping through different things stories. The next tip I have for you to start building better relationships with your followers and clients who are following you is to highlight your past content. I actually get a lot of you guys always responding whenever I post this story right here on how I create that. I actually created that to make sure that I'm highlighting the guides that I create for my bride so that they're aware that this even exists. So let's go over into Canva and I can show you guys exactly how I create this story.

Okay, guys, so here I am over in Canva and I'm going to show you exactly how I create those stories. Canva is one of my favorite platforms.

To use for Instagram Instagram stories as.

Well as my feed posts. It is super simple and user friendly and it is also free.

However, I do pay for the paid.

Platform because it's a lot.

It allows you to get more branded.

Within your fonts, colors, different things like that, and you can unlock different designs.

I forget exactly how much the paid.

One is, but I believe it's something like $30 a month maybe.

But I utilize it a lot.

If you don't, you can just use the free platform. So what you're going to want to do is go over to templates, then I go over to Instagram stories.

That way you know it's going to.

Be the right size for your story. I go over to the blank one.

And now I know that my dimensions.

Are going to be correct when I download it and post it to my story. They have the best pre made templates all on the side. So you can do so many different things within Canva.

And honestly what I did was took screenshots of all the different guides that.

I wanted to use within this story and then I just uploaded them into my uploads over here.

So I go into my uploads and.

You go to upload media and then you can select anything from within your desktop. And these are just the uploads that I already have. So I'm just going to drag and drop these photos. Then I can crop them to however big or small I want them. So then you can just drag your photos wherever you want on the screen and then you're going to go up here over to Effects or I'm sorry guys, you're going to go over to animate. That's what I did. So go over to animate and then.

You can select from all these different.

Photo animations to make it pop on the screen how I did within that story. And it'll show you exactly how they're all going to look. But first what you're going to want to do is select them all. So I just dragged my cursor around all of them. So that way they're selected. That way I can animate all of them, not just one. Then if you just hover, hover over any of these, it'll show you exactly what they're going to look like and you can choose whatever one works best for you.

I like the pop.

That way they all pop within the screen. So then when you select that, then you're going to go over to download.

And this is the important part.

When you're downloading it, you want to make sure that it's an MP4 video and then you're just going to download it. It's going to download to my desktop. You can save this within your phone. They do have a Canva app. I just find it's easier for me to do things over on my desktop whenever I'm doing edits like this.

And then what I like to do.

Is I'll go over to file and because this is an Apple product and I also have an Apple iPhone, I can just go to Share and go to Airdrop and it'll airdrop over to my phone and then I can just go and post it to my story.

So that is how I create any.

Kind of pop effects within my stories using Canva. Let's head back into the video guys.

Alright guys, I hope you're ready to start seeing your engagement on your stories explode. You can start building those better relationships with your current followers. If you like this video, make sure you give it a thumbs up and make sure you're subscribed for next week's video where I'm going to be covering how I went from zero weddings to 80 weddings. All the mistakes that I made, what I wish I knew, what went wrong, what went right and everything you need to know and so you can book.

80 weddings in a year.

Don't forget it's a great day to create something beautiful and I hope you guys have a great day. I appreciate you. Thanks so much. Bye guys.