Well, it is a well-established fact that users tend to go through Instagram stories more than the feed itself.

Advertisers are slowly shifting towards promoting stories on Instagram and moving away from posts. The usage of Instagram stories is skyrocketing, and the company is looking at bringing more features to stories. In January 2019, the platform reported that over 500 million people use Instagram stories daily, up from 400 in June 2018. With such a wide audience, it might be interesting to look at bringing more features to the popular media consumption format.

Instagram Stories is a way to elevate your visual content strategy; its’ tools allow you to get to know and understand your audience 10x more. One of the key engagement factors with Instagram is the quality of your feed, and each post can take hours to get right. But with Stories, the photos and videos don’t get saved to your profile, meaning you can cash in on the benefits of real-time marketing without cluttering your profile with less-than-perfect images. You can also then create highlights and have folks looking at your stories you posted a few weeks back.

Instagram Tip: Did you know that the more you post stories, the more they will appear the more followers you will get. Even with stories using the location tag and adding hashtags will help you gain visibility.

FYI: In case you haven’t noticed, now you will get suggestions of who to follow within your story. The only other places where follow suggestions show up within the app is the Instagram feed and a user’s profile, after you follow them.