Instagram Stories Update: How to Use Stories That Only Show 3?
Recently, Instagram is testing changes to the interface for the display of Stories - its main viewing window shows up to three Stories. Other Stories beyond three will be hidden behind a small "Show All" button below the bottom navigation bar.
image later
What impact will this have?
By limiting the number of Stories displayed in the main view, users want to see the 4th and 5th Stories need to add a button click action, which will greatly reduce the possibility of users viewing other Stories.
As a result, Stories will also move from "sharing real anywhere, anytime" to "curated content" for brands and creators.
How to adapt to this change?
Brands need to focus their creative and production capabilities in these 3 Stories videos for a more focused and prominent presentation. Here we provide 3 methods to directly improve the effect of Stories:
- Improve the sensitivity of Stories data: Users basically only look at the 3 Stories on your homepage, so the data performance of these 3 Stories becomes more important.
Today's Instagram Stories are open to 60 seconds, so how many seconds have the highest completion rate?
Users are more attentive to Stories, so how about the number of entries and launches?
After the brand has more carefully curated the content of Stories, has the response interaction improved?
These questions can be answered in the Instagram "Stories Analysis" function of Marketing Cloud, the global social media data marketing management platform.
After users authorize their Instagram account on the marketing cloud platform, they can view their Instagram account details on the "Monitor" → "Social Account Monitoring" interface on the left function bar, and view the "Story Analysis" results in the account details. The data dimensions include: the number of snapshots, the number of exposures, the number of people covered, the completion rate of a single coverage, the number of replies, the number of exits, and the number of taps to advance/return.
Clearer data analysis results can help brands respond to the revamped Instagram Stories function with a more precise strategy, which is a major prerequisite for improving marketing effects.
- Concentrate on brand awareness: Due to the reduction in the number of online Stories displayed, brands should pay more attention to the brand awareness that the brand needs to be established by users in Stories.
The best way is to re-disseminate the "correct perception" that users have generated.
The original positioning of Stories is to share real life and experience in real time. Although it has undergone many innovations, users' demands for authenticity when browsing Stories will not change.
Therefore, brands can share user reactions, interviews, or Amway and other content in Stories to further focus on the awareness and ideas the brand wants to convey. For example, Ritebite, a protein energy bar brand for fitness people, shows the perfect body after consuming the product in Stories, and tells users the efficacy and advantages of its brand with a strong visual impact.
- Guide "swipe up" to boost sales and conversions: The "swipe up" feature embedded in Stories is a favorite for brands targeting sales and conversions.
So your brand can use a limited number of Stories to involve users in something that leads them to a “swipe up” action.
For example, TopSocial, the KOL delivery platform, uses prominent text in its Stories to remind KOLs with more than 1,000 followers to register on the TopSocial platform. Through the sliding function of Stories, it is very convenient to increase the registration volume of the website.
Conclusion:
Instagram's changes to Stories are related to the "simplified experience" it mentioned earlier in the year. After showing only 3 Stories, the feature is rendered much like the carousel posts that can be displayed in the feed stream.
So we can reasonably predict that the next step for Instagram to simplify Stories is to integrate Stories into the feed stream, allowing users to browse Instagram's various types of content more naturally and seamlessly. This is also a great opportunity for brands to increase their exposure.