Instagram Stories, launched on August 2, 2016, has become another efficient way to engage with your followers. Over 500 million accounts consume Instagram Stories every day, which is an enormous number to gain popularity, views, and attract new followers. In this blog post, we will reveal 9 interactive Instagram story ideas to grow your followers in 2025.
What are Instagram Stories?
Instagram story is a special form of content placement that stays live for 24 hours from the time you post it. It can be a single or multiple images, videos, audios, etc. It appears at the top of your Instagram feed in a fixed position, which makes it a prominent section for grabbing the attention of your followers.
How can Instagram Stories help grow your followers?
Instagram Stories is a primary touchpoint for your followers. Additionally, Instagram's notification system updates followers whenever you post a new story, which is similar to a broadcast. Keeping this in mind, here are some ways in which Instagram stories can help grow your followers:
- Stories help you stay top of mind for your followers.
- You can bring followers' attention to your posts, videos, and live using Stories.
- Stories make collaboration easier with other accounts.
- Stories fill the gap in your content schedule, preventing unfollows.
Interactive Ways to Grow Your Followers with Instagram Stories
Instagram provides interactive features within Instagram stories that can spark engagement with your followers quickly. You can create polls, play quizzes, start Q&As, and much more within Instagram Stories. Using all these features will not only strengthen your Instagram community but also bring new followers to your account. Moving on further, we are going to explore some of these methods
1. Instagram Story Trailers
Don't waste your Instagram posts; make them sensational. Before you actually update your Reels or post on Instagram, add a trailer on your Instagram story with a countdown sticker. This trick creates hype among your followers regarding the new post.
Once you have uploaded new content, you can share it in your Instagram story to notify all existing followers about it. They will visit your content, and if it's interesting, they will share it with their friends, which brings in new followers to your account.
2. Free Collaborations with Stories.
Many Instagram accounts grow by just sharing others' posts on their stories. Instagram doesn't penalize for sharing others' content. You can collaborate for free with others by adding their post to your story and asking them to add yours to their stories.
This give-and-take relationship with Instagram stories gives your account exposure to a new audience without spending money or creating new content.
3. Revival and Reminder
Based on recent data, 95 million photos and videos are posted on Instagram every day. Certainly, the chance of your post getting viewed by your audience is very less. Here's when Instagram stories come a handy feature to revive and remind your audience of your older posts. If you want to learn how to share posts to Instagram stories, read this article from the Instagram help center
You can add a reminder by sharing your Instagram post to your stories. Since Instagram stories always appear at the top of the feed, the chance of getting views is higher.
Similarly, it is also helpful in the revival of older posts at a time when you don't have any new content. You can still keep your audience hooked with your older photos and videos.
4. Instagram Story Giveaway
The Instagram story giveaway is a 100% effective strategy to expand your reach to a large audience. Although it comes with a cost, as you need to give away prizes for your audience in exchange for sharing your content on their stories and sharing a screenshot.
Regardless of the cost, giveaways are the best way to go viral quickly on Instagram. It's like a paid promotion, but you can target it to the right audience to get genuine followers.
5. Engagement Bait
Instagram has many small features embedded in Instagram Stories. You can create polls, use question stickers, create a media collage, and play a quiz. These stickers let you create stories that act as engagement bait for your followers. It will spark new conversations to make a strong bond with you and your followers.
If your followers are interacting more with your Instagram stories, it signals to Instagram that your content is engaging and your account is valuable. It leads Instagram to show your content to a broader audience with similar interests, which brings new followers to you.
6. Live Stream Notification
Instagram's notification system usually notifies your followers about your Live streams but it won't cover your entire audience. It will notify the audience who are more likely to join. In such a case, you can share your Instagram Live stream notification on your Instagram story to ensure and maximum number of people join it.
Additionally, you can request your followers during the live stream to share it on their stories or friends if it's helpful. This brings even more followers via Instagram stories.
7. Story Within Story
Instagram allows adding multiple photos and videos together in a day. Viewers can tap and view the next image/video in the story sequence or swipe left or right to jump to another account's stories. This kind of interface lets you tell a story in a sequential fashion.
You can start with a hook, then tell the story, dividing it into multiple slides, and in the end, add a CTA using stickers to let your audience interact with you.
8. Interlinking Accounts in Instagram Stories.
If you have multiple Instagram accounts, you can interlink them in stories by tagging your account with fewer followers to the account with more followers. It will bring the audience already interested in your content to the new account, and they are more likely to follow too.
9. Story Highlights
Instagram allows you to create a collection of stories so called story highlights, that will appear just below your Instagram Bio. It is an Instagram feature that not only keeps your Instagram stories safe from auto-deletion but also helps your account look pretty.
Though story highlights do not directly help you gain new followers, yet its a good way to impress new visitors. There are many different ways to organize your story highlights; the most common is to group similar stories together in one highlight. Data shows that an Instagram account with story highlights is more followed than one without it.
Wrapping Up
Thanks for reaching the end of the article. In this article, we have revealed the best 9 interactive Instagram story ideas to grow your followers. Story trailers, collaborations, tagging, live notification, interlinking, and story highlights are some of the many proven ways that are applied by successful Instagrammers. If you are willing to win this game, give it a shot.