The “Show All” Instagram Stories Update and what it means for business owners that market online.
As is the way with Instagram, a slew of new updates to the app rolled out recently, and I usually encourage business owners to keep their head down and keep creating without worrying about it - but this update impacts so many social sellers, influencers, and small business owners that use the app to market that we can’t ignore it.
The update to Instagram Stories is that they’re now collapsing your stories after the third story. Your followers will have to click “show all” in the top left corner in order to continue watching your stories.
If you’ve heard me speak about your stories audience, you know they’re important because they’re usually your hottest leads, the audience that pays the most attention to what you’re up to. So this new update is taking the content meant for your most engaged followers, and introducing an additional step for them to keep seeing it.
This means 2 things for you as someone that uses IG Stories to market your business.
- The Hook has never been more important, and
- Same goes for the Call To Action
You now have 3 slides to peak your audiences attention enough to compel them to click the “show all” button to keep watching. This will significantly change the culture of stories. If you’ve been the casual business owner that pops on and chats for a few seconds before you get into what you wanted to discuss with them, you no long have the real estate online to do that. You only have 3 slides to get them invested enough in the conversation to stay. What this means is that you’ll have to get really good at asking questions they want to know the answers to (HOOK THEM) and then tell them exactly what to do (Call to Action) in order to hear the answers.
To illustrate what this looks like - If I’m getting ready to host a masterclass I want them to attend, in the past I might have spent 4 slides talking about why I was hosting it, and who it was for. Now, I know I don’t have the time to do that and really get them invested in joining, so I have to launch right into it.
Instead of spending those precious first 3 slides warming them up, I ask the heavy hitting question that’s meant to get them nodding their heads and saying “YEP” right out of the gate.
EXAMPLE:
“Tired of feeling like you’re saying the same thing over and over again online, and your engagement, sales and growth are suffering from it?” (HOOK)
If you’re like ‘YES, YES I AM’ then you’re gonna wanna head up to click the ‘show all’ because I’ve got something specifically for YOU today.” (CALL TO ACTION)
That all needs to happen in the first 15-30 seconds in order to get them watching the entirety of the story series you’ve painstakingly put together.
In order to weather this update without seeing a massive dip in your story views, you’re going to regularly need to remind your followers to click show all, and you’re going to really need to focus on the hook when you’re getting ready to sell to her.
While you may be worried about this change, I do see some good in it. First and foremost, research is showing us that attention spans are shortening, and this update just reinforces our need to tighten up our marketing to keep attention.
Second of all, the more practice you have in doing this in stories, the better you’ll get at reels (and tiktoks) - as the same principles of attention apply to these short form pieces of video.
Tell me, what questions do you have about how to leverage this update?