How to Manage Instagram Stories With Later

When it comes to a winning Instagram strategy, stories are just as important as posts. They’re temporary images or videos that showcase your brand and even have the power to make you money.

Instagram Stories strategies have a ton of moving parts from visuals and CTAs, to timing and performance. By managing every step of the process from Later, you can guarantee they’ll always be on time, consistent, and measurable.

Saving time is easy when you plan Instagram Stories in advance. Schedule one or multiple stories at once, and then publish in just a few seconds by opening a push notification.

The Instagram Stories scheduler is available within Later on the web. To access it from the Calendar, first make sure that only your Instagram profile is selected from the social sets and profiles menu.

Open the Instagram Stories scheduler by clicking Stories. On the Stories page, you’ll see a horizontal timeline along with your side library.

To schedule an Instagram Story:

1. Select one or more media items from the side library
2. Drag the media items to the timeline and drop on the publish date and time
3. Add more media items to the Instagram Story by dragging from the side library and dropping in the Stories editor
4. Confirm or edit the scheduled publish date and time
5. Click Save Story

You’ll likely want to customize the Instagram Story content before saving, which can be done from the Stories editor.

Save time when you publish by editing Instagram Stories media in advance. The media editor helps you perfect the image or video within Later.

To launch, click Edit on the Instagram Story you want to edit.

• Crop to Instagram Story dimensions (9:16)
• Add filters
• Apply text with 10 fonts, 9 colors, 3 alignments, underline, bold, italics, and all capitalization

When you’re happy with the media edits, save by clicking Update Image.

Add captions or text to the Add Clipboard Text box. Anything in this box will be automatically copied to your clipboard when it’s time to publish.

Remember to click Save Story when you finish editing the media and publishing details.

When it’s time to publish, the scheduled Instagram Stories media and captions are sent to your mobile device through a push notification. In order to publish an Instagram Story with Later, you must have access to the Later mobile app.

Due to Instagram limitations, you cannot Auto Publish Instagram Stories. Learn more about how to set up your mobile notifications in the Help Center.

To publish an Instagram Story from a notification:

1. Open the Later push notification
2. Tap Open in Instagram
3. In Instagram, tap the Stories button on iOS or Add to Story on Android
4. Swipe up to open your camera roll
5. Select a single media item or tap Select Multiple and select all the media items you’d like to add to your Story
6. Paste the copied text to any Story
7. Add any other Stories features like stickers, polls, or drawings
8. Tap Send To then, next to Your Story, Share

When you open the push notification, a blue and white image with a stop sign will be automatically downloaded along with the media you scheduled. This is a clear indicator for you to know where your Stories media ends in the camera roll.

To increase Instagram Stories engagement, combine Later’s editing tools with Instagram features. Try adding stickers, surveys, or polls to interact with your audience.

Measuring results is a crucial step for any social media strategy. Your Instagram Stories performance is no exception.

Later on the web has built-in analytics to help you understand your audience engagement and behaviours.

The key metrics to watch in order to learn more about how your audience views your Instagram Stories are:

• Impressions: total times a story is viewed
• Reach: total accounts that viewed a story
• Completion rate: percentage of accounts that finished viewing the story
• Average views per user: average views per account

To investigate how your audience interacts with your Instagram Stories, take a closer look at:

• Replies
• Back
• Forward
• Exited

When you have a thorough understanding of how your audience views and interacts with Instagram Stories content you can start building benchmarks.

Benchmarks allow you to compare your engagement rates between content types or with industry standards. It also helps you set goals for content experiments you may want to run in the future.

For example, if you know your impressions are lower than industry standard, you can try different techniques like hashtags or tagging locations.

To learn more about Instagram Stories best practices, check out The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Stories for Business.

Turn your Instagram Stories into brand-building, sales-driving content! Customizing and experimenting with an Instagram Stories strategy will take your business to the next level.

Check out these resources to learn how others are using Instagram Stories to support their business.

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