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Are you tired of stuffed DMs every time you post a story on Instagram? Well, say goodbye to that because Instagram strikes back! A useful tool for all content creators out there has been announced by Instagram – story likes.
So far, if someone loved what you posted on your Instagram story, chances are – they sent a reaction and immediately started a conversation in your DMs. While that might be fun for some, others only get lost in the sea of unanswered DMs. This new feature might actually help you with engagement and analytics without harming your brand and having that “they are too good to answer DMs” image.
When you see a story from now on, there will be a heart icon next to the “send message” button. If you tap on the heart icon, a like will be sent to the author of the story. That like shows up in a viewer sheet under insights, not in the DMs. In the viewer sheet, there will be a little heart icon next to the name of the viewer.
Story Likes are private and only a creator can see them.
❤️ Private Story Likes ❤️ Starting to roll out today, you can now send some love by liking people’s stories without sending a DM. Likes on stories are private and do not have counts. Rather, they appear as hearts next to people’s handles in your Stories view sheet. 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/l56Rmzgnnw — Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 14, 2022
Why Does This Matter?
While it may sound trivial and small, this new feature might actually be helpful. Not only will you be able to understand what your followers like (without the inbox mess!), but you will also have better insights into the engagement and preferences of your audience. That will definitely help with coming up with a content plan in the future. Since liking a story doesn’t come with any attachments and is easy to do, a lot more followers will probably give you feedback – and we all know feedback is important.
Even though Instagram didn’t say anything about how these likes might affect ranking, it could be a good idea to keep track of it all and learn what users actually like.
