Today we are going to be talking about a hot button topic – should you buy Instagram story views? We’ll also talk about understanding your KPIs to help you assess your growth.
IE 131: Should You Buy Instagram Story Views
You need to understand that there is a difference between running an ad that attracts your target audience and just paying for views.
Before we get started, be sure to download the free worksheet I have provided for you, to help you work through the questions we are going to talk about in this episode.
Using Your Key Performance Indicators
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. You need to know what your KPIs are, as well as the KPIs of the brands you work with.
There are two questions you need to ask yourself:
- What are you trying to accomplish? What is your ultimate goal?
- What needs to happen in order for you to accomplish your goal?
If you are running a business, your goals should always be attached to revenue. That revenue can come in a lot of different ways, through product sales, sponsored posts, ads, etc…
If your goal is not attached to revenue, then you are running a hobby, not a business.
Once you figure out what your ultimate goal is, you can figure out what you need to do accomplish that.
For example, if my ultimate goal is to grow my ad income, I will need to increase my page views.
I can do that by growing my list and emailing my list consistently so that my people keep coming back to my site regularly.
If you are looking to sell a product or service, you need to grow your list. Your list will be full of people who know and trust you that want to purchase what you’re putting out there.
What We Want
The way this all ties back to whether or not you should buy Instagram story views or not is because there are certain things that we want and don’t want.
One of the things we do want is our ideal audience seeing our content.
We want consistent engagement, whether it’s liking something in our feed or DM’s with questions about something we talked about.
We want to build a tribe and community of raving fans. This is why you don’t want to buy random views on Instagram.
You need to make sure you have a call to action in everything you do. Teach your audience how to engage with you. You cannot say something once and assume they will do it.
What We Don’t Want
The things we don’t want are people who are here today and gone tomorrow.
If you have people who are just around for a day because you put money behind an Instagram story, that doesn’t get you to your end goal.
We need to make sure that we are working to engage with people to get them coming back to our site, moving them from being a cold audience to being a warm audience.
The other thing we don’t want is numbers that don’t reflect engagement.
Too often I see people say things about having 100,000 followers on Instagram, but what’s more important is the number of comments and messages they’re receiving from their audience.
When you first work with a brand, your follower number does come into play.
The purpose of working with a brand is not to work with them once and make as much money as you can. You want to build a long lasting relationship with them so that they will come back to you for more campaigns.
If you can’t deliver the engagement the brand is asking for, they will never work with you again.
The brands will pay the people who have engagement, whether you have 1,000 or 100,000 followers.
Should We Buy Instagram Story Views?
When it comes to this whole controversial question of whether you should buy Instagram story views or you should buy followers, the answer is no!
You shouldn’t be buying those things ever.
Unless you are educated, you shouldn’t be running Facebook ads. Period.
You have to be willing to put in the work to learn it. If you don’t know what you are doing, you will be wasting your money and targeting the wrong people.
Start by doing the work and understanding if this will work for you. Don’t just put money behind something without a call to action. And a call to action is not simply watching an Instagram story.
What Is Your Purpose?
There needs to be a purpose and a follow-up to everything you do. If you post a poll in your Instagram stories, there needs to be a reason behind it.
Maybe that means you DM every person that responds to the poll with your most recent post or you send them to the product you are selling.
I am sure the title of this episode was confusing to a lot of you, because you know I would never tell you to buy anything.
You have to know what your KPIs are, and those have to be tied to revenue if you are going to view this as a business for yourself.
The only way to notice a profit is to start setting goals and stop feeling icky about focusing on revenue. Revenue is what sets your business apart from a hobby.
Action Steps:
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