Are you running dry on ideas of things to post your Instagram feed? It can happen super easily, especially if you're trying to keep up with some sort of frequent posting schedule. If you're opening your Instagram app and feeling like you're just hearing birds chirping in your head or you’re completely out of ideas, this is an easy feature you can use to get you inspired quickly.

Instagram stories – we all know them, we all love them, and we all know we should be using them if we want to stay relevant on Instagram. Analytics, however, can seem a little bit more nebulous. There’s a lot of them and the descriptions aren’t super clear, so our eyes tend to glaze over when we swipe up to check our story stats. To simplify it for you, there is one piece of information in particular that you should be paying attention. Today, I’m sharing the ONE Instagram Story metric you should be paying attention to.

Tell me – what does your content strategy look like? What are you creating on a consistent basis for your business, brand, or blog? Let me guess.. a weekly YouTube video and blog post? Maybe multiple Facebook and Instagram posts too? And perhaps you're going live in a Facebook group? Oh, and are you emailing your list? It can get really overwhelming, right? It can start to feel like you're on that content treadmill where you're just churning and churning. It can feel never-ending…  and it can take up all of your time and energy super quick. More importantly, it feels like garbage – and it doesn’t have to. Grab your coffee (or wine, I’m not here to judge) and let’s chat about how to overcome content overwhelm.

Let me guess… you are busting your ass to post between 5-15 Instagram stories per day. You're trying to keep your Instagram really active and engaged to gain more followers and get more eyes on your stories. Maybe you're also low-key burning out… when you go out to dinner with your friends, you've got your phone on the table waiting for that perfect snapshot. When you're at the beach with your family, you're too busy taking Boomerangs to enjoy the experience with your friends. But even with this constant attention to Stories, you’re not getting the visibility you wanted. Any of this sound familiar? I get it. Today, I'm going to share with you exactly how I doubled my Instagram story of viewers in the course of less than one week.

Be honest with me. Are you thirsty for that blue check mark next to your account name on Instagram? I don’t blame you – the blue check means that the account is verified and basically tells users you're legit.  When users are scrolling through their Instagram and see your account name with the verified badge next to it, they're going to know, “This person is for real. They're not messing around.” In short, it's a legitimizer. Luckily, a few days ago, Instagram rolled out a feature that allows users to request verification from them. There are only a few small things that you need for it. It's super easy and really fast and I'm going to tell you exactly how to apply for your badge today. 

Picture this. Your favorite blogger makes THE MOST perfect post; a gorgeous photo accompanied by a beautifully formatted caption. Their sentences are broken up into tiny little digestible nuggets, separated by perfectly curated emojis. It’s a longer caption, but despite its length, their engagement is insane! They’ve got tons of comments blowing up their feed. On the contrary, when you post with a caption anything longer than 4 words, you hear crickets chirping. Engagement drops off to almost zero and you’re left with a major vulnerability hangover. Sound familiar? There’s a reason for this. Today, I’m going to walk you through how to perfectly format your long-length Instagram captions so your followers actually read them.

Have you ever sent an Instagram message that you regretted? Let me guess… right after you hit send you thought, “Oh God, I should not have done that. If only there were a way to take it back!” Then you proceeded to group text your lady gang and tell them how embarrassed you were while stressing over a pint of Phish Food (just me?). I’ve got good news, friend, this no longer has to be your fate. The next time you accidentally send a not-so-fabulous-and-maybe-completely-embarrassing Instagram message, you can unsend it immediately! Today, I am going to walk you through exactly how to do just that.

Music is magic. It can transform a walk into a strut, folding the laundry into an epic dance breakdown, jogging on an elliptical into a Rocky-level pump-up. And NOW you can add a soundtrack to your Instagram stories (natively in the app!). With over 400 million people using uploading stories every day, it's important keep it spicy with new features to keep your audience interested and coming back for more. And, with the new elements Instagram is constantly adding (I’m sure you remember questions, polls, GIFs, heck ­– even IGTV!), it’s basically a nerd’s playground. Ready to get started with one of Instagram's most fun features? Here's everything you need to know about how to add music to your Instagram Story.

We can all agree the Instagram stories are where it's at on Instagram right now, can't we? Despite what people say, engagement on Instagram has not gone away… it's simply moved from the feed to stories. For this reason, Instagram stories are more important than ever. It's a great idea to keep your stories spicy by using new techniques that keep people guessing. Today, I'm going to tell you how to add color blocks to your Instagram stories. It's super easy and you're going to love it.  

I don't know about you, but I certainly do not want anyone knowing how much time I spend on Instagram because #spoileralert, it's a way more than it should be. Maybe you log on in the middle of the night when you wake up (guilty) or find yourself mindless scrolling for hours on end (double guilty). Whatever your reason, it's nice to have some privacy, right? There hasn’t been a ton of people talking about this feature, which really surprises me because, to me, it’s really important to have this turned off. Today I'm going to show you exactly how to turn off your activity status on Instagram.