Stories are full-screen posts that disappear after 24 hours. Snapchat invented the format; Instagram made it huge. Stories are mostly seen by people who already follow you, which makes them the format of presence: they keep your account alive in your audience's day.
Feed posts are your public gallery. Stories are your daily radio show.
They sit at the top of the app, they cost little to make, and they expire before they can embarrass you. That mix creates a habit loop: your audience taps through today's story the way people check messages. The account that posts stories daily stays FELT, even between big posts.
Distribution is follower-first. Stories rarely reach strangers; they serve the audience you already own, ranked by how close Instagram thinks each viewer is to you.
So stories don't grow the account much directly. They do something else: they keep the audience warm, and they carry the interactive furniture (polls, questions, links, countdowns) that turns viewers into participants.
The story view count resets daily and works as your true attendance number. Brands compare it against your follower count before pricing anything.
Because the count expires with the slide, keeping it healthy is ongoing work: daily posting, short sequences, stickers that invite taps, and, when the proportion needs a bridge, delivered story views applied to the slide currently live.
Not much with strangers; stories serve existing followers. Their job is audience warmth and daily presence, which indirectly supports everything else.
Daily is the standard for active accounts. Gaps break the habit loop, and the view count shows it within days.
On a public account, yes, anyone who visits your profile can tap your story ring. In practice most story viewers are followers.
Related terms
Every definition lives in the full glossary, and the services behind the vocabulary are on the services page.