How I’m Seeing Story Replies Outperform Posts on Instagram
When I joined Tastemaker Talk with Abbey Rodriguez and Chandice Probst, the conversation naturally drifted to something a lot of food creators are feeling right now.
Feed reach is inconsistent. Website traffic feels harder to predict. And even when content performs well, it doesn’t always translate into the kind of momentum creators expect.
So we started talking through what’s actually working across the creators we work with every day at Grocers List.
One pattern kept coming up: Instagram Stories are quietly doing more heavy lifting than most creators realize. More specifically, Stories that ask followers to reply are often reaching more people (and driving more traffic) than feed posts. And we have some stats to back that up.
I’ll attach the episode below and bookmark where our conversation on Instagram Stories vs Posts came up:
Replies trigger distribution
When creators ask followers to reply with a word, those Stories tend to get more reach.
Replies take intent. Someone has to stop, type, and send a message. From the platform’s perspective, that’s a strong engagement signal. When a Story generates a lot of replies, especially without immediately sending people off-platform, it gets shown to more of the audience.
This entire workflow (from comment to email send) was done using Grocers List!
Creators consistently tell me they’re seeing:
Higher Story reach than their usual baseline
Stories hitting a meaningful percentage of followers
In some cases, more traffic from Stories than from the feed
It was mentioned during our conversation that a single Story reached about 10% of their audience simply because people kept replying “RECIPE.”
Replies are easier for your followers
Replying fits how people already use Stories. It keeps them in the flow.
Instead of tapping out, loading another page, and hoping they come back, followers respond and move on. The Story prompts action, the DM delivers the value.
That handoff matters.
“Save to Email” turns engagement into an owned audience
The next step is what happens in the DM.
DMs are fast, but they’re not great for keeping things organized. Messages get buried. Links disappear. Giving followers the option to save the recipe to their email solves that.
A simple but effective workflow used by Lexi’s Clean Kitchen.
What we see across creators:
About 5% of people who receive a recipe DM choose to save it to email
That turns Story engagement into steady email growth
Creators don’t need separate funnels or lead magnets
It’s simple for followers and low-lift for creators.
How I see recipe creators structuring their Stories
Here’s a common flow I see working well:
1. Lead with a reply-first Story
Often a reposted Reel adjusted to feel native in Stories.
Clear ask: “Reply ‘RECIPE’ and I’ll send it to you.”
2. Let replies drive early engagement
This is usually the Story that reaches the most people.
3. Share other Stories after
Partnerships, promotions, or updates tend to benefit from the momentum created by that first Story.
Automation makes this entire process more practical
We work with recipe creators with hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of followers on Instagram. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to manually reply to every DM these creators get.
Manually replying doesn’t scale. Automation does.
Replies trigger an automatic DM that sends the recipe, offers the save-to-email option, and keeps everything consistent without creators spending hours in their inbox.
Engagement matters now more than ever
Most food creators I talk to feel the same tension: feed reach goes up and down, traffic is harder to predict, and what worked six months ago doesn’t always work the same way today.
That’s why story replies stand out. They’re not dependent on chasing a trend or changing your content style. They work because they align with how Instagram already behaves and how people already use Stories.
They tend to be:
Encouraged by the platform, because replies signal real engagement
Easy for followers, because replying takes almost no effort
Effective at driving both traffic and email growth in one motion
And the telltale sign is simple. Most creators don’t necessarily need a dashboard to notice when a Story suddenly reaches more people than usual. You can see it as it’s happening.
You can get it all done within Grocers List
All of this is why we built Story Reply Automations the way we did at Grocers List.
When someone replies to your Story, the goal isn’t just to get them a link as fast as possible, it’s to carry the experience forward in a way that still feels connected to your content.
That’s why our DMs automatically pull in your actual recipe photography, along with the recipe link and the option to save it to email. Instead of a plain text message, followers get a rich, visual DM that feels intentional and familiar.
That detail matters. A visual DM reinforces why someone wanted the recipe, keeps the moment from feeling transactional, and creates a smoother handoff from Story → DM → website or inbox.
For creators, it means story replies can become a reliable system rather than another thing to manage. You get more reach, more traffic, and steady email growth, without adding manual work or changing how you already create content.
