You’re welcome!
So basically Reels because they cast a wider net, and you can add text if you care to. But they still appear on the main page and there is no practical downside.
yes - there’s more editing stuff you can do too, and I think they basically just show up in more different places on the app.
Will people care if stories from us are only ever ads? Or would that actually be a positive, e.g. “Oh look they’re having a sale again”?
My instinct would be that that would be fine, considering that you probably wouldn’t be doing it every day. Also, CTC isn’t really an entertainment channel so I’d assume anybody following is specifically interested in solving picking problems, so would at least not be ‘turned off’ by knowing about products, upcoming interviews etc. If someone is ‘consuming’ ig stories I think they have an understanding of the level of quality/importance of what they’re consuming; stories are very casual.
I have no interest / bandwidth for making disappearing videos otherwise though.
Not that I have any skin in this game, but proposing one idea: I’d imagine there’s a lot of time when you personally are tooling around with something, or trying to get closer to an answer for something (on the guitar,) probably enjoying what you’re doing, probably interested in the process even if you don’t have a valuable conclusion yet. So I think one use of stories could be a very casual documentation of that kind of thing - as in, phone vid of some sloppy attempt at a lick you were working on anyway, tiny bit of text, that’s it. there’s no intent to be making content, and there’s barely any time or energy added to what you were already doing.
I know I personally would have a lot of fun seeing those from you, and I’m probably not alone.
Stories have a more direct connection with DMs because you can’t ‘comment’ on them publicly, and so even doing dry-runs of things you’d also be getting a temperature on how interesting that thing was to your audience, and questions sent via DM might actually be helpful in helping clear up misunderstandings about initial explanations of the topic.
When I was more active on ig that would be a common thing I’d on stories, just post a bit about something I was personally working on, even if I hadn’t cleaned it up yet - or was making no progress, hah. And what kind of engagement I’d get was useful feedback. Since my thing is teaching rather than performing, I think people just casually seeing process was/is good advertising anyway.
And I do believe - but could be totally wrong - that some story posts with frequency, with good engagement, winds up being a good thing for the channel in general in terms of algo, but again I could be remembering that wrong or just making it up.
Point is, stories can be like, very low investment, and they can have a nice personal touch too. This was just an idea that came to mind but I’d imagine there are a lot of things in the CTC process that are thematically similar to what I described.
Selfishly, I think it would be really cool to get little glimpses of what your process is like!
Anyway, just some food for thought I guess before dismissing the avenue entirely.
PS For whatever it’s worth, I’ve really been enjoying following a woman on IG named Allie Mason who is basically a very not-bro-y social media manager/growth coach etc. The on-topic piece of that is that I think she has a non-dogmatic approach to discussing how the algorithm works and new changes instagram announces, things like that. I feel like the market she is often addressing in her posts are business owners and freelancers who aren’t necessarily interested in instagram or social media (and maybe even burnt out/sick of it) but see it as a useful tool and want to optimize their efforts.
In all the time I’ve spent on here I’ve never come across pick displacement. This is ‘swipe’ level cool 
