The world of digital marketing has become cost-efficient and much more useful than traditional marketing. Instagram, being one of the largest social media platforms, is the answer to enhance your brand awareness and online presence towards customers. With over 500 million daily active users, Instagram Stories are a powerful tool to build and establish relationships with your audience and boost engagement rates. From photos, live broadcasts, boomerangs, videos to GIFs, this powerful feature allows users to share personalized content with viewers for 24 hours. Start sharing personalized stories to build relationships with your followers, drive traffic, and to show off your products and market your business.
Since this feature was launched in August 2016, Instagram has added many innovations such as swipe to link, ads, polls, location and hashtag stickers, GIFs, and plenty of editing features that will give your story a creative streak custom to your unique brand.
Apart from personalization, stories are credited with fueling the growth of Instagram Direct, a messaging feature that allows users to share content privately. Instagram Direct messaging has become one of the most popular messaging apps with over 375 million daily active users. Implementing Instagram Stories for your business, gives you the opportunity for maximum outreach and communication to build rapport with your current followers and future prospects.
Why Should You Be Using Instagram Stories For Your Business?
This feature has proven to provide outstanding results for digital marketers. With more ads shown compared to feed posts, lower cost of ads, and a more significant percentage of prospecting purchases, integrating Stories into your marketing plan is essential for increased traffic and brand optimization. If you are thinking about using this feature in the near future, refer to the information below for further suggestions to help you improve your performance.
Announcements
Are you launching a new product, running a giveaway, or maybe expanding to a new market?
Social media platforms allow companies to deliver news and run promotions. Stories are a great place to make special announcements; you can notify your followers about your future strategies by merely sharing an InstaStory.
Tutorials
Educational content is a proven way to attract users. Posting something as simple as a short tutorial, which is generally not supposed to be longer than 90-120 seconds, can introduce your product to your followers or demonstrate to them how it’s used. Sometimes a quick and easy explanation is what a prospect needs to help clearly understand how your product can solve a problem.
Implementing this kind of video can make your story a highly engaging experience for your followers. For example, you can make a section of tutorials on your profile by creating a Story Highlight. That way, followers can find and review them as often as they like.
Feedback
One of the main aspects of running a business is finding out what your clients think about your products. You can obtain customer feedback by using Instagram Stories using the question sticker to gather your audience’s most pressing questions beforehand, running a poll, or even hosting a live interactive session. Your customer’s opinions about the experiences they had with your brand can be valuable information you can use to adjust your business in order to fit their needs more accurately.
Instagram Story Poll is an entertaining way to engage with your audience and grab their attention. By stopping users from swiping past your stories, a poll enables you to gather opinions that will serve your target audience and further improve your marketing activities. Instagram has two different poll options that you can add to your stories: the classic poll,which has two answer options that you can customize, and the emoji slider.
Time Bounds
Due to the fact that photos and videos that you post on your Instagram Story will disappear after 24 hours, you can utilize them for discounts or time-bound deals. The urgency factor entices your audience to take action immediately. For example, you can run flash sales, seasonal promotions, or an event-relevant coupon code to your followers all via Stories.
Behind the Scenes Stories
Build trust with your followers and help humanize your brand by taking your audience behind the scenes. This way, you can reveal your organization’s hidden culture. An example of this kind of content is ‘day in the life’ where you are able to personally connect to your followers.
How to Improve Your Instagram Story Engagement
Improving your performance and engagement on Instagram Stories in seven steps:
Instagram Stories Ads
If you want to improve your sales, gain more followers, or boost brand awareness, running InstaStories Ads is the perfect feature to use. By using Ads, you can reach new audiences or showcase your business to your currently engaged followers.
When creating an ad you should keep in mind that your message is supposed to be short, straight to the point, easy to read, and should always reflect your brand’s personal aesthetic. The Story expands over the entire phone screen so your ad won’t compete with anything around it; it’s an immersive experience. When used properly, story ads won’t feel as intrusive as other types of ads and will blend right in with the organic content.
Interactive Stories
In order to build a better connection with your followers you should post more Interactive stories. There are so many options to guide user engagement towards your brand. Whether its using poll stickers, live videos, swipe to link, or tagging other users, you are showing your followers that you care about their opinion while encouraging customer interaction.
You can utilize this feature for feedback, research, or to get better acquainted with your followers and have fun.
Story Highlights
Since their release in December 2017, Instagram Story Highlights have become a game-changer.
Think of them as an extension of your brand’s bio. Instagram Story Highlights are showcased on your profile, making them perfect for new visitors to discover more about your brand. To create a Highlight, just pin your archived Stories to your profile, and by creating an eye-catching cover for your highlights section, you can turn your page into an amazing sectional brochure.
Collaborations
You can dial up your social media strategy with influencer marketing. Research has shown that almost 86% of marketers have used influencers to market their brands, and that 94% of them found it compelling. Influencer’s credibility and authenticity are the most viral factors. They have the power to drive engagement, traffic, and build trust towards the brand they activate for.
You can use them for shoutouts, lifestyle images, brand awareness, or to host giveaways. Joining forces with someone else who promotes your brand, while keeping in mind specific goals, enables your business to learn, grow, and maximize engagement and retention.
Use Different Stories Options
When creating a new story, there are several options you can opt for, such as Type, Music, Normal, Video, Boomerang, Slo-mo, Hands-free, Focus, or Superzoom. There is also a face icon on the bottom right corner of your screen, and by tapping it reveals a series of face filters such as Circle frame, Pulse, Subtle, Contact sheet, Duotone, and many others. You can also use a mix of these options in one Story; there is no limit to creativity!
Use Hashtags and Location stickers
When used correctly, geotags allow users to reference a specific location with their image. This feature elevates your content beyond your current followers and makes it possible to reach a wider audience. Similar to geotag, the hashtag is also showcased with the image, and can be stylized along with other text.
The advantage of implementing both of these into your content is users are able to find your page in other sections of instagram instead of searching by username alone.
Be Creative!
The power of storytelling lies in the ability to deliver unique and engaging messages. Instagram is a great platform for encouraging visual aspects of your brand. The key element is authenticity, so choosing fonts that compliment each other or even better, using your brand font, is an easy way to create your unique template design. With a strong Instagram Story strategy, it’s easy to get your audience to love what you’re selling.
Instagram Stories are quickly turning into one of the best features on the platform to grow your business. With more and more features being added, benefits like brand recognition and gaining exposure are hard to ignore. When it comes to your Instagram Story Strategy, choosing which features to use is customizable to your unique brand.
Consider trying out a lot of different styles and approaches until you determine which promotes your business best. Sounds like a bunch of Gen Z mumbo jumbo? If you need help with Instagram marketing campaigns, don’t hesitate to contact our digital marketing agency. We can guide you through this process with our Social Media Marketing expertise, and steer you in the right direction by maximizing your online presence and profitability.
