Instagram Stories are a platform with over 500 million daily users who click, watch, and interact with the stories of the people they follow (and likely the stories’ ads as well). That’s half a billion people who could see your story or your business’s story ad.
Furthermore, 58% of Instagram users say they become interested in a brand or product after seeing it in an Instagram Story. This means you can increase your brand awareness and grow your followers and customers by regularly using Instagram Stories.
What is an Instagram Story?
An Instagram Story is a post that disappears from your Instagram profile. It will remain on your profile for 24 hours unless you add it to a highlight (which we will discuss later).
You will know if someone has a published story by the bright circle that will appear around their profile picture:
To view the story, simply click on the profile picture, then click on each story to see them all:
Why Use Instagram Stories for Business?
There are many reasons to be excited about Instagram Stories:
Active user base: Instagram states there are over 500 million daily users of stories. Creating stories doesn’t require you to invest half an hour in a post that won’t be around tomorrow. While Instagram posts require perfect lighting, angles, and hashtags, a good story only requires a quick idea or an interesting moment along with some creativity.
Avenue for testing ideas: Instagram Stories reveal less than regular Instagram posts, making them ideal for testing ideas. If they are well received (positive feedback and people watching your entire story without skipping), you can consider reposting them as a permanent Instagram post or adapting the idea for another channel.
Toolbox of features: There are many Instagram tools for drawing, adding Instagram stickers, reality filters, and more.
An opportunity to boost traffic: Add links to your stories, advertise your products using Instagram shopping, and take advantage of Instagram’s latest feature: shopping in Explore. This makes product discovery and reaching a new audience easier than ever.
Another way to get discovered: You can add hashtags and location tags to stories for a chance to satisfy Instagram’s algorithm and boost your reach.
But we are still just scratching the surface. Here are some ways you can integrate Instagram Stories as a marketing channel for your business.
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How to Post an Instagram Story
To post an Instagram Story, follow these steps:
- Click the + icon in the top right corner of the screen (next to your notifications and messages) or swipe the screen to the right.
- Select “Story” from the options for what you want to create.
- Take a photo or record a video. Or swipe up to access your photo gallery to upload an image, graphic, video, or Boomerang you’ve created earlier.
- Edit your photo or video using the various editing options on Instagram.
- Click the “Your Story” button to publish it to your public story or the “Close Friends” button to send it to a specific group only (if you’ve set up that group).
Instagram provides you with many new features that you can apply to your posts, encouraging you to create content within its editor. But you can also easily upload content you’ve created elsewhere.
Unlike the usual dimensions for standard square Instagram posts, stories are shot vertically. Your images and videos should be appropriately sized, with a width of 1080 pixels and a height of 1920 pixels. In March 2022, Instagram launched an update allowing you to resize images and videos before publishing by zooming your phone’s screen.
You must
to add anything to your photo gallery when you scroll up in the camera view for stories. In addition to photos and videos, stories offer a variety of modes to create content in other formats:
- Text: Text-based posts in different styles on a colored background.
- Live: A real-time livestream that your audience can comment on in real-time. You can post it as a story afterwards.
- Boomerang: Create short videos that repeat.
- Focus: Capture selfies that blur the background while keeping the person’s face in focus.
- Superzoom: Dramatically zoom in on someone from afar, using fun effects like paparazzi or surprise.
- Rewind: Record a video that will play in reverse.
- Hands-free: Record a video without having to press the record button.
You can enjoy how to create this content. You can design quick title cards and other graphics in Canva (or even Keynote, Slides, or PowerPoint) that you can upload as an introduction, call to action, or individual slides within your story.
Edit a collection of videos using a video editing app like Quik by GoPro (free). Just remember that you can only upload 15 seconds of video at a time or it will be cut off. (Live videos can last for one minute.)
There are plenty of ideas available for Instagram stories, so you can be creative. Use all the options available to you to bring your content to life. Combine text, images, videos, stickers, interactive filters, polls, and graphics to produce engaging and interesting content.
What are Instagram Highlights?
The Instagram Highlights feature compiles Instagram stories into topics or categories and displays them on Instagram permanently (instead of expiring after 24 hours).
Highlights appear on your Instagram profile page, giving you the chance to showcase your brand’s personality. It allows businesses to save, format, and display Instagram story content for followers on their profile pages.
To create your Instagram Highlights, follow these steps:
- Go to your Instagram profile page and click the + button under the empty “Highlights” section to create your first highlight category.
- Select from your previous stories to start compiling your new highlight category, then click next.
- Edit the cover (and keep it on brand) by creating relevant graphics and uploading them from your photo gallery.
- Name the highlight category and then click “Add.”
- Create as many highlights as you want by repeating steps 1 to 4 until you’re done.
Features of Instagram Stories to Increase Engagement
With traditional posts, you can increase exposure of your content if you smartly use stickers, location tags, and the best Instagram hashtags. You can add a location, sticker, or hashtag to your photo or video in the sticker menu.
Instagram Stickers:
When you share a photo or video in your story, you can now add story stickers to encourage different types of engagement (look for the smiley face in the top right corner of the screen).
Link Stickers:
Instagram stories previously required users to have 10,000 followers before getting the “swipe up” feature to add links to their stories. However, Instagram has recently changed this to a link sticker that anyone can use, even personal accounts.
This makes it easy to link to a blog post, product page, or any other page on your website you want to mention in your stories.
Poll Stickers:
Ask for your audience’s opinion! This is a great trick especially for gathering customer preferences if you’re working on a new product line and want to know your audience’s likes.
Do
by sharing stories using the poll sticker on two different product options – or use it for fun with your audience as part of your social media marketing strategy.
This is exactly what Bloomscape did in the example above, where they asked their audience how long they think it will take for a new leaf to unfurl.
Question stickers:
Use Instagram Stories to engage directly with your audience. Place the question sticker over a photo or video to allow your audience to ask any burning questions they might have.
You can then place their questions in a new story while recording yourself answering, or write the answers over a different image or video.
Mentions stickers:
Do you want to mention another user or brand? While you can do this using the text feature, there’s also the perfect mention sticker for that purpose.
You can see its use below when this health and wellness brand tagged a user who completed a challenge they were hosting:
This strategy is great for recognizing loyal followers and customers. Fresh Start tagged this follower and then asked them to send a direct message to claim their prize.
You can also use hashtags or location stickers in your Instagram marketing – they appear similarly in your stories.
Music stickers:
Do you want to add background music to a photo or video? You can easily do that using the music sticker. Just tap on the “music” option in the sticker library and then select or search for the song you want to add:
Countdown stickers:
Countdown to a product launch, event, live video on Instagram, or any exciting news with a countdown sticker. This type of content will increase anticipation and allow your audience to set a reminder on Instagram when the countdown ends.
GIF stickers:
Animated images are another fun way to liven up your Instagram stories. Click on the GIF option in the sticker library to explore all the different options, or search for something related to what you’re posting.
Shopping stickers:
If you have set up your Instagram shop, you can link products from your stories. This is a great way to make the buying process easier for your customers. If your audience sees something they like in your story, they can click on the product link and purchase it instantly.
Emoji slider stickers:
The biggest benefit of this option is having some form of interaction in your stories. You can customize any emoji you want on the slider, giving you full freedom on how to incorporate it.
You can use the emoji slider to gauge how much someone loves a product you’ve showcased, or simply include it in a story to add some vibrancy, as seen in the example below.
Geotags:
Geotags will help you gain recognition in local stories (for example, New York City or a popular restaurant in your neighborhood). Regularly tag your location in your story posts when relevant to appear before people who are specifically checking out that place.
Hashtags:
Although they are usually used to find content on social media, hashtags are likely to take viewers away from your stories and direct them to others’ posts.
Analyze results using Instagram Analytics
With a personal account, it can be challenging to know how your stories are performing. You don’t have many metrics to work with, other than views (you can see who viewed your story by clicking on it) and replies (when viewers send you a message through your story).
But with a business account, you can access a wide array of metrics for more meaningful feedback from your stories.
Display
data such as impressions and reach, but also actions taken on your stories, such as the number of people who clicked through, reactions, or swiped away.
Use this data to learn more about the most engaging interactions and where you lose attention. Whether your stories are too long or too short, you can improve your content over time.
Creating an Instagram Story Strategy
1. Think less about “posting” and more about “programming”
Although stories don’t last forever, they still require some thought and planning. Brands should think of their Instagram story just as they do with any other content channel: in advance.
You might consider your story like a television network with scheduled programming for the week, or even recurring “episodes” that happen on certain days. Thinking ahead about the type of content you’ll share and how your story will flow will help you create a more engaging and consistent experience for your audience.
You can even tease what will happen and when so your followers know to tune in.
2. Post up to seven stories a day
Buffer conducted some research by analyzing 15,000 different Instagram stories and found that the optimal story length is between one and seven stories at a time.
As we see in the chart above, the completion rate begins to drop after those first five to seven stories. Since your stories disappear after 24 hours, you’ll want to wait until the end of that timeframe to post your next batch of stories.
3. Post regularly
Regular posting is a key part of any social media platform strategy, and the same applies to your Instagram stories. Since they only last 24 hours, you should make sure to post more so that your audience always has something to watch.
The more you post, and the more your audience watches and engages with your stories, the higher the chances of appearing in their story list. This will increase their awareness of your stories on Instagram overall, boosting your reach and engagement.
4. Use Instagram Live to support your stories
Instagram Live is fun to watch when it’s a show by someone else, but it can be a little scary to start one yourself, as it’s being recorded and broadcast in real-time.
Going live gives you the least control since it’s in the moment, but it’s an interactive and versatile format.
One advantage of going live on Instagram is that your followers receive a notification when you start one (unless they’ve turned off notifications). Once the live broadcast ends, you can upload it to your story for the next 24 hours.
If you have a large following, consider giving Instagram Live a chance. The icon changes when it’s uploaded to your story, making it stand out from the rest of the stories at the top of the Instagram app, where this type of live video happens less frequently.
Remember that this is interactive, which means regularly acknowledging comments from your live audience and encouraging them to participate in some way. It may take some time for the audience to join before you can start, so prepare an introduction to give yourself a few moments.
Some Instagram Live ideas include:
- Holding a contest or inviting your audience to bet on a specific outcome.
- Hosting a Q&A session (ask me anything).
- Covering an event or sharing an exciting moment.
- Hosting a talk show.
- Live streaming a personal video.
5. Drive traffic to your website and products
Links in your Instagram bio:
Your bio used to be the only place to add a clickable link, and many brands still utilize this approach. Fortunately, you can apply two fundamental principles to achieve the goal: signaling and call-to-action (CTA).
Provides
The signal is a sensory cue for the user indicating where their attention should be focused and what action they can take. After you tell your audience to check out the link in your bio, you might consider mentioning your own handle (@yourhandle), or using an arrow to point to the avatar in the upper left corner of your story, both of which lead to your bio.
A CTA is a direct instruction for what you want your audience to do. Without an explicit CTA, your audience’s default action will likely be to continue scrolling to the next post. As a general rule, you should always strive to add a CTA, whether in your Instagram captions or stories. Here are some examples of CTAs you can use:
- Check out more photos at #yourcampaign
- Swipe up to get this product
- Click now to get XX% off
Links in Instagram stories:
You can also add links to your Instagram story posts, directing users to your homepage, your blog, product pages, or anywhere else you choose.
You can also take advantage of shopping in Instagram Stories to create clickable posts that drive your audience to purchase pages. Use product stickers to showcase products in your story. Your audience can click to learn more and buy the products.
Instagram also recently announced plans to integrate shopping into its Explore tab. The Explore tab is where Instagram users go to discover new content and accounts, and it’s curated to match their interests, hashtags, and in-app behavior. This can put your products in front of an audience that doesn’t even follow you yet.
Remember that you have your audience’s attention for brief moments, so when you want them to take a specific action, be direct.
Highlighting Your Stories in Highlights
While stories have a short lifespan, they can live on as highlights that you can pin to your profile. These highlights consist of stories that you can group under specific themes and label in meaningful ways.
You can use highlights to:
- Create promotions for your account.
- Showcase your customers.
- Display product features.
- Directly onboard new followers on Instagram about your content and account (you might name it “Start Here”).
- Announce discounts.
Running Instagram Story Ads
If you are looking to bring more attention to your Instagram account, creating story ads is the best way to do it.
Story ads are images, videos, or graphics that promote your brand and its products or services. They appear between organic stories and can be a single image or video or span multiple frames.
Here is an example of a story ad from Papaya Reusables:
While you can use your stories for anything — behind-the-scenes videos, educational graphics, links to blog content — your story ads should have a specific purpose in mind. This might be to increase followers or to make a sale.
What Is Your Experience with Instagram Stories?
Are you using stories as part of your Instagram strategy? What has your experience been so far? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Source: https://shopify.com/blog/how-to-use-instagram-stories
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