Instagram has a relatively new feature called stories. If you are familiar with Snapchat, who could be called the founders of “stories,” they are essentially the same. A story is something that is only available to view for 24 hours, and it is shown at the top of your Instagram home page. These stories can be pictures or videos and can be one slide to 100, but users typically keep them between 10-20 to make sure those consuming their content aren’t getting bored or annoyed. Stories are a more casual way to view content from the user that you follow, and it is a great way to promote other social media content or post new and exclusive content that is only available to view on a story. Because of their popularity, it is important to know the advantages that Instagram stories can offer. Quicksprout’s article on how to use stories to promote your business has some great tips on how you can elevate your social media content by utilizing Instagram stories.
How to Post an Instagram Story
Posting an Instagram story can be reached from your profile or homepage. If you are on the Instagram homepage, you will see a little icon in the top left corner titled “Your Story,” and there will be a blue plus sign in this icon as depicted in the picture below.
You can either click on this icon from your homepage or swipe left from the homepage, and you will be taken to create a story. Once you are here, there are a few different options to choose from. You have the ability to take a picture or video from the Instagram app or import one from your camera roll. Not only that, but you can also take a boomerang or go live on your story. Today, we’ll just be talking about simple picture and video Instagram stories. After you have taken or imported whatever media you like, you can then add filters, locations, music, and other effects using the sticker function.
The best way to learn and get comfortable with the story feature on Instagram is to use it yourself. Get in there and play around with all of the different tools that are available. After you have created the content that you’d like to share to your story, hit the “Send To” button in the bottom right corner and share to your public story. From then on, your story will be visible to your followers for 24 hours, and they are able to reply to your story and send it to others to see.
Elevate Your Content
The content that you post to your story is just as important as the filter and text that you choose. There are a few different ways that you can utilize Instagram stories to get the best bang for your buck, even though Instagram is technically free. Anyways, if you follow these steps you’ll be sure to see a difference in your analytics.
Offer Special Promotions
By posting on your story that is only available for 24 hours, this gives users the feel of exclusivity. If someone didn’t see it in that time frame, they could potentially never see it again. This is an opportunity to post flash sales for your followers according to Quicksprout. Even if you are a business that doesn’t sell a physical product that would require a sale code, you can still post other promotional content. For example, if you are the digital marketing director for a hospital or clinic, you can’t give a discount code for money off of a medical procedure. However, you can post a poll or quiz on your story and anyone who guesses correctly can be entered into a prize. There is more than one way to do it, and don’t feel like you are limited because of the industry you are in!
Promote Your Other Content
Instagram stories are a great place to promote other content that you have posted on different platforms! This can be achieved by either screenshotting or linking your other content to an Instagram story, or you could repurpose the content and create a mini version of this content for your story viewers. Quicksprout gives a great example of taking a blog post and condensing it into important snippets and turning that into a visually appealing Instagram story, which is portrayed below with an image from their article. This is a way to not only repurpose content but to also let your followers know about your other platforms.
Encourage Follower Engagement
Instagram stories have a great feature where you can share another person’s story to your own story. If you are a brand or business, this a fantastic way to increase your follower engagement and promote brand awareness. By running a competition, as Starbucks did on Quicksprout’s article, users are sharing and promoting the brand’s content without any cost to Starbucks. A competition can also tell a brand what users are wanting to see in future product launches or promotional campaigns. If you would like to create something like this for your followers, be sure to link a unique hashtag to the campaign so all of the entries can be easily found.
To Sum It Up
Instagram stories can be very useful to your brand or business. They can elicit a feeling of exclusivity for your followers, they can promote other content you have posted on different platforms, and they can encourage your followers to repost your content and increase your brand awareness. Don’t be shy and learn how to develop the content that your business could need.
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