Information in this blog post was obtained from Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social.
What are Instagram Stories?
Instagram introduced this feature back in 2016 due to the rise in popularity of Snapchat and its story feature. Stories are a slideshow of pictures, videos, or shared posts that Instagram users can share that don't go on their main feed, and only last for 24 hours after being posted. These stories can either be viewed by clicking on a user's profile picture or by clicking on one of the profile icons at the top of their main feed. Users often use this feature to share their friend's posts or other posts they think their friends might be interested in, as well as pictures and videos of their day that they don't want on their main feed.
Why Should You Use Instagram Stories?
A recent study found that the potential ad audience of Instagram Stories is 996 million, with posts on the main feed reaching 1.32 billion. With over 75% of the same audience as the main Instagram feed, understanding how to effectively use Stories will greatly help marketers reach, and connect with their audience. This is why it is important that digital marketers ensure that utilizing stories is part of their marketing plan on Instagram.
What Type of Content Should You Post?
While stories can be used to share your own content that you've posted on Instagram, there are also many different types of tools that can help you make your stories stand out from other brands and companies.
Behind the Scenes
Instagram stories are a great opportunity to share glimpses behind the scenes of a business and how it operates. For example, if you are recording a podcast you can share some short videos of you showing how you record the episodes, or give the users that view your story a sneak peek at an upcoming guest. You can also use it to help you highlight your employees or even to give a brief tour of your workplace. By sharing this more candid content your followers will feel more connected with your brand and its content and be more likely to engage with it in the future.
Tutorials
Since story clips are shown in order they are perfect for a short tutorial that shows how to use your company's product. For example, if you are selling a type of software you can make a short tutorial that highlights one of the features of that software. Or if you make content based on traveling you can also offer your followers tips or advice for traveling in different countries. This type of content shouldn't take too much time or resources to create but will still be valuable to consumers.
Interactive Features
Instagram stories offer many different interactive features such as polls, quizzes, questions, and more that allow creators to better engage with their audience. For example, you can create a poll where users can vote on which product types are their favorite. It can also be used to ask for their opinion. Say you want to create an e-commerce store but don't know which platform to use, you can ask your audience which platform they recommend. This will help your audience feel more connected to the content since they know that you value their preferences.
Questions are also a great way to learn from your audience because you can ask open-ended questions such as "What type of content do you want to see in the future". This way you will be able to receive direct content from your followers without them ever needing to leave Instagram.
You can also use quizzes as a fun way to interact with your audience. For example, if you run a small business you can have users try to guess fun facts about you. This will help them get to know you better, and help them better connect with your content in the future. The "add yours' feature can also be a great way to interact with your audience because it allows them to share photos that are related to a specific prompt you created. For example, you can have users share photos of themselves that contain your product and then you can select which of these photos you want to reshare on your profile. This will help encourage users to post images with your product because they may get reposted on the company's story.
Another way to interact with your audience is by creating a countdown that when clicked will allow users to receive a notification when the countdown is finished. This can be used to help your followers stay informed on when a new product is released, or when I new podcast is posted.
Additionally, you can use the link and product features to easily create direct links to other websites or a direct link to the product you are showcasing. Lastly, you can use the hashtag and location features to help promote your products or an event you are hosting or appearing at.
Share Posts
As briefly mentioned in the last section, your story is a great place to share user-generated content. For example, if a user posts an image of them using or wearing one of your products, simply sharing it to your story can not only help other users see how purchasing customers enjoy your products but also show them that they have the opportunity to get posted in the future. To make it easier to find user-generated content make sure that you encourage your audience to either tag your company or use a specific hashtag (Ex: #Nike) when posting so that marketers can easily find and share this content. If you have several people posting about your product over a short period of time you can save some of those posts to share later on when you need more content to post.
Contest & Giveaways
One way to encourage consumers to post about your products is to host contests that either require them to make a specific type of post with your content or sign up for a prize using a link in your story.
Similar to a contest, you can also create giveaways that require them to post about your product to be eligible to win prizes, such as free products, shoutouts, or coupons. By hosting these contests semi-regularly your audience will feel more engaged and you will be able to more easily generate attention for your business.
Since stories only last 24 hours after posting, they are perfect for announcements and keeping your followers up to date on your business. For example, if you run a clothing company and there was a problem with shipping out your latest orders you can post on your story to quickly update customers on the status of their packages. These announcement-style posts are a great time to use the "Countdown" feature mentioned earlier.
Story Highlights
After seeing all the unique ways you can use stories to increase your following and engagement on Instagram you may be wishing that you can keep some of the content you post on your story for more than 24 hours, don't worry because you can by using the highlight feature. This feature allows you to highlight different stories on your profile indefinitely. These stories appear as circles right above your main feed posts when viewing your profile. This is a great feature to use if you want to highlight specific user-generated content, recent product releases, upcoming events, or more. You can have several of these highlights on your page, that way you can easily group similar content together. You can also have up to 100 photos or videos in these groups so you are able to keep tons of the content you post on your story if needed.
Even if it's been over 24 hours you can go into the "archives" section in your settings and you should be able to see everything you've ever posted and shared to your story, as well as what day you posted it. While you are able to see these posts you are only able to see the number of accounts it reached, and that engaged with it. You are not able to see the original viewers and who liked your story posts.
Learn More
If you want to learn more about how to effectively use Instagram and its various features, make sure to check out some of our other articles:
"How to Maximize Your Content on Instagram" - Elizabeth Stoeck
"How To Market Fashion Brands on Instagram" - Peyton Niernberger
Resources
Newberry, C. (2023, March 4). 34 Instagram stats marketers need to know in 2023. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. Retrieved April 23, 2023, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-statistics/#Instagram_Story_stats
Read, A. (2023, March 17). Instagram Stories: The Complete Guide to creating standout stories. Buffer Library. Retrieved April 23, 2023, from https://buffer.com/library/instagram-stories/
Zote, J. (2023, January 10). Instagram Stories: The Complete Guide for Your Brand. Sprout Social. Retrieved April 23, 2023, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-stories/
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