If you’re not using Instagram Stories for your consumer business, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity! Not only are Instagram Stories fun and creative, but they’re one of the best ways to grow your customer engagement, build brand awareness and even drive sales!
Below are some of our top tips for maximising Instagram Stories and appealing to your consumer audience, covering everything from content strategy to design, so that you can create the best Instagram assets to elevate your consumer brand. For more ideas on how to maximise the power of Instagram, check out our recent podcast episodes:
Master the art of Instagram marketing
What Are Instagram Stories?
Instagram Stories are published separately to the posts published on your Instagram grid. They are visible to your followers, although the more frequently you post and the more your audience watches them will help your Stories be shown more prominently to your followers. Stories disappear after 24 hours so they have a very “in the moment” feel to them, which is proving increasingly popular with consumers. Many of our clients treat their Stories feed as a separate channel to their Instagram grid feed because the audiences are so different.
The Stats
Instagram Stories are the platform’s most popular feature. In fact, the average number of feed posts published by businesses and influencers has declined every year since Stories entered the scene. With 60% of Instagram’s users (a whopping 300 million people!) now using the app every day, Instagram has twice the amount of daily active users than Snapchat and Twitter. Whilst Instagram “borrowed” the idea of Stories originally from Snapchat, Instagram’s version has quickly taken over as the “go-to” Stories app. The popularity of the Instagram Stories feature has meant that Facebook now has the same feature and LinkedIn has a B2B version too!
Be Authentic
Consumers expect a more authentic connection from the brands they interact with now and 24-hour Stories have grown to become the perfect outlet for sharing “behind the scenes” camera content with minimal post-production editing. The introduction of innovative features to compliment your Instagram Stories, such as interactive stickers and polls, are great for starting conversations, humanizing your brand, and getting real-time feedback straight from your target audience. Regularity in posting original and personalised content via Instagram Stories will increase your consumer interest, improving the likelihood of your consumers clicking that follow button!
Enhance Engagement
Opportunities to boost your consumer engagement through Instagram Stories are endless! With tons of easy-to-use features that encourage audience engagement — from one click polls to instant emoji slider stickers. If you’re running low on inspiration, Instagram’s “create” mode has tons of pre-populated stickers designed to kick-start your creativity and encourage more engagement. Decorating your Stories with a handful of these features each week can effectively drive more audience interactions, which in turn can work wonders for boosting your overall ranking within the Instagram algorithm, as well as creating genuine opportunities for conversations with your consumers!
Driving Sales
If you want to drive more sales directly from Instagram Stories, ‘product’ and link stickers are a good place to start. The sticker allows you to tag specific products and links in Stories, just like you can with regular Instagram shopping posts with your video assets — creating a super streamlined way for your consumer audience to shop your products!
Insta Ads
Instagram Stories adverts are a great way to showcase your brand, business and products to an already engaged audience that might not be familiar with your consumer brand yet. According to Instagram, 75% of Instagram users take action after seeing a story or video ad, such as visiting a website or making a purchase!
We hope you found our advice on maximising Instagram Stories useful. For even more tips on Instagram, head over to our podcast, Revitalise & Grow and check out Episode 5 of Season 2, which is all about the platform as well as Episode 6 from Season 3 which covers Instagram Lives in even more detail! You may also want to read our blog on an introduction to TikTok for businesses.
We know that social media can be an essential growth tool for your company. Download our FREE Social Media Content Planner now and change how you engage with your audience!