Instagram Stories are the latest trend in the social media town. Whether you have a personal Instagram account or a business account, chances are you must have viewed an Instagram Story – those snippets of photos, videos, quiz questions, stickers and more on the top of your Instagram feed.
Launched in August 2016, the Stories feature enables you to share content with your followers for a total of 24 hours since the time of posting. Nevertheless, should you want your followers to access your Story post the 24 hours, all you need to do is add it to your profile with the ‘Story Highlights’ feature.
Moreover, unlike Whatsapp, your Instagram feed is public (given you’re a business account) and visible to both your followers and visitors alike.
Here are 4 reasons how and why you should use stories:
- Engaging with your followers
Engaging with your followers helps in building your brand presence. Not only is it beneficial for branding but it also adds to your credibility and can go a long way in boosting your SEO rankings. One way to engage your users is through Instagram Stories.
Instagram Stories allow you to interact with your followers easily as Stories appear at the top of the feed. Moreover, with a Story, you can publicise a newly launched product, take polls, go live on your channel with a Q&A or discussion and more. This way you can gauge where your users’ interest lies.
Moreover, all these can be measured based on factors such as how many users proceed to the next Story, or if you’re live how many users tune in and how many stay till the end. For example, if you’ve gone live and you notice most users drop at a certain point – you may want to consider what was it that didn’t connect with your users and try to work through it. This is more beneficial if it is about your product!
2. Teaming up with Instagram influencers
Influencer marketing helps you not only gain more followers but also drive your sales. There are three ways you can team up with your influencers – going live with them, Story takeovers or they promoting you directly on their page.
Going live with influencers on your Instagram Story can generate excitement and go a long way in engaging your audience.
Story takeovers, on the other hand, let your influencer take control of your Stories for a day and vice-versa. Think of this as collaboration, where both the partners benefit. The days leading up to the takeover – the brand, as well as, the influencer can promote the event leading to users being excited and waiting for the event. If you can rope in a celebrity, then you will definitely witness sharp spikes in user engagement. However, a word of caution, make sure your influencer is someone relevant to your business, or industry.
For example, if you’re a web hosting company, collaborating with someone from the tech world to discuss the benefits of your product makes more sense than someone who produces music!
3. Add links to improve CTR
As a brand, you would most likely add links wherever you could fit and definitely measure the CTRs aka Click-Through Rate. Links are surely useful and a sure-shot way to take a user to the desired brand page.
As a business, once you cross 10,000 followers or are a verified account on Instagram, you get a ‘Swipe Up’ feature in your Story to take your users to the page/website you want. Another option is, once you reach 5,000 Instagram followers, you can include a link in your Story.
However, if you’ve just begun your journey Instagram allows users to add a link to their profile bio.
Using Instagram Story you can take your user to the product by mentioning to check your bio where you can add the link for users to click. Although this may seem a tedious process – rest assured if a user is interested he/she will definitely click-through.
4. Behind the scenes of your brand
Who doesn’t love a good scoop or a sneak peek into what’s happening backstage? We all do, don’t we? And Instagram is all about sharing our lives with others, and the same is true for business accounts.
Take, for example, you’re running an IT company and have your own in-house server – so maybe you could share a glimpse of your server room in your Instagram Story, or if you’re running a restaurant business – maybe you could show your kitchen or the chef in the middle of preparing a dish. Another example is a quick office routine or culture. Depending on your business and what you stand for you can think of several creative Instagram Stories.
Some more tips:
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- Always use #hashtags in your Stories to make them more ‘hashtag findable’
- Brand your Stories to reflect your business brand colours
- Share website content or old but relevant product posts from your feed in your Stories
- Mix and match to include audio, video, images and music in your stories
- Keep your Stories brief and to the point
- Save your Stories for future viewing by adding them to Story Highlights
- Go live on your Stories to engage with your followers
While marketing is crucial to the success of your business and social media helps in building your brand effectively, it is important not to overdo it.
Develop an Instagram Story marketing strategy so that you have a plan in place. Moreover, combining fun and relatable content along with great visual storytelling goes a long way in engaging your users.
Lastly, remember that every marketing activity is all about building a strong and long-lasting relationship with your customers.
Do you have an Instagram account and have you engaged your followers with Stories? If yes, do leave a comment below sharing your experience or tips with us!
To know more about marketing and how it can help your business, read more from our Marketing Blogs Category.