If you aren’t using Instagram stories to promote your brand, you’re missing out. More than half a billion people use and watch Instagram stories every day, and a third of the most-viewed stories are posted by businesses. Stories last for 24 hours and are a great way to get noticed on Instagram. You need to make your stories fun to watch, unique, inspiring and informative. Here are some of our top tips and tricks on how to start using Instagram stories like a pro.
- Tell a story. Create real, in-the-moment content to communicate with your audience. Stories are often a lot more casual than your main Instagram feed, so feel free to get a little bit silly with them! A popular way of telling a story is to allow your audience to get a “behind the scenes” look at your business.
2. Use interactive elements such as hashtags, @mentions, and interactive stickers. Some of our favourite interactive stickers to use are polls and questions. Polls allow your audience to have a say and makes them feel as though they are part of the brand, and questions allow them to ask you any questions they might have.
3. Use story templates. One of the easiest ways to generate a fun and creative story is by using a template. My personal favourite app to use is Canva, but there are plenty of apps out there to use!
4. Change it up. Post a range of photos, text and videos to your stories to keep your audience interested. Use a range of informational as well as casual content.
5. Check your story insights. Once you have posted an Instagram story, you can check how many people have viewed it, as well as any actions taken on your story. To do this, tap “Your Story” at the top left of the Home Screen to bring up your story, then swipe up to get a list of people who have viewed the story. Click the bar graph icon on the left to see the insights.
6. Add your favourite stories as highlights. Highlights consist of stories that you select to stay on your profile page for longer than the typical 24-hour life span of a story. To add a story to your highlights, open your story, tap highlight in the bottom-right corner, tap new to create a new highlight (or tap the name of an existing highlight you want to add your story to).
Instagram stories can drive a ton of engagement and value. Since its launch in 2016, a total of 250 million Instagram users have started using stories; contributing to the huge jump in time spent on the app from 24 minutes to 32 minutes a day. Whether you are trying to grow brand awareness or drive traffic to your website, stories allow you to publish fun, disappearing content that infuses brand voice and personality.
We hope these tips help you to post some killer Instagram stories that your audience won’t be able to stop following. Our best advice? Have fun with it! Happy ‘gramming!
