19 Mar Making the Most out of Your Instagram Stories
Stories have become a major part of Instagram, receiving millions of views daily. If your brand is active on the platform it’s important to take advantage of this space, since it presents a huge opportunity to be discovered by audiences both new and old. With so many eyeballs on this content, it’s important to use Instagram best practices in this area of the platform along with the posts you add to your page. If you need help figuring out what works best, these 9 tips will lead you in the right direction. Follow along to learn how to create eye-catching Stories that will resonate with your fans!
Location, Location, Location
Location is an easy addition that’ll help your Stories be visible to more users! In Stories, you can add a location tag that is relevant to the image or video that you’re sharing to make it searchable for new fans. You don’t have to use them every time but when it makes sense, add them. For instance, if your brand is opening a new store or hosting an event in a certain place you can pop a location tag onto the content to let viewers know where it’s taking place or encourage them to visit if they’re close to the area.
Lead Them Somewhere
If your brand has 10,000+ followers, you can use the linking feature in your Stories. This feature is helpful if you have interesting content to share on your blog, website or Pinterest page that doesn’t translate to the highly visual Instagram platform. A brand may want to showcase a recipe, styling tip or traveling information located in another place. They can use this feature to prompt users to “Swipe up” and check out the full details. For this to work well, you have to figure out how to give fans a preview that works well on social. Try using a boomerang or eye-catching photo to draw them in or add a few arrows pointing to the “Swipe Up” button to help, too.
Create Emphasis
As we mentioned before, arrows always help! Pointing out things in your Instagram Story that you want to be emphasized is a quick and easy way to make your stories fun. Instagram Stories come equipped with a few drawing tools that are great to take advantage of, so pick one and draw away but remember to not over do it!
Tease a Temporary Thing
Is your brand always coming up with something new? Instagram Stories are the perfect place to preview new products or temporary happenings like flash sales, events, freebies and more. Stories only last for 24 hours so these limited-time promotions will be seen, then go away by the next day.
Take Them behind the Scenes
Another way to immerse your audience is by taking them behind the scenes. Pull back the curtain to show what goes into making your brand interesting. For instance, a food brand or restaurant could show how their food is made in the kitchen or in the field where it’s grown. A retail brand could put together an outfit or room design from start to finish to inspire users to buy products or create something similar.
Showcase Quick Tips & Tricks
Utilize how-to guides to tell a story. Whether it’s teaching fans how to use or style a product, break that process down into a sequence of events to create your Story. Engagement tends to drop after the first few slides, so keep that in mind when creating how-to’s or step-by-step guides for your viewers. Make sure that you’re creating content that is concise and to the point so that your audience won’t lose interest.
Share UGC
If your audience shares a lot of UGC, your Stories are a great place for those images. You can make your audience feel involved with the brand by sharing their content on your Instagram story without impacting how your page looks. Remember to always ask for permission first and give them credit when posting!
Wallpapers
If your brand is one that has a passionate fanbase you could use your team’s creative skills to come up with wallpapers that your fans can screenshot and use on their mobile devices. Remember that the size of Instagram Stories is 1080 pixels by 1920 pixels, so be sure to make them the right size.
Don’t Forget to Highlight
As we’ve mentioned, Stories only stick around for 24 hours so if there’s something you want to keep around longer create “Highlights.” If you have some special Stories from the past that have already disappeared, don’t worry, Instagram saves your old Stories in an archive so that you can go back and pull them into your Highlights. When creating highlights also create icons and highlight titles that are interesting so that your fans feel enticed to click on them.
With that being said, it’s clear that Instagram Stories are here to stay! If you’re still not ready to conquer Instagram Stories alone, we have social experts here to help!
