Table of Contents
Introduction:
Summary: In this vlog post, we’ll see 13 easy and amazing ways to use Instagram stories to promote your business to loyal audiences.
Instagram stories are one of the most interesting features in the Instagram world. It allows users to share multiple images and videos in a slideshow format. Instagram stories that let you upload a vertical photo and video of up to 15 seconds, and it automatically disappears after 24 hours.
Stories are a quick and easy way to share exciting moments and experiences with wider people. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways that helps to connect with your target audience directly.
Over 500 million users are using Instagram stories every day. It is a key medium for many businesses to establish their product and services to potential audiences, build brand awareness, and generate sales.
Let’s dive into the main topic.
#1. Define Your Stories Object
Before you use Instagram stories, it is essential to know the objective of your business. Here are some interesting facts that you should understand when you create a story for your business:
- Why do you use Instagram stories for your business?
- Who are your target customers, and what is their niche?
- What are you offering to your target audiences?
Once you define the objective, it’s time to establish them and create content that is relevant to your business.
#2. Share Your Company Announcement
Instagram stories are a great way to share more information about your brand and business, such as new products, employees, and general updates. It will help you to show the human side of your company, product, and services. And, it is the perfect way to boost brand awareness, increase engagement and build strong relationships with your audiences.
Behind the scenes footage is a great opportunity to show your company environment, working culture, and the step by step procedure of your product preparation.
#3. Use Poll Stickers
Instagram stories provide a variety of stickers that help to show your videos more attractive. Poll stickers are one of the easiest to get involved with your fans and followers. It is also a great option to get instant engagement for your engaging stories.
Many content creators regularly use this poll sticker to ask their audiences about their content and recently updated posts. It usually looks like the basic point of conversation, but this is extremely a wonderful way to create a strong relationship among the Instagram community.
As a marketer, you can use poll stickers in your Instagram stories by asking which content they prefer, how well your product they like to use, and more. In this way, you can make your future content based on your audience’s niche and increase interactions.
#4. Use Hashtags And Location Tags to Boost Views
If you’re looking for a way to increase your brand reach organically, adding hashtags and location tags in your stories is an effective strategy to achieve it. Instagram allows users to add as many as 10 hashtags and one clickable hashtag sticker to their stories. But make sure those hashtags are always relevant to your content and target audiences.
Adding a location tag in your posts can help you to increase your Instagram story views, brand reach, and impressions. It is especially more helpful if you upload any travel or food related content because people search for locations before they arrive.
When it comes to optimizing your Instagram story hashtags, think about the subject matter of your story, hashtag volume of your competitor’s posts, what keyword your target audiences most search for, and more.
#5. Post Branded Stories
Unique brand design is crucial when you decide to promote videos on any social media platform. Instagram stories are the perfect choice to show your brand voice to massive audiences.
To provide a memorable look and feel of your Instagram stories, you have to create a brand kit for your stories. It will help when your followers scroll down their stories feed and see some of your stories, they will get immediate attention before they see your username.
Here are some valuable ideas to make an Instagram stories brand kit:
- Apple your brand logo in all places.
- Use unique brand colors and fonts.
- Write your brand message.
- Give a swipe up option to drive traffic to your website and offer more content about your brand.
- Try the Instagram stories template while creating your stories.
- Use image filters, stickers, and Gifs to improve brand visibility.
#6. Go Live
Instagram offers live streaming features for users to directly interact with their target customers. It is a great opportunity for brands and businesses to get instant engagement and reach their brand to a wider audience.
If you’re looking for a way to effectively drive traffic and boost sales, going live on Instagram stories is a cost effective strategy. Once you go live on Instagram stories, your followers will get the notification who are using the app at that time. So, you can quickly share your brand messages to the majority of audiences.
- To go live on Instagram stories,
- Open Instagram.
- Click the camera icon at the top left corner of your profile icon to access Instagram stories.
- Here, you can find the live option at the bottom of the screen.
- Tap go to live to start your session.
- Once you’ve completed the live session, tap the end option to wind up.
#7. Make Use Of Instagram Story Highlights
Instagram offers a story highlight feature, which helps to extend the lifetime of your stories. It is a great strategy to increase your brand reach and get more visibility. We know regular Instagram stories that are automatically deleted after 24 hours. But, story highlights can live your content permanently on your Instagram profile page.
With this story highlight feature, you can easily discover your products and services to new level audiences and drive the most traffic to your business.
To add your Instagram stories to highlight:
- Open Instagram account
- Select the active story you like to highlight
- Tap the highlight option at the bottom of the screen.
- Hit the plus icon to create a new highlight
- Enter the name of your new highlight
- Click add to complete the process
#8. Use Reaction Slider
A fun addition is one of the important strategies to engage your audiences and grab huge attention. You can use an Instagram reaction slider to your stories that help users to respond to your content. It is the best way to interact with your audiences and get feedback on how your content and how engaged users your content will gain.
As a business account, you can use this reaction slider to your stories to boost engagement rate and know how much your audiences love your product. Most brands use emojis with heart eyes to their stories, and it will easily attract your customers to post their responses.
#9. Countdown Sticker
Countdown is a recent addition to Instagram stories that helps marketers to promote their brand, sales, competitions, announcements, and more. When someone views your Instagram story with a countdown sticker and taps the countdown, they’ll see the option to get the remainder and share it to their profile.
It is a great opportunity for brands to set a reminder of any date and time, which helps your audiences be notified. If you want to grab attention to time sensitive content like a new product launch, an event, or something else, you can use this countdown sticker to your stories.
#10. Add Links
When you have more than 10K followers on your Instagram profile, you will get an excellent chance to add direct links to your stories. Although it is a great strategy for your brand to get an instant win for boosting conversions and driving traffic.
Swipe up is a good start to get more clicks and engage your story viewers to reach the landing page/product page. But, if you’re yet to get the swipe up feature, your bio is the golden opportunity to add your website or social media links and encourage audiences to click the link.
#11. Utilize Instagram Story Ads
If you’re looking apart from the organic option to generate your leads, Instagram story ads are one of the perfect ways to show your brand, product, and services to engaged audiences. It is a paid marketing strategy that helps your brand to get a wider reach, massive brand awareness, and increases your brand revenue.
It is a full screen and vertical advertising method, and it looks like a normal Instagram story with a sponsored label at the top right corner of your posts. According to the statistics. 75% of Instagram users visit websites and make purchases after watching Instagram ads.
Hence Instagram story ads are a great addition for our brand to get maximum potential and high engagement rate.
#12. Instagram Story Takeover
An Instagram story takeover helps you to take over other creator’s stories to your account temporarily. For a rapid growth of your Instagram stories performance, you can try Instagram story takeover to give unique and fresh content to your followers.
But make sure to take over the stories that are relevant to your brand and industry. During the takeover, the creators and influencers will commonly show how well people can use their products and services in real life. It is great for beauty tutorials and stylings.
#13. Instagram Story Analytics
Analyzing the performance of your Instagram stories is the most significant factor in developing your marketing growth and content strategy. Before you track your analytics section, make sure that you have an Instagram business account.
Once you create an Instagram business account, you can see the analytics option on your profile page. Here are some main insights that will help you to enhance your business strategies:
- Total number of likes, comments, and shares
- Number of profile visits through stories
- Total reach and saves of the post
Author Bio:
Katherin Mary is an SEO strategist and senior content writer of Instausers.com. She has been working in the content marketing industry for 3+ years and has a handful of experience in Digital Marketing. You can also find her on Twitter!
