Are you ready to tap into the power of Instagram Stories to increase your brand’s engagement?
Instagram has surpassed the 1 billion monthly active users mark, and over 500 million accounts use Instagram Stories every day. It’s a popular format for users to share content on the platform.
As a brand, you can tap into the potential of this content format to market your brand on Instagram. You can use it to showcase your products or make an exciting announcement.
Are you using Instagram Stories yet?
If not, are you ready to join?
Today, we’ll share a few smart ways in which your brand can use Instagram Stories to increase user engagement.
1. Use Storyboards
A storyboard allows you to layout a story for your audience. It is a great way to plan out your idea for the Instagram Story before you take it live.
Utilizing a storyboard will allow you to plan a clear introduction, content, and end for your Stories. This will help you ensure that your Stories have a logical sequence and they demonstrate a clear vision.
Using a storyboard can also help you create engaging content that can improve exit rates.
Storyboards work really well when you create Stories that showcase behind-the-scenes moments or introduce your team. You should craft unique storylines for Instagram to engage your audience in a better way.
You can find a variety of storyboard templates online and use them to spice up your Instagram Stories.
2. Be Consistent in Design and Branding
It is pivotal that you create branding guidelines not only for your Instagram storyboards, but also for your brand’s overall digital exposure.
Your brand has a personality and you can convey that personality to your audience using colors, styles, fonts, logo, and other consistent details. All of these elements combined together can represent your brand in a unique way.
Consistency represents professionalism. It can get people to trust and remember your brand.
The image below showcases how two Instagram account holders adhere to their own unique branding guidelines to make their Instagram feeds stand out. Each of their feeds offers a smooth and consistent feel.
Image via Forbes.com
3. Collaborate with Influencers
You can exponentially increase user engagement on your Instagram Stories when you collaborate with relevant influencers.
Influencer marketing is a great strategy to boost your brand’s visibility and user engagement. If you aren’t using it yet, it’s the right time to look for relevant influencers and partner with them.
When an influencer shares your content in their Instagram Stories and posts, it can help you generate a lot of engagement. However, you need to ensure that the content of these sponsored posts and Stories is relevant to their followers.
Before putting together a serious influencer marketing strategy, you should identify tools that can help you manage your campaign and also track your influencer’s performance.
With platforms such as iFluenz, you can manage all aspects of your influencer campaign in one place. From finding the right influencers to calculating the ROI of your campaigns, you can easily do it all.
Image via iFluenz
Tracking their performance will help you analyze the amount of engagement each of your influencers generate for you. You can continue working with influencers who help you drive the best results.
4. Use Hashtags
Using hashtags can help your Stories to reach more people, which can further result in increasing user engagement.
People follow relevant hashtags on Instagram and they also search for content related to specific hashtags. This means that adding popular hashtags to your Stories can enable people to discover your content. If they like it, they may also follow your brand on Instagram.
5. Use Your Feed to Cross-Promote Your Stories
Assuming that you have a robust feed with strong engagement, you should leverage it to get more exposure for your Instagram Stories.
How can you promote an upcoming Story through your Instagram feed?
You can publish a photo or a short video that introduces the topic of your upcoming Instagram Stories. You can also ask your followers if there are any specific topics they want you to cover in that Story.
This technique can help you keep your followers engaged. You can use this strategy to create Stories that your followers will love to view, engage with, and share.
For example, Instagram promoted their Stories about the movie, “The Fast and Furious 8,” on their feed and invited their followers to watch them.
Image via Instagram
6. Post User-Generated Content (UGC)
People trust people more than they trust brands.
Let’s consider the difference between viewing an ad and reading a lot of positive reviews about a product. Which one would you trust more?
It is natural for people to trust other humans, who have nothing to gain. They are likely to trust other consumers’ reviews to judge the quality of a product or service.
As a brand, what can you do about it? You can leverage user-generated content to promote your products or services. This is an effective tip to grow your business through social promotions.
You can create engaging Instagram Stories by repurposing user-generated content such as:
- Reviews
- Videos/testimonials
- Success stories
- Messages received from happy customers
- Photos of customers using your products
Begin communicating with your customers early on. This will make them feel comfortable to share their reviews and pictures with you.
7. Get Creative with Animations
Use animations and GIFs in your Stories to stand out from the static crowd.
Many apps can help you add professional-looking animations to your Stories’ content. Animated videos tend to hold the attention of users more easily. Windows Movie Maker and Google Web Designer are some of the free tools that you can use to make animated videos for your business.
Bonus: Other Ways to Increase Engagement with Instagram Stories
You can also:
- Use poll stickers to engage your followers and get valuable consumer insights.
- Schedule your Stories in advance to post them at a specific time for better engagement.
- Use Instagram Insights and find out when your audience is most engaged.
- Observe and identify what kind of content and images your audience likes the most.
- Utilize GIFs to make your CTAs stand out more.
- Check your messages constantly to grab opportunities.
- Use countdown clocks to create FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) effect for a discount offer or an important event.
Conclusion
With more than one billion monthly active users, Instagram has emerged as a competitive battlefield for marketers. If you want to keep your audience hooked, you need to innovate.
Instagram Stories can be a great tool to take your marketing game to the next level. You can use the tips mentioned above to ensure that your content stands out.
With attractive visuals and creative storytelling, you can effectively use Instagram Stories to boost your engagement rate dramatically.
Have you used Instagram Stories to boost user engagement? Please share your experiences in the comments section.