Stories are considered to be one of the most effective tools for business marketing on Instagram. With more than half a billion IG active daily users, stories support brand awareness and provide a direct and interesting communication channel.
As time goes by, it is getting easier to upload stories, share links inside them, and keep users eager for the next one. We gathered some professional and simple tips to help you utilize IG stories better and maximize your experience.
What is an Instagram story?
An Instagram story can be defined as an image or video that is enhanced and edited with special effects such as filters, stickers, gifs, or text and is displayed in a slideshow format. IG stories go live 24 hours before disappearing, and each slide lasts 15 seconds before automatically moving to the next.
Advantages of Instagram Stories for business marketing
Instagram stories have become an effective tool for business marketing as it helps in:
Keep followers updated
IG story is a great tool to update followers without excessive posting on the main feed. Especially for images or videos that are not suitable to be permanent. Additionally, the 24-hour feature will keep curious followers returning to Instagram profiles since today’s stories will be gone tomorrow.
Driving more traffic
IG story is a traffic-driving channel because it can include links that redirect followers; this feature solves the problem of not allowing links in regular Instagram posts.
Building brand awareness
Stories boost brand visibility; a good bio alongside the IG stories builds a stronger bond between the followers and the brand. By watching the stories, responding, commenting, and starting a conversation, followers are more likely to hit that follow button.
Help spread the word
Instagram stories are perfect for sharing new blog posts and product launches. In addition, it provides content redistribution for old posts and blog articles to drive more traffic to specific landing pages.
Sharing different content types
While Instagram stories for business might be planned, sharing spontaneous stories is helpful. Such stories build a connection with the followers and give them a behind-the-scenes peek into something, which makes stories popular among users to get exclusive information.
Instagram Story Tips
Add Stickers, GIFs, and other extras
Make the story more exciting by adding interactive elements such as quizzes, polls, emoji rating stickers, and countdowns. Interactive followers will have something to do while viewing the story.
Stay consistent with the business brand
When sharing business-related content on Instagram, keeping the brand identity in mind is essential, so ensure that Instagram story design follows the brand guideline. This consistency will help improve the brand’s recognition, and followers can easily tell that your brand posted those stories.
Engage with followers
Engagement is one of the difficult goals to achieve on social media. Fortunately, IG stories provide various tools to drive followers to engage, such as asking questions and running polls. The engagement feature helps gather feedback from followers about a product or service and collect valuable information efficiently.
Publish stories Consistently
The rule of thumb in social media is consistent publishing to be at the top of the people’s news feed, and for Instagram stories, there is no difference. Consistent stories update will make the business more visible. However, remember that quality is still as important as quantity, and don’t just upload random stories.
Prepare the content ahead
Stories are like any other social media platform; it needs a clear strategy and content calendar. Such a calendar will provide more time to design the next story, get creative, and stick with the brand guidelines.
Benefit from user-generated content (UGC)
User-generated content is any brand-related content published by customers, such as images or videos. Sharing such content to IG stories will improve customer loyalty, provide a good customer review and show appreciation for customers who posted the content.
Gather data and insights
The analysis is the complementary step of any marketing efforts and the base of any enhancements. Instagram provides comprehensive data and insights for posts and stories as well. Such valuable data must be processed regularly to know what the targeted audience engages with and how to stand out from the competition.
Conclusion
Instagram became a powerful platform for branding across all industries. And stories are one of the effective, easy-to-use tools that Instagram provides. It helps reach and interact with the targeted audience easily through consistent uploads, improving the company’s Instagram performance substantially.