One of the latest and greatest methods for engaging your audience is Instagram stories.
More than 500 million people are daily active Instagram story viewers. It’s a great way for businesses to increase brand awareness, get on the top of people’s feeds, and drive engagement with their followers.
Stories allow you to connect with people in a more impactful and engaging way, and they help build that trust that makes people want to work with you.
In addition to video production, our company also manages several social media accounts in Knoxville, and we’re excited to share with you our top 5 ways to best utilize Instagram stories for your business.
Let’s go!
1. Use Them Regularly
Active posting is crucial because the more recent your story is, the more likely the content will appear first on top of someone’s instagram feed. If you’re wondering what types of IG story content works best for businesses, some of our favorites are:
- Behind the scenes – show people the inner workings of your business or life; it makes you more relatable
- Teaser – if something big is coming up, get some hype built up around it by teasing it on your story
- Polls – helps you learn about your followers, and is one of the primary ways to actually get them to engage with you through stories
- Questions – a classic Q&A sesh allows your followers to ask you questions about yourself or your business, and be sure to actively respond to them
- Go live – this allows you to respond in real time to comments from viewers -nothing is more real than that
2. Encourage Engagement
IG stories are a great way for you to interact directly with your loyal followers and gain insights directly from them. Use polls to learn about your audience, whether it be the type of content their looking for from you or their favorite taco place, it’s a great way to engage your followers.
Also, a Q&A session really allows your followers to engage with you as they ask questions about you or your business. You could even go live to respond in real time to their comments or questions.
3. Run Instagram Story Ads
75% of instagram users take action – like visiting a website or making a purchase – after looking at an instagram ad.
You can create story ads directly through the Facebook Ads Manager, or you can use the “promote” button on an existing story post to turn it into an ad (like boosting a Facebook post).
These allow you to send viewers right to your profile, DM’s or your website. Make sure to use an active visual, like stop-motion, animated text or a regular video to capture the attention of your audience right away as their swiping through stories. This is a great way to get people to a certain webpage if you don’t have that swipe up feature that comes with 10,000 or more followers.
4. Utilize Instagram Story Highlights on Your Profile
Your Instagram profile is really like a landing page for your brand (business or personal), and using highlights allows your audience to view the content they’re most interested in. It also allows new visitors to your profile to get to know you right away.
Use highlights to introduce your brand, your product or services, and show what it’s like to work with you. Make your highlight covers cohesive and branded to have a more polished look. We recommend using Canva, which is a free online design software to create some awesome covers. They even have IG story templates already created that you can adjust to fit your brand.
5. Don’t Be Too Salesy
You’ll lose followers if you’re constantly using stories to make sales pitches. While you can definitely use them to convert followers to customers, stories are best utilized to show authenticity and create brand trust.
We hope these points gave you some ideas and inspiration on how you can best use Instagram stories for your business. If you ever have any questions about social media management, be sure to slide into our DM’s or contact us here. We’d love to help you out!