Make Your Business Stand Out with Instagram Stories

Nowadays, social media is all about documentation. If we talk about an instant hit in the social media landscape, the Instagram stories feature is the first thing that comes to our minds. This feature allows the Instagrammers to share their photos and videos in the form of short clips. The stories are only visible to the users’ followers and they can even be customized. Just like Snapchat, Instagram stories are ephemeral, which means that they disappear right after 24 hours.

Instagram launched the Stories feature in August 2016 and now there are over 500 million active users who are leveraging this feature. If you have been thinking about incorporating Instagram stories into your business marketing to increase your brand visibility, know that now is the perfect time to do that! Not only Instagram stories are a fun way to keep your followers engaged, but they are a seamless feature to drive traffic to your website and generate revenue.

Do you want to use Instagram Stories but don’t know how to create engaging stories? In this guide, we will walk you through effective ways to help you get started. By the end of this article, you will learn how to use advanced strategies to make your business stand out from the crowd. Let’s dive right in!

1. Announcements

As Instagram Stories are ephemeral, they are a great option when it comes to making an announcement about a new product, service or any general update. Take full advantage of these moments to share behind-the-scenes footage of the company that just can’t make it to your brand’s main profile. Your followers will feel like you really want to keep them updated on the latest info. Also, they are likely to know your business better.

These snippets could be anything from manufacturing a new product to celebrating the birthday of a colleague. This is, without a doubt, a great way to show the human side of your company, consequently boosting engagement and building brand awareness.

2. Create engaging content

Incorporating how-to or advice pieces into your stories is a brilliant way to add value to your brand and bring lucrative opportunities your way. As a marketer, you should figure out who your ideal client is and what kind of content they expect from you. Create content in a way that excites them every time they see a new story from your business profile.

Creating tutorials or sharing advice related to the services or products you are offering on your platform is a great way to keep them engaged. For example, you have a clothing brand and you want your followers to invest in your new collection. You can produce videos that teach people how they can create different stylish yet elegant looks with the dresses offered by your brand, share some dressing tips or show them the effort that goes into creating unique pieces for them. A business owner must look at their business and create engaging content that sparks the interest of the audience.

3. Questions

With the use of question stickers, you can invite your customers to ask away any burning questions. In addition to that, a brand can leverage this feature to ask their audience questions as well. Undoubtedly, this feature makes it possible for brands to build a community and interact with their customers and followers more frequently. Make sure you check your internet connection before using this feature. Once connected to internet, you are likely to successfully build a community in no time.

It is an easy to use feature. This sticker features a small box on the top where you can ask questions and then there is a blank area that can be used by the followers to respond to your questions. The best thing about this feature is that the responses won’t go to your Direct Messages (DM). Instead, you can see them through Instagram notifications where you can not only see a list of questions asked by your followers but also see who has viewed your story.

4. Consider promoting your event/conference

Are you about to host an event or conference? Chances are, you also want to invite your customers to give them insights on your brand, new products and their features. Then your customers should know about it. Instagram is a platform where stories are a great way to get your message across louder and clear. Just create a story to let your followers know about the event details and let your biggest followers spread the word on your behalf. If you want people to be excited or to engage, make sure you don’t keep your stories too promotional.

5. Live stream your event

So you have successfully held a conference in the area of your expertise. Now you want your followers to see what exactly is happening there. In order to engage the non-attendees, make sure you live stream the entire event. They are likely to have this fear of missing out (FOMO) and the next time you are promoting your event, they would end up signing up for the event without event thinking twice.

6. Create enticing polls

Gone are the days when you would wait for the followers to comment below your posts. Now with just a tap, you can get your answers! If you want to interact with your audience in an exciting way, creating a poll in Instagram Stories is a great way to do exactly that. Even you can make the most out of polls to get customer feedback or to know your audience better.

7. Have flash sales and limited offers

Every business wants to retain its existing customers and attract new ones as well. You should consider offering flash sales for your loyal customer base. When you reward your followers, they are likely to stick to your products and services. Announcing the limited offers or flash sales via your stories makes your followers pay attention to the content you post so they don’t miss out on any sale.

Parting Words!!

Instagram Stories quickly becoming one of the best channels to build brand awareness, drive traffic, drive engagement, and even make ecommerce sales! So, if you haven’t started with Instagram Stories for your business yet, hopefully this article gives you some motivation and direction for creating your own Instagram Stories for business.