If you answered no to the question above you could be missing out on a huge opportunity!
In a world where clicking ‘skip ad’ is the instinctive response of many, Instagram stories are a redeeming feature for businesses. I’m sure you, like me, have found yourself sucked in by the additive design of these stories, clicking through one after the another and losing more time than you planned. In fact, Instagram has revealed that users spend an average of 24-32 minutes watching stories daily (that’s longer than an episode of Friends!).
Stories are not only a fun addition to your branding, with over 500 million users daily they are also a strong channel to build brand awareness, grow your engagement, strengthen the connection you have with your existing customers, and even drive sales for your business!
So what are stories good for?
- Announcements: stories are a great way to share announcements, such as new products or staff members, due to their instant nature and simple readability.
- Telling your story: be a storyteller for your brand. Tell the story of your products, share your ideas, share your blogs, put your staff in the spotlight, and showcase everything you want to share about your brand!
- Expanding your profile: the story highlights features acts as an extension of your business’s profile. Tell potential customers more about your brand without the extra words! It is essentially a reel of your best brand moments and extends the 24-hour shelf life of these stories to improve their visibility.
- Creating a community: keep your customers in the loop with what is going on with your brand with quick and creative stories.
How can you increase the views on your story?
- Location stickers: tag locations in your story to increase the discoverability of your content! By doing this, your story will be added to the official story of that location, opening your content up to people who don’t already follow you. When people search for the tagged location, they will be able to scroll through the stories shared from that location.
- Hashtag stickers: Similarly, by using a hashtag sticker in your story, your story will be added to the story compilation of that hashtag.
How can you improve engagement on your story?
- Polls and questions: Utilising polls and questions is a great way to encourage your followers to interact with your stories. The data from these ‘surveys’ can be used for customer feedback, to gain a better understanding of your audience and what they want, or simply for a bit of fun.
- Live: not only is going live on your story a great way to capture the attention of your followers and showcase the faces and personalities of your brand, but it is also the perfect channel to encourage interactions by way of live questions and comments.
- Post consistency: though simple, this is an important step! Posting stories consistently for your business will increase the chance of your story reaching your audience, as with each new story you are moved to the front of your follower’s feeds.
- Insights: browse your story insights to gauge which of your stories is performing the best. By utilising this data over time, you will be able to develop a content strategy that works for your business.
Make your brand approachable, share your story and connect with your customers with Instagram stories! Ready to give it a go? Click on the blue + by your profile picture and get creative today!