How Brands Can Make The Most Out Of Instagram Stories
With Instagram Stories being such a big part of many digital marketers social media strategies, we thought it was about time for us to share our tips and tricks for upping your brand’s insta-story game. Here are our top tips to make the most of your Instagram Stories…
Be active
Just like physical posts on Instagram, it is really important to stay active when uploading Instagram Stories because let’s face it, we’ve all caught ourselves
spending waaaaayy too much time clicking through the Instagram Stories of the people you follow. Stories will expire after 24 hours so make sure you’re uploading at least one story every 24 hours so you can remain in everyone’s story reel.
Repurpose influencer content
Gone are the days where you had to screenshot, crop and then resize posts to share them on your Stories. Sharing a post is made easy by clicking the arrow next to the comment button on a post and then clicking ‘Add Post to your Story’. Repurposing influencer content is a great way to engage your audience and stay active with your stories. You pay your influencers to create gorgeous content for you so make the most of it! Remember to always give credit!
Influencer takeovers
We have seen a lot of brands hosting influencer takeovers on their Stories and it really is an effective way to engage with your audience and create brand trust. An example of how a brand could use Instagram Stories is - a beauty brand could engage an influencer to share their morning routine on the brand’s Instagram Stories and share how they use each product in the range to get ready for the day, from skincare to makeup.
Influencers have built great communities and are quite honest and transparent with their followers so having them appear on your stories saying they trust and use your brand will be great! If you’re going to use this strategy, tie it into your influencer marketing strategy and get the influencer to promote the takeover across a number of posts before, during and after the takeover.
Share Stories you are tagged in
Instagram users and consumers are more frequently turning to Instagram Stories to share their favorite products and/or brands. Pay attention to what you’re getting tagged in and share any relevant stories on to your own story reel - your followers will love you for it and it’s extra content that you don’t have to create.
Take advantage of the swipe up feature
In 2017, Instagram launched the swipe up feature for Instagram Stories, allowing users who are on a business account and have over 10,000 to include a link in their content that will take users to a webpage when they swipe up on the Story. This feature has been a huge game changer for marketers and many have taken advantage of the new feature to make their Instagram strategy drive better results and to be able to track and measure the success of content.
So, how should you be using this feature? You could include a link to your website, a product page or a blog post, or you can also include a link to an influencer blog post about your brand or an event you are running. You can link to anything and everything!
Behind the scenes
Showing behind the scenes content on Instagram Stories is a great way to create a personal relationship with your followers. You could show sneak peaks of new products, the design process of a product, show products getting dispatched, show behind the scenes of photoshoots and events.
You could also do staff takeovers, where your staff could take over your story for a day or go live, or just put a spotlight on a team member each week or month (we do this on our Instagram!). People want to be able to connect with you and your brand on a more personal level, so by giving them an insight into what goes on behind the scenes, you can start to make real connections.
Make the most of your highlights
A highlight where you save your Instagram Stories to keep them on your profile permanently, even after they expire. Highlights are different “folders” where the stories are kept, so you can categories them. Highlights appear on your Instagram page underneath the bio.
Having highlights gives people the ability to ‘suss’ out your brand and see some of your past content. Some categories for your highlights could be: behind the scenes, new products, product categories such as, apparel, accessories or shoes, tagged content or inspo.
Keep an eye out for shoppable stories
Just recently, Instagram announced that the platform is going to start making stories shoppable by adding links and icons that show the product name, price and a direct link to their content. At the moment, only really big accounts like Gap, Louis Vuitton and Aritzia have access to that feature, but it will no doubt roll out to all users eventually. The shoppable icons appear as clickable stickers that will then take you to the same page that would appear if you were to click on a shoppable link on a post.
Polls Creating a poll on your Instagram Story is a great way to get feedback and learn more about your followers, who are your customers, or potential customers. You could use the polls feature to ask what kind of content that like to see on your Instagram Stories, what colour they like better for a future product release or whether they’re a coffee or tea person (everyone loves a fun poll!). Polls can help you create a great sense of community with your followers and let them know that you value their opinion.
Must-have apps
There are heaps of apps out there to help you up your Insta-Story game so we thought we’d share some of our current favorites…
InShot - InShot Video Editor app is a really handy app to use when creating content for your Instagram Stories. You can add music, text, effects and edit your videos. Most importantly, InShot lets you crop your videos or images to your desired size which is perfect for when you want to share a square image on stories.
Hype Type - Hype Type helps you add animated text to your photos or videos
Unfold - Unfold has a variety of templates that you can add images and videos to that are fit to the Instagram Story ratios. They’re quite minimal in design and let you export your content in high quality so your videos don’t appear blurry or compressed.
Now you are ready to take your Instagram game to the next level!
