With more than 1 Billion monthly active users, Instagram has become a very popular social media channel. For social media marketing teams of many brands and agencies, Instagram is one of the unavoidable platforms with a lot of amazing features. More than 500 Million users are active on this platform every single day. Thanks to features like Instagram stories, live broadcasts, and video-call, Instagram will soon be the most used and most-loved social media channel.
Why Instagram stories?
Instagram Stories give you an option to be creative by adding various filters, GIFs, and other graphic elements, music, and geo-tagging. It is the best way to create dynamic content that lasts not more than 24 hours and keeps the feed fresh and active. Instagram story feature is now used by more than 400 million users every day and the number is growing.
In this post, we will share some tips on using Instagram stories which will boost your social media marketing efforts.
- Countdown
Launching a new product, or a new collection? Or do you have an upcoming event that you want to promote? You can create countdown on Instagram stories. This will increase the curiosity and build momentum for the special day. It will arouse the interest of your followers and at the same time, they will be reminded daily about the big day for your brand.
You can educate them more about the event, you can have a Q&A to answer their queries regarding the opening day and so on.
- Live Streaming
More than 100 Million Instagram users go Live or watch live stories every day. This will help you understand the popularity of the Live feature in the stories. You can use Live option to broadcast an event, show day-to-day running at your workplace and include audience to be a part of that process, when it is happening. You can also cross-promote your other channels through live.
- Offers
When the offer is time-bound, it creates a certain sense of urgency. Instagram enables you to create offers that are for limited period and influence the buying intent of your target audience. Stories create alert in the users Instagram feed and keep your brand in their sight all the time. These alerts increase the brand engagement.
- Behind the scenes
Everybody is curious to know what happens behind the scenes. Haven’t you noticed how many behind the scenes videos on YouTube have millions have views? You can use Instagram stories option to give an insider view of your brand to your viewers. Behind the scenes give a touch of honesty to your marketing efforts and creates and strengthens the bond between the customers and the brand. This content is as important and interesting as the regular content that you post in the feed.
- Instagram Q & A
When you are from a certain sector, people want to know the insiders or expert opinion on the events related to that industry. You can use Instagram stories Ask a question option to start a Q&A and engage your audience. This will increase engagement and give a positive boost to your brand image. Q&As also help to solidify your position as the industry thought leaders.
- Instagram Take-over
Using stories, you can collaborate with other brands or influencers. For a day, an influencer in your field will be in charge of your Instagram content and they will post stories / pictures / videos etc. It is a great idea to break the monotony and let your audience see your brand from another perspective. You can also do the take-over with other brands by sharing the content that you want on their feed, and in turn, you will share their content.
- Re-purposing your long-form content
You can take clips from your long form video, or important stats and figures from a blog or a slide share and post it in your Instagram stories. If you have more than 10K followers, you can add a link to those content pieces in the story itself and direct the users to that page. If not, you can always add the link in the bio. You can also use Instagram stories as teasers of the long form content that you will soon be publishing – you can tell them about the topic, you can ask them to guess what your next video is going to be about, and so on.
Do you have any queries regarding this? Or would you like to add more to this list? Please write to us at [email protected] or connect to us on Facebook / Twitter / or Instagram.
