There are over 200 million business accounts on Instagram. According to the platform, 90% of people follow at least one business account. Therefore, it is possible to increase your followers with Instagram stories. Additionally, you get the chance to create content that does not take hours to make.
However, Instagram content ideas for brands can change frequently because keeping up with content demands and staying creative is difficult. More and more brands or businesses are achieving success with Instagram stories.
Brands' use of Instagram brings many benefits, as it allows them to interact with their target audiences. But first, brands need to know how to use Instagram stories effectively. So, how is the Instagram story feature used?
What should brands do to use Instagram stories effectively? Let's take a closer look at the details that will enable brands to be creative when using the Instagram story feature.
What is an Instagram Story?
If you are wondering what an Instagram story is, it is a slideshow of vertical images or videos. Unless added to story highlights, the story disappears within 24 hours. People use the Instagram story feature to share snippets of their vacation, work, and daily lives.
However, any business can share topics related to its industry. Therefore, using Instagram for brands requires making more professional posts. For this reason, if you are considering using Instagram stories for your brand, you should entertain your followers and raise their awareness. You also need to know the answer to the question of what an Instagram story means in detail.
When you share a story, a colored ring appears around your profile picture. This allows your followers to watch the story by clicking on your profile picture. Along with the colored ring around it, your story appears at the top of your followers' home page.
Instagram stories provide effective ways for brand promotion. For this reason, you should take care to share eye-catching Instagram stories. To create Instagram stories, you should seek help from ideas applied by famous brands.
Why is an Instagram Story Important for Your Business?
The Instagram story sharing feature allows you to interact with your target audience quickly and easily. To grow a company account, one must proceed with Instagram stories. Because when you share a story on Instagram, you appear in your followers' feeds, which helps you get noticed.
If you post Instagram stories regularly, you will often stay on your customers' minds. The feature of posting Instagram stories allows you to reflect your brand's voice and personality. Especially details such as polls, hashtags, and quizzes in Instagram stories allow you to have fun with your followers; therefore, it can offer endless opportunities for engagement.
You are viewing the opportunities offered by the Instagram story.
Benefits of Instagram Story Sharing to Your Business
The feature of posting Instagram stories offers various advantages to brands or businesses. We wanted to address these advantages on a large scale.
1. It increases your brand visibility
Using Instagram stories increases your brand visibility. At the same time, it helps you retain your customers, allowing you to build brand loyalty.
2. It template allows you to generate leads
The image quality of Instagram stories is quite good, which is why you can easily use the story feature. Thus, you can generate potential customers. This is because when your customers like your stories, they engage in word-of-mouth marketing, which enables your business to build leads.
3. You have the chance to get instant feedback for new products or services
Even before launching a new product, you can get instant feedback from your audience using the Instagram story feature. Suppose you feel unsure about the usability, look, and feel of a particular product. In this case, all you need to do is go to the story feature and ask your followers for their opinions. You can use polls and quizzes to start the conversation.
4. It increases brand transparency
Brand transparency gives your followers confidence. Therefore, you should show your followers how transparent your processes are in your stories. At the same time, you can share a photo with your team during your breaks.
5. It allows you to increase website traffic
It helps you increase your traffic by adding content that drives traffic to your website. If you have a retail or e-commerce business, you can direct your followers to buy products from your website.
You are viewing how to direct your followers to your website in an Instagram story.
How to Create an Instagram Story?
If you are wondering how to post an Instagram story, it is quite easy. The important thing here is to attract the attention of your target audience.
1. Go to your Instagram home page
To create an Instagram story, you must go to your home page. You should tap your profile picture in the upper left corner.
2. Start creating a new story
To start creating a new story, you must tap the "camera" button in the "add story" window. You can also select a photo from your gallery to add to your story. From here, you can instantly create and publish videos and photos.
3. Choose a shooting mode for photo or video
If you are shooting a new photo or video, you have the chance to select a filter at the bottom of the screen. You can also decide on a shooting mode for the photo or video. To expand your options, you can tap the arrow in the panel. Then, select the one you want to use. The "Create" button allows you to build a story.
4. Tap the letter icon of text format on top to add text to your story
After taking the photo or video, tap the letter icon at the top to add text to your story. Write your message. You can change the color and font of your message so that it looks clear.
5. Then share your story
After editing your story and adding the necessary stickers, hit the "share" button. When you tap this button, your story will instantly go live.
How to Make Instagram Highlight Covers?
"Instagram highlights" is a great opportunity to show your brand, sense of style, and color palette to your followers. For example, you can share important information in an Instagram story and showcase it in highlights. Aesthetically prominent covers help you attract attention.
Additionally, the duration of an Instagram story is 24 hours. The highlights section can be used to make your stories permanent. So, let's explore in detail how highlight covers are made.
• Open your Instagram account.
• Click on "New" in the highlights section under your bio.
• Go to your story archive.
• Select the stories you want to include in the highlights.
• Click on the "next" button in the bottom right corner of the screen.
• Type the name of the stories you want to highlight.
• Press the "edit cover" button to edit the cover chosen by Instagram.
• Tap the "add" button from the top right cover of the screen.
10 Creative Instagram Story Ideas
If you're wondering how brands should use Instagram stories, we've compiled some impressive ideas here. We also included Instagram story features that are perfect for brands. If you're ready, let's get started!
1. Engage your fans with a poll
Instead of open-ended questions, you can utilize the poll feature. Of course, you should embellish this with custom story designs for the brand. For this, it might be right to proceed with Instagram story examples of famous brands. Because if you are a small business, you may not be knowledgeable about preparing Instagram stories. For this reason, you need to make more effort to attract attention.
For example, the brand Sephora regularly conducts polls of its customers about their cosmetics choices and favorite brands. In this way, they can perform free user research while creating brand awareness among customers.
However, while doing this, Sephora pays attention to keeping makeup in the foreground. It emphasizes emojis and tags the brand in question. So, it feels social and fun with its polls.
2. Promote your upcoming events
You should share announcements for a product launch, sale, or Instagram live broadcast. You should use the countdown feature for these events. This way, your followers can click on the timer to set a reminder.
They can then receive notifications for your events. In other words, even if your brand is managing the biggest event of the year, you should never be lazy about marketing.
Most world-famous brands use this Instagram story strategy. This way, you can keep your followers excited about upcoming developments. Some of your followers might not follow the news well, or they may not visit your website regularly. For this reason, you should take care to send them reminders.
You see the Sephora brand promoting its upcoming event in its Instagram story.
3. Share photos of your team
Instagram stories provide opportunities for brands with their intimate nature, helping to build a close bond with your customers. It allows you to shine a spotlight on the people behind your business.
Sometimes, you should also use the Instagram story feature to introduce your new team members. When you show your team to your customers, you can rank among warm and friendly brands.
For example, you can take your followers on a warm tour of your office. Doing this using Instagram's live feature helps create an even warmer environment. Because your employees reflect the face of your business, you must introduce your team to your audience to humanize your brand.
4. Feature customer content
Brands must try to connect with their target audience. When you use your customers' posts in your Instagram stories, you can earn customer loyalty. This means you should share praise-filled comments, posts, and stories from your customers. Sharing user-generated content makes them feel appreciated.
At the same time, it offers social proof to win the trust of your potential customers. For example, the brand Drunk Elephant shares customers who post about its products in its stories.
It tags customers and shares a shopping link in every post. Nike also interviews famous athletes who are its customers. During the interview, the athletes talk about their careers. This is because Nike wants to motivate athletes.
The Tommy Hilfiger brand features product links and tags its customers in its Instagram Story.
5. Focus on causes your audience cares about
Focusing on events and causes your followers care about strengthens your bond with them. For example, if you have an audience that loves animals, you should share animal-specific days in your stories.
Along with this, if a trending topic matches your brand values, you should include it in your stories. This way, you can reach new customer demographics and find it easier to grow your following.
You should add links related to these topics to your website, blog page, and social media accounts. This increases your visibility and reach, giving you the chance to connect with like-minded people.
6. Show how your products are made
People love transparency. For this reason, you should try to show how your products are made in your Instagram stories. Share with your followers what inspired you and what materials you used. For example, the Dior brand shares videos of how its products are made in its stories.
When you allow your followers to accompany your brand’s journey, your sales and revenue increase. This is because you create a sense of trust in your customers, and consumers prefer to shop more from brands they trust.
If you are a small business owner, you must know how to build trust to establish strong relationships with your customers, helping you retain them.
7. Do a Q&A event
Instagram stories include many features that allow you to interact with your audience. It is possible to increase engagement by gathering questions from your fans. This way, you can proceed with fun and informative events.
You should share a story using the question sticker. Then, you should share the answers to the questions asked in your stories. You can answer the questions in text format, but you can also answer them in video format, making the Q&A event more appealing.
You should collect all the questions first. Later, you should answer these questions collectively in a video and share this video in your Instagram story. Thus, you should leverage the visual nature of Instagram, as visuals help your brand stand out in the competition.
8. Create fun with the quiz feature
To encourage engagement, you should also use the quiz feature. You can quiz your customers about your brand. In other words, you should use the quiz feature to educate your customers about your brand, products, and industry.
For example, the brand Benefit Cosmetics used the quiz feature to find out how well its followers knew the company. Consequently, you can attract interest by using the quiz feature for your brand.
Additionally, you can ask your customers to guess product prices through quizzes in Instagram stories. This way, you can make progress in brand and product promotion.
9. Try to participate in story trends
Is there a trend that has recently gone famous on Instagram? If there is, you should try to participate in these trends. Perhaps people are sharing stories around a trending hashtag; you should share a story with this hashtag.
However, you should make posts that match your brand values and designs. Therefore, do not hesitate to proceed with story trends, as they offer the most effective ways to connect with your target audience.
If you want to build more personal connections with your audience, you should keep up with trends. In this way, you can pull new audiences to your brand.
10. Collect feedback using emojis
To share your new products or showcase your existing products, you should get feedback from your followers. This way, you can understand how interested your customers are in your products.
At the same time, you can find out how excited they are about the new release, and get an idea of whether they like your product or not. Therefore, you must involve your customers in your business or creative process.
For example, you should share your products in a story using emoji stickers. Then, you get a chance to learn your customers' opinions about your products.
World-famous brands frequently use emojis to collect feedback from their customers. You have the chance to resort to this method to get feedback about your products and brand.
How Often Should You Publish Instagram Stories?
Creating Instagram stories increases your engagement rate. However, you need a solid strategy to grow your brand. Changes such as posting frequency, posting at specific times of the day, and using in-app features help your algorithmic ranking.
If you want your Instagram profile to grow, making 2 stories a day is healthy. You must be consistent in every aspect when publishing stories. If you are looking for an answer to the question of when to share Instagram stories, you should publish the story when your audience is active. You should also start live broadcasts on Instagram from time to time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions and answers by users regarding Instagram stories are as follows:
1. What does it mean to shoot a story?
The word story refers to "Instagram story". So, shooting a story means
