4 Ways To Utilize Instagram Stories For Your Business
These days, Instagram is one platform that is getting increasingly difficult to conquer with each passing day, especially for businesses. With the constant algorithm tweaks, the unfortunate truth is that the impact of your content is getting less and less. However, it’s certainly not all doom and gloom. Instagram launched its stories feature back in August 2016, essentially the platform’s answer to Snapchat, and it has only been on the rise ever since. Much like Snapchat, Instagram Stories offers a way for users to share real-time photo and video content in a slideshow format, which then disappears after 24 hours. 
The reason behind the popularity of Instagram Stories is undoubtedly its authenticity. In a nutshell, it is a way to see behind the scenes, behind all of the curation of the feed, and gives your audience a chance to see who you really are. The feature is undeniably valuable for businesses as there are so many ways it can be utilized which can help to enhance your social media presence and brand awareness. In this post, we’re talking through some of the easiest ways you can start making the most of everything Instagram Stories has to offer for your business.
1.) Use the story features to boost engagement and gather feedback
Some of the features available to you within Instagram Stories make for effective ways to to engage with your audience. Features such as polls and questions not only make it incredibly easy for your audience to participate, but utilizing these features also doubles as an opportunity for you to learn from your audience and gather feedback, whether it be with the intention to streamline your content, or perhaps even to improve the product or service you are offering. Within just a few moments, you can start to see authentic, real-time results.
2.) Keep it consistent
As with anything in the world of social media marketing, consistency is key. Instagram Stories is certainly no exception to this. In fact, consistency may just be one of the most important aspects in order to really make the most out of this feature. First and foremost, the amount that you post on Instagram Stories should be consistent. Every time you upload a new update, your Story appears at the top of your audience’s feed for 24 hours. Posting more often with little updates boosts your brand awareness and helps you to stay front of mind. If you are consistent with this, your audience will become more and more familiarized with your brand. Also, the more regularly you post to your Stories, the more discoverable you become, providing a great opportunity for you to expand your follower base. You should work to keep your brand visuals as consistent as possible. Many of us swipe through Stories like there’s no tomorrow, so if you are consistent with posting and doing so regularly, consistent visuals just makes it easier for users to recognize who the content is coming from.
3.) Plan your content in advance
We’ve already talked about how Instagram Stories provides you with the opportunity to post real-time content, and how it cannot be argued that this authenticity is such a benefit. Whilst that is indeed true, when you’re in the midst of running a business, it can be hard to find the time throughout the day to think of content to post to Instagram Stories on the spot. Thankfully, you have the option to upload content older than 24 hours, from your camera roll. This allows for busy social media marketers to plan content ahead of time, such as a pre-filmed intro to a livestream, without completely losing the essence of real-time content.
4.) Include a clear call to action
If there is one thing to be learned from social media marketing, it’s that CTAs are much more effective when they are clear and as easy as possible for the user to follow. Thankfully, Instagram Stories makes it super easy for you to include a clear CTA with which you can’t really go wrong. If you have over 10k followers, you’re in luck. You can add in a ‘swipe up’ link and some text to tell your viewers to swipe up for your latest offers, news, or whatever else you wish to share with them, and with one swipe they’re on your website. If you haven’t reached 10k followers, don’t fret. You can ask your viewers to ‘Click the link in bio!’ with eye-catching text. There is also a library of gifs which can add swipe up arrows and ‘link in bio’ alerts to your post, all whilst making your content more fun than a standard call to action.
Author Bio:
Article written by Stuart Cooke Blog Editor at NIParcels.com.