Author Brigette Lugo
Brigette is a social media consultant at TW Media a digital marketing agency based in Orange County, CA. Follow Brigette at @locaxlosangeles and @tiannawintersmedia for the latest social media tips and news.
Stories: Temporary Visual, Permanent Reach
Instagram stories are available for users to post videos or photos that last 24 hours. 500 million Instagram users create stories daily! 58% of users said they have noticed and clicked on a product or brand after they saw it in Stories.
With Stories, the more unique to your brand you create them, the more your current followers stay interested, and is a great way to reach new ones.
Welcome to a breakdown of Stories! We’ll share how to navigate the feature, from your first post, to the background of tricks and tools to make sure your stories stand out for your brand!
Since Stories was introduced to Instagram users in 2016, the feature has grown to be one of the most used on the app. With Stories usage increasing, posts by brands and influencers on IG feeds have lowered yearly since Stories developed.
Followers and customers appreciate and engage with authentic content, and Stories provide that. With its limited 24-hr running time, many Stories provide the phone-to-post, with minimal editing giving the authenticity followers like to see.
Stories are a gateway to get your brand attention and growth! Creating them on a regular basis can be a fun, easy way to benefit you!
Instagram has added ways to engage with your followers and potential clients more through Stories-- timely interactions, tracking your followers’ responses to content, and giving brands the space to create short and attention-grabbing content.
Stories=Gains
All Eyes On Your Brand
Add Variety to the Mix
Up Your Brand’s Game Plan
Stay Active, Stay Seen
Create Quality Content
All Eyes On Your Brand
Though there are options of what to post and how, they fall under algorithms, which turn them into a competition! Stories, however, show up featured on the top of your IG feed, leading the way for you to keep up with those you follow, what they’re into, what they want!
Add Variety to the Mix
Short and sweet is the name of the game when it comes to Stories! Using the feature is a big advantage for your brand to add variety to your account, and you get to personalize as much as you want within the feature. Capture video, boomerangs and more straight from your phone, and share! They last 24 hours.
Up Your Brand’s Game Plan
Instagram is a very visual platform and to catch followers’ eyes, you can customize Stories to stand out! Diverse fonts, gifs, emojis, and even tools to make your own drawings on your Stories are at your fingertips. Keep your brand in mind when creating! Another cool feature is tagging other accounts using their @, where you can shout them out. This is another benefit to your account, because they can share your story, where it’ll lead their followers back to you! It’s all about building your brand through community!
Stay Active, Stay Seen
Another big plus when creating on Stories is making your followers feel included within your brand! If you host or are planning an event or sale, sharing live content during the event can lead to your audience and potential customers and clients to feel a part of the fun, no matter where they are. Going live, posting behind the scenes in Stories, and a variety of “teasers” can also lead customers to go to the event in person. This is all going to help to expand your current and future sales or events. Don’t forget to tag any other vendors or brands attending the event, to build more community (and followers).
Build Your Business to Bloom
Using every tool on Instagram to your advantage is a great way to grow your brand. With such an easy feature like Stories, it’s a fun, creative way to keep your target audience rooting for and following your business. Photos, videos, Boomerangs, live coverage of events, emojis, tags,... oh, my! Real time content your followers and clients can connect with is the goal. Though Stories are only 24 hours, they can be dynamic and active with all of the exciting features you can use and personalize, where posts on your actual profile can act as your permanent art gallery to feature your strongest content for your followers to return to as much as they want!
Post. Repeat.
To keep your social media reach on the rise and with a fresh focus for your brand use the elements IG provides! Hashtags and location tags are an awesome way to grow! Remember to post content relevant to your brand, frequently.
Hashtags Looks
When it comes to your brand on socials, image counts for a majority of your IG! Delve into hashtags without it getting in the way of your Stories style.
-Tip: You can make your hashtags blend in with your Stories. Click on the color pen from the text option and drag the “drop” over a color in your story that you’d like the hashtag to match with!
-Tip: Though you can blend your hashtags, it’s important to keep them relevant to your story! Your cap for hashtags is 10, and you should be focused on how much they are used on IG, or if it's an original hashtag, make sure to use it on as many posts and stories as you can, to keep traffic and growth!
Size Matters
You can adjust the size of your hashtags within your story, but if it’s way too small, Instagram won’t be able to read it and that means your hashtag might not show up on searches! So keep it as legible as possible while placing it to the size you desire.
Thriving and Gains Through Stories
With so many tools to choose from on this platform, your growth and engagement will thrive if you focus on using everything at your fingertips. There are even more tips that will keep your brand at the top of its game with the best of them, and in creative ways that will keep both you and your followers engaged in the social media game!
Stickers....
They’re not just what we used to love as kids. In IG world, they come in different forms and grab your followers’ attention! They can add some personality and fun to Stories, and even inform! If you think there aren’t any that match up with your content, think again! Don’t go for overkill, but use them when they’re relevant. Here’s some ways to use stickers in Stories:
Stickers Share Location
If you tag your location within your story, it has an opportunity to show up in the story feed of that location, which is shared with users on IG who are also clicking on that location’s story feed! More users seeing it means possible follower gain! Remember that location stickers also show your posts within the regular feed of that location, which means more eyes on your brand!
Hashtags As Stickers
Hashtag stickers work like location stickers, where users can look up a hashtag and see stories and posts where a hashtag was used. IG users can see you regardless if they’re following you or not. You can use as much as 11 hashtags within your story, so the goal is to use hashtags that have the posts under them ranging from 5k-500k, enough to get your brand noticed with popular hashtags, but not over 500k so your posts don’t get lost in the crowd!
Mentions as Stickers
Mentions, or tags, as stickers are an awesome way to shout someone out in your account. Using mentions can only benefit you, your clients, vendors you collaborate with, etc. This creates visibility for your brand, while bringing attention to anyone’s account you work with, creating community and gaining potential followers. You can tag up to 10 other users on Stories, and tagging those users that are more relevant to your content within the story, the better! You get seen, users you tag within your story can share it on their own account. Their followers can see your account and potentially follow you! Win, win, win.
Engagement
There are tools you have at your fingertips that can help you measure and keep up with what your audience likes and wants. Instagram’s question and poll stickers both serve as great features for your followers to let you know what they want, like, and need in a timely way! Social is about change and growth, and these engagement stickers can turn into your brand’s bff to reach out to followers. When followers start replying to your messages, it brings up engagement and blends into IG’s algorithm, giving you much more visibility!
Rework and strategize with whichever engagement type seems to get more of your engagement a boost, as in, what type of engagement do your followers most resonate with, and do more of that! Have fun!
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