Introduction
Ever since the launch of Instagram on the 6th of October 2010, its popularity has skyrocketed, with over a billion users. Its ability to offer users new features through innovative innovations has kept it popular over the years.
One of the platform's innovative features is Instagram stories, which have become a central part of the platform today. These short disappearing videos and images are essential to a brand's social media marketing strategy.
Today's article will discuss how we can use Instagram stories in our marketing strategies. We will also look at how we can use Instagram Video Maker to create an engaging Story to feature in our marketing strategy. Let us begin by having a deep look at Instagram stories.
What are Instagram Stories?
Stories are full-screen friendly, vertical content that is available on Instagram. It will display images for 5 seconds unless a user presses a finger down on the screen to pause. Conversely, videos on the story can be 15 seconds long. In a scenario when we post a longer video, it will automatically be divided into separate 15-second videos.
The videos on Instagram Stories can be made more engaging by:
- Using stickers that users can click upon
- Evoking the user to reach out to the poster
- Enticing the user to check out a link
When users open Instagram's site on their desktop or the app, these stories appear at the top of their feed and are the first thing they are likely to notice. Once the users click to view one of the stories, they will see the recently posted stories one after the other in order. They will disappear completely after 24 hours of posting them. Then, how can Instagram stories help us in our marketing? Let's take a look!
Why should we use Stories in our marketing strategy?
Stories are an essential fragment of our social media marketing strategy for the following reasons:
- Widely known feature: Today, more than 500 million people use Instagram Stories daily. Also, a third of the most viewed stories come from businesses. It will be incredibly wise to use this huge traffic to our advantage. We can prompt a massive audience to click on our link and reach out to us on our website.
- Powerful features for shopping: Shoppable stories are a huge asset to online businesses. It is because companies can tag their products in the Story itself. When we tag our products on the stories, users can click on our product image, see our product information, and even purchase our product within the application. It is a very efficient way to prompt users to buy our products as soon as they see them. All we need is an enticing story that will interest viewers as seen as they see our products. An Instagram Video Maker has many suggestions to help us create enticing stories.
- High potential to engage users: Recent studies show that up to 58% of Instagram users become more interested in a product after seeing it in their stories. These stats indicate we can get more customer engagement through Instagram Stories alone. We can increase sales and improve our business with the right Story model. Another good thing about Instagram Stories is that we can attract more followers who will be loyal to our brand.
- Very interactive: We can use Instagram Stories to build and interact with our audience through stickers. It is because stickers can help us interact with our customers in several ways, including:
- Asking them questions
- Allowing them to ask us questions
- We can even have them weigh on a poll. Our audience can generate discussions as a result of our poll, making our Stories more interactive to our viewers.
- Stories have an urgency: Picture it like this, when people need to watch a story within 24 hours or miss it altogether, an urgency arises not to miss a single thing. Therefore, users can stay hooked on what we have to say in our Stories. For example, it will be more interesting when we decide to run an award-winning competition on the platform. Viewers will be eager to get daily updates on how the competitors are faring, creating an urgency to view our stories.
Now that we know why we should use stories, let us look at the uses of the Instagram Stories feature.
Uses of Instagram Stories
The beauty of Instagram Stories is that they are versatile, making them a fantastic place to feature different types of content. The following are the strongest use cases for the stories feature:
- Showcasing events: Showcasing important events that are taking place in our company is a great choice to use Instagram stories. It can cause other users to want to participate and even show the value of what we offer. The good thing is that we can also share information about events and provide links that our audience can use to register for them.
- Share user-generated content: User-generated content, often referred to as UGC, is the most valuable marketing medium possible. Featuring user-generated content on Instagram stories is a great way of maximizing its visibility. It would be best if we tagged the user who offered the origin post to us and encourage other users to share their own too. It is because UGC is a great way of showing new users that our products are of good quality. Therefore we can get our customer's trust and register more sales in return.
- Make brand or product announcements: After we have spent much time designing a new product, we have to make sure that we launch it in style if we want to make the best out of it. Stories are a fantastic way to create awareness of this information and mock it a few previous days. To push products, we have to make sure we use Instagram's shoppable features for maximum gains.
- Post content from behind the scenes: Everyone enjoys knowing what goes on behind their favorite brands. It creates a human element that allows the building of a great rapport. Some examples of behind-the-scenes content include videos of how to make things, pictures of new products, or even employee content. Using Instagram Stories to show viewers some of the things that happen inside our company keeps them eager to know more about us.
- Question and answers session: We can have our team answer questions submitted by users on a video. The questions sticker also makes it easier than ever for users to answer questions. These stickers can be live or pre-recorded, making them extremely valuable when building that deep connection with our followers. Using Instagram Stories to ask these questions is important for our business in huge ways.
- Go Live: Live videos are viral across all platforms. The followers get a notification when we go live. They can even dispatch messages and respond to them in real-time for everyone to read. Once our Live is over, we can save our camera roll and play back the best part as Stories break them into bite-sized segments.
How Instagram Stories can be created
We can create Instagram stories by clicking our profile picture next to the stories segment. It will open up the full-screen camera, and we can start making our Story. Another way is to use the Instagram Video Maker on different apps. They have similar features that make our Stories more interesting. In the Story, we can do any of the following:
- Make a story based on text
- Make a boomerang
- Select an image or video from our camera roll
- Use the in-app camera to take a video or picture
- Create a question-and-answer video and many more.
Once we have selected an individual picture or video, it is time to get creative. We can add text, emojis, and GIFs to our video. We can also draw directly with our fingers. There is also an incredible option to attach stickers to our Instagram Story. These can simply be flashing GIFs that motivate users to increase their volume.
They can also link more interactive layers to what we post. In a Story, we can take a poll to encourage donations, feature a clickable hashtag, add music to the background, or even mention a user. Once we finish making our Story, we can press send to publish it.
Tracking our Stories' performance
All businesses and marketers should closely monitor their content's performance. Keeping track of our stories will help us see what is working for us and optimise our future content. Fortunately, business accounts on Instagram and other maker accounts have free access to local analytics on the platform.
Accessing Our Previous Stories
To access our stories, we need our insights and then scroll down to see our stories. We can observe the stories we produced in the previous 14 days. We can also see our top performers based on several different qualifications.
Some of the metrics here may include the following:
- Exited
- Next Stories
- Email button taps
- Call button taps
- Reach
- Follows
- Scroll backs
- Get direction taps
- Impressions and link clicks
The information can assist us in seeing which stories were most helpful at driving actions such as link clicks or phone calls. We can also check which actions made users scroll away quickly. All these are vital fragments of the marketing puzzle.
Tips for solid results for Instagram marketing strategy
Following a few strategic practices can help us register the best results using Instagram Stories. Experts advocate the following best practices to help us get the most out of our stories:
- Creatte Highlights: Highlights will allow us to showcase our story long after those 24 hours are up. We can have different theme groups on our profile where we feature what is essentially known as archive stories. Users can view our archived stories at any time and even look for common themes in our stories. Our UGC, product announcements, and live events stories could feature as individual Highlights allowing our stories to live on beyond the 24-hour short expiration date. We must choose attractive images as the Cover for our Highlight. It can help us get more clicks and views dramatically.
- Tag other users: Users can share our Stories as long as we have a public account. It is an added opportunity to increase visibility with a bonus of UGC tossed in it. The best thing is that we could employ a sticker to mention users where pertinent. It may include thanking users for sharing their outstanding UGC or appreciating an industry influencer for helping with a Q&A story. If anyone ever mentions our brand, we will receive a notification in our message Inbox. If they have a public account, we can also share the information.
- Keep our Stories creative: A Story should always have stunning visuals, whether we post them as images or videos. Creativity and quirkiness are going to work best here. We should choose bold colours to draw attention to our images and always add text for the context where needed.
- Consistently include pertinent links: Instagram’s verified business accounts or those with over 10,000+ followers can add links to their Stories. Links can direct users to our homepage, key landing pages, or any other relevant information they may need. It is a fantastic way to promote a post from blogs and other lead magnets that might be difficult to drive clicks to on Instagram.
- Broaden into Stories ads to reach more users: Branching out to paid Instagram Stories will help us reach out to new users who aren't already following us rapidly. Stories can dominate users' attention as they take up the entire screen. They also typically cost less than in-feed placements. Therefore, we should be able to afford them comfortably. Users will know everything we want them to know without getting distracted. It will also ensure that users view our stories to the very end. Expanding into Story ads will bring us plenty of followers. We must ensure that our story is interesting enough to keep viewers engaged with our content.
Conclusion
Instagram Stories make up a big deal and a focal point of the platform. Even though the content disappears after only 24 hours, campaigns that regularly use Instagram stories can experience a significant impact in the long run. In addition, we can use Instagram Video Maker for unique story ideas.
Companies and other marketers on social media marketers should use Instagram stories at least two times a week to get the best results out of the platform. In addition, we should remember to test different content to see what works for us and adapt accordingly. Finally, branching into paid Instagram Stories will save us much time when it comes to building an Instagram following.
