Instagram Stories: 5 Thing You Need To Know About the Snapchat Competitor
Last week, Instagram introduced a Snapchat-like feature called Stories. Here’s everything you need to know.
Technology businesses move fast. From Twitter Moments to Facebook Live, 2016 has already seen countless innovations from the world’s biggest social media platforms — but Instagram hasn’t made any major moves.
That is, of course, until last Tuesday, when Instagram launched Stories.
The feature gives users the power to share photos and videos of their lives in realtime, with a set of features very similar Snapchat.
But whilst some dismissed the move as nothing more than a copy, there’s a massive business case to getting the hang of Instagram Stories right now.
These are the five things you need to know about the feature.
1. You can post photos, videos or graphics
Much like on Snapchat, you can share both videos and photos on Instagram Stories. Tapping the compose story icon will open up your camera, giving you the option to capture and share action as it happens.
But that’s not all. If you want to share content from the past, or have a graphic you’d like to add to your story, you can upload from your camera roll and share it with your followers.
Each post can be up to 10 seconds long, meaning that Stories is perfect for bite-sized content.
2. Each story disappears after 24 hours
24 hours is the magic number on Instagram Stories.
Once you post a piece of content, it’ll live for just 24 hours (unless you delete it before hand). Once the period is over, the post will automatically delete itself, never to be seen again.
Playing on the success of Snapchat, this feature means that users are more likely to watch your content as and when you post it, to avoid missing it.
Instagram Stories is all about fast consumption.
3. Each time you post, your story is moved to the top of the pile
An Instagram Story is made of by multiple posts.
Each time you upload and share a new post, your story is moved to the top of the pile, meaning it’ll appear on the top left of your followers’ screen.
That means that the more you post, the more likely you are to be at the top of the pile. And the more you’re at the top of the pile, the more likely you are to get views and engagement from your followers.
4. The user-base is huge and impossible to ignore
The Facebook-owned platform has 500 million monthly active users, meaning that around the world, half a billion people open, use and engage with the app at least once a month.
Compare that to Snapchat’s 130 million monthly active users, and you can see why Instagram is miles ahead.
Additionally, the demographic and age-range of Instagram users is far more diverse than Snapchat, and so it shouldn’t be taken for granted that the people who follow you on Instagram even have Snapchat installed.
5. Now is the time to get ahead
Consumers and businesses alike are slow to adapt to change.
Because of this, the sooner you can become a familiar face to your followers on Instagram Stories, the sooner you’ll form relationships using the feature, way before your competitors start to take it seriously.
So grab your phone, open Instagram and start posting right now.
Right now.
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