Instagram Stories — 14 Smart Ways To Use It For Your Business
Instagram Stories are here to stay! As per Instagram (internal data, Jan 2019) 500 million users use Instagram story every single day. Woahh!! That’s Huge!
With so many intuitive and creative features such as Question stickers, Polls, countdown, location and functions like music make Insta stories, Instagram is pushing hard for users and business to hop on the Instagram story trend. Story ads is also one major factor that has added up more power to the Instagram stories. Also the latest big addition of introducing the Augmented Reality filters has sparked a major streak of interest among the users and has brought a huge profit on the business side.
Instagram stories have that affable capacity of holding people’s attention which is why it is a perfect place for businesses to be. You can actually do a lot of things on Instagram stories that can help you raise the bar of your business, can grow the audience as well as can boost up the engagements rates too. Plus it will help to increase the visibility of your business.
- Live 🎥
- Questions ❓
- Countdown ⏱
- Polls ⚖️
- Location Stickers 📍
- Reaction Emoji Slider 😍
- Announcements📢
- New Post 🤳
- Highlights ⭐️
- Contests 🎁
- Hashtag Stickers #️⃣
- Collaborations 👥
- Templates 📋
- Links 🔗
1. Live 🎥
Today on Instagram every single person wants to be at the top live section of the story conveyor belt. Surely, Instagram Live is going to be the next big thing. It has become the best way and an interesting way for the businesses to dwell in engagement. Many big as well as small brands are using this feature to grab in more users and engage their followers.
There are few things to take care of if you are thinking of streaming live. You should prepare it in advance and also inform your followers about it beforehand so that they know when it will be going to happen and they can tune in. If you want to get featured on the “Top Live” section on the Instagram explore page then it is required that your Live session gets large number of viewers and high engagement.
Instagram Live can be used for a lot of things from which your business can earn huge profits from such as you can use IG live for launching new products, interview sessions, sneak peak to the work areas, hold Q&A segment with your followers, offer discounts and takeaways and much more.” The possibilities are endless”.
2. Questions ❓
This feature is one of the coolest and an interesting one too. It has made possible for the businesses to ask questions to their followers and if their followers has got something in their mind, they can also ask. It has encouraged interaction and engagement as well. This has also proved to be one of the best way of building a community. When you ask questions to your followers, ask about their opinions, they feel important and when you give a chance to your them to ask anything to you and when you reply to their questions, this incites customer loyalty.
Another major advantage of this feature is you get to know the reaction of the audience about the products, services which in turn helps you to know better about what they are liking and what they are not. You can also instigate the loopholes and can work on them.
And as we know that the more interactions you have with your account or your content, the more outreach your content gets. And when you post questions to your Instagram stories, it’s a chance for every single follower to get his or her bright moment. The involvement broadens the reach and mucks up the odds of organic traffic stream to your Instagram page.
3. Countdown ⏱
This feature has become a major hit. Companies, celebrities, singers everyone is using this feature and yes! Benefiting a lot from it. This countdown sticker has proved to be the best for the businesses and brands to promote sales, competitions and announcements. The users can set the reminders for the countdown deadline, and the brands receives this data so that could know exactly how many (and which) of their audience are most engaged!
Including this feature in your business marketing armory is no doubt a wise move. It develops the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) feeling among the users and in response they act inevitably by coming to your store & purchasing from you.
One more exceptional advantage of putting up the countdown sticker in IG stories is — your followers also has the access to share that particular story at the same time with their people. If your followers count is under 50,000 followers then you will get notifications via Direct message (DM) every single time someone enroll and reshares your set countdown timer.
4. Polls ⚖️
If you want to get detailed insights and better understand the mindsets of the clients, this feature proves to be the most beneficial for the companies. It allows to raise interests among the new customers and helps companies to engage creatively with their loyal customers. Polls are a great tool to collect quick feedback's on products and services for brands, which they can in return know what customers need and want. If the clients engage on giving their opinions and selecting through the polls what they like best, customers could feel nearer to the brand and feel like their say matters.
Polls help the businesses with the decision making process and helps to implement the advertising strategy. The company can ask their customers what products they would like to see on offer. With the data collected from the Instagram polls, the business can initiate a versed decision as how to stock up the inventory.
5. Location Stickers 📍
To double up your visibility on Instagram you must use the location stickers. As we are well aware of the fact that Instagram is a huge social media platform where people come together and share the common interests. When you tag a location in your Instagram stories, then you will be showed in the stories of that location and then people who do not even follow you will be able to see your stories and who knows the people might get inspired by you and may follow you. What a great, simple and effective way to get large number of impressions on your post.
Location stickers are a treat to your Instagram stories as they increases the visibility plus helps you to get followers on Instagram.
6. Reaction Emoji Slider 😍
One of the coolest feature of the Instagram stories is the emoji slider. Instagram has played smart and added one of the sorted thing by which one can get reactions about a particular thing straightaway. Generally brands use the heart emoji to know the reaction of the audience whether they liked the product/service or not. A scaling meter is set on which people can scale as per their experience and mood. There are a lot of creative ways to use the reaction slider on your IG stories.
7. Announcements📢
The nature of the Instagram stories are very rapid and due to this reason they are the best thing for announcing latest products, new add on services, newly joined staff members. Also you can showcase the BTS moments which will make your followers feel connected. You can also put videos uncovering the packaging of your upcoming products, or some fun activities carried by your company members. This will deliver the human side of your business to the people thereby dwelling in more engagement and will boost brand awareness.
8. New Post 🤳
Due to Instagram strict algorithm, what matters the most is how you can get maximum engagement on your posts. Which is why users have started to use stories for alerting people about the new posts. Generally they do this by hiding the thumbnail of the picture so that it evoke interest among people and more number of people gets directed to the account and see it. The accounts which are having more than 10k followers are blessed with the “swipe up” feature which allows the user to put a link to the story post for faster engagement. Via this swipe up feature users can buy as well as take actions as per their choice.
9. Highlights ⭐️
One of the best feature that has been rolled out by Instagram is the Instagram highlights feature. Now your stories can live up to forever on Instagram by using the Highlight feature. This feature has created a major impact on Instagram and has been proved to be a smart tool profiting large number of business as well as individuals.
For normal users it acts as a personal “best bits” show reel and for businesses it acts as an extension to their bio. They can highlight the best story parts and can create a perfect front cover for the highlights. It will show next to your bio which means it will be one of the things that users will see and take under consideration whenever they look at your account. You have keep it updated. Always make sure you fill your highlights with your Hero Content.
10. Contests 🎁
Your Instagram stories can do wonders if used in the right direction. If you have got a supreme product or service to giveaway. Then you must aim to run a contest on your Instagram story. As we know that Instagram stories life is of 24 hours and this creates a sense of urgency among the users. You can also use this as a tool to inform your users about the contest running on your main profile. Some may not have addressed your takeaway/giveaway post. By stories you can tell everyone about it and can guide them the right path to enter.
In order to widen up your post engagement you can make use of hashtags such as #giveaway, #takeaway, #contest alert, #contest to reach up to the people who don’t even follow you.
11. Hashtag Stickers #️⃣
The hashtag stickers are much more like that of the location stickers. When you use any hashtag sticker in your story, the other users who is not even in your follower’s list will view and engage with your particular story on that hashtag’s page.
Or if any user click on the hashtag sticker which you have put in your story, then they will be directed to that particular hashtag page and then you can see and explore other stuff that has been shared with using the same hashtag.
One major advantage of the hashtag stickers is business can make use of them to promote their branded hashtags on stories and can make them popular.
12. Collaborations 👥
Instagram takeover culture has put the social media on fire. Many celebs, brands, businesses, individuals are following this path. Collaborations is all about getting teamed up with a relevant business, popular identity, influencers who you think could benefit you as well as your followers.
If you are a business owner, there are two options available to you — you can collab with another business and take over their account or you can partner with an influencer to have them take over your account.
If an influencer with a large following base takes over your account for one day, sharing bulk of amazing contents that evens up with your business brand. For both the influencer and your business this is a win-win situation. On one hand your influencer will gain exposure from your audience, on the other hand you will also be able to access your influencer’s following by requesting them to tune into the takeover on their Insta account.
13. Templates 📋
Influencers on Instagram do make use of templates in a very smart manner. You definitely should take ideas from them. Templates helps to know your customers/users in a more detailed manner. You post templates and your users fill them or they also take the screenshot and put it in their stories which in turn promote you thereby giving more engagement and extending your reach.
Also the templates act as a mediator conveying information about your organization to your followers bringing them more closer. It is the perfect way if you want to engage your followers
14. Links 🔗
Instagram is playing smart and doing its best to keep hold of their users. As we know that there is only one place where you can put up the link i.e, in the Bio section. But if you have 10k followers or more than that, you can use the swipe up feature in your stories. Swipe up feature is one of the interesting thing in which the user will be diverted to a separate browser within Instagram, which means when you cross off that page you will pick up right from where you left.
If you are blessed with this feature, use it sprucely by putting up clear cut to cut CTA in your Instagram stories like “Start Free Trial”, “Shop Now”, “Book Today”, “Avail Now”, “The Sale Ends Today, Buy Now” etc. Placing the right CTA will make things clear for the users and they will know what they are hitting for when they “Swipe Up”.
The Key to be successful on Instagram is to be Consistent and always Connected. This can be done by actively managing your accounts, dwelling out amazing and valuable contents everyday without a miss, being in touch with followers, clients and much more. To handle all things together is a tough task to do. But what if you have got a software by your side which not only fasten and easen your work but also UP your Instagram game by bringing in huge engagement and amplify your Instagram marketing.
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Here’s Why Smart Marketers And Business Owners
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Account Management — From one single dashboard you can manage multiple Instagram accounts with ease. You can add as many accounts as well as you can delete as many you need to. You can also check the status of the account with the help of account checker.
Auto Scheduling Posts — Delivering quality content and being active is one of the important things to consider if you want to rule the world of Instagram like a pro. Schedule your posts and be stress free.
Targeting — Time is Money. Save your hundreds of hours of manual labor by using the advanced audience targeting and filtering options of GramboardAi.
Track Your Performance — GramboardAi will provide you full detailed reports of how your accounts are working, also it will help you to gets the insights of your Insta presence. It makes you aware of your customer expectations, what your followers are liking, which posts of yours are not working, what are the drawbacks. GramboardAi help to manage your posts and keep track the performance of your account.
Blacklist — With this amazing feature of GramboardAi, you can straightforwardly block interactions and blacklist user who you find useless and unwanted.
Auto-Follow, Auto-like Auto-comment — Increase your Instagram audience organically using smart automation. GramboardAi intelligently automates the activities such as (Following, Liking, Commenting, Unfollowing) that you want your account to perform.
Gramboard is popular for its simplicity and intellectuality. If you want to master Instagram, then you definitely need this exceptional tool.
Wrapping Words 🙋
Instagram stories are clean, simple, minimalist, editable and easy to use. Although their shelf life remains for 24 hours( you can put them for forever by pushing them into Highlights), they create a long lasting impact and drive in the maximum engagement. With 500 million people using Instagram stories on a daily basis, you should incorporate it in your business strategy. IG stories are here to stay. With such intuitive features, it is successful to deliver the real, uncut content to the people which definitely makes your brand approachable and reliable.
What do you think about Instagram stories? Do you use them in other ways? Do share them in the comment section below, we would love to hear them!
