How To Crush it With Instagram Stories: A Guide for Brands
What I love most about Instagram is that it has challenged brands to think out of the box and away from the idea of “selling” to people. It has provided social media marketers an opportunity to engage with audiences in a fun and organic manner.
Instagram Stories raise the bar for brands to be more proactive in creating content that speaks to their target audience.
As of June 2018, Instagram Stories topped 400 million daily active users, which is twice as many as Snapchat’s daily users. Instagram has also reported that Stories encourage users to visit the platform more frequently and stay longer. This can help build loyalty for the brand.
So, what’s the best way to take advantage of Instagram Stories to engage with your core audience? Keep reading to find some nifty tips that you could incorporate into your content strategy to elevate your brand’s Stories game on Instagram.
Let’s go 👇
1. POLLS TO ENGAGE 📊
Creating bite-sized polls with Instagram Stories is a fun way to engage with your audience. It gives your audience a reason to participate, and as a brand you receive direct feedback on your product or service. Not to mention, polls are also easy to create. All you need is a bunch of product shots or already existing content and questions to create a poll.
You can create polls around a product launch, marketing campaign or simply to get feedback on your audience interests.
HelloFresh is a meal-kit delivery company with 302k followers. They often create fun polls to engage with their audience on their IG Stories.
Takeaway: Polls are the holy grail of Instagram stories with a three-fold winnings— engagement with your audience, increasing brand awareness and feedback for the brand.
2. INSTAGRAM LIVE FOR ACTIVE PARTICIPATION 🗣
As brands, we all have our own niche, and it would be amazing to directly interact with our core audience. Instagram Live allows brands the opportunity to directly communicate with their followers. However, a few things must be kept in mind to ensure the success of a live interaction.
As a brand, you first need to consider how a Live session will benefit your audience. There must be a compelling reason why a video is being telecast live — it could be to promote an upcoming event, or share product behind-the-scenes or to host a Q&A session.
So have a definite time and cause for scheduling a live session in order to encourage your audience to participate.
Example: Tastemade collaborated with John Legend to discuss Wine Hacks as shared below. They often do live sessions to share experiments from their kitchen!
Takeaway: Instagram Live is a great way to interact with your followers. Have a content plan, schedule a time and promote it, keep it fresh and exciting.
3. ADD CALL-TO-ACTION LINKS TO DRIVE TRAFFIC 🔗
You might wonder how to link your audience from your Instagram page to your website or landing page. You can add Call-to-Action (CTA) links to your Story to drive traffic or potential customers to your content assets or your product pages. All your audience needs to do is Swipe up on your story, to go to your preferred URL.
Social media marketers can also grow their email database, by linking to lead-generation forms on their landing pages. Currently, the direct link feature is available to business profiles with more than 10,000 followers.
Below are a few examples of how brands have integrated “Swipe up” to link direct product pages. (The Frye Company, TOMS, Converse )
Takeaway: Adding direct CTA links to your Instagram Stories provides a fantastic opportunity for taking the connection with your followers a step further, driving more traffic to your site, and potentially increasing your sales.
4. TELL A STORY TO ENTERTAIN 💭
To keep an audience captivated, a brand must entertain them. Instagram is a casual platform, and the audience expects fun and entertainment. It is also a great opportunity for a brand to share its lighter shades. Besides digital storytelling can be anything — from behind-the-scenes documentary to product stories, to tutorials, to sharing new information. Stories can help increase brand loyalty, if you know your audience’s interest and dish out more content that they value.
Example: Tastemade creates “1 of everything” videos for their website, in collaboration with different restaurants. For their Instagram Stories, they create short behind-the-scenes videos as a teaser for their upcoming video to generate curiosity and entertain their audience.
Takeaway: BTS and storytelling are an exciting way for the audience to know the brand, and to take them on a more intimate journey than a glossy, polished campaign. It’s an organic way to connect with the audience.
5. HOST AN INSTAGRAM TAKEOVER TO SURPRISE 😍
Hosting an Instagram Takeover means someone takes over the brand’s Instagram account to share content. It is a win-win because it’s diversifying the content, reaching new audiences, and most of all, it’s fun!
Who would take over your account?
That would depend on your brand’s goal, whether it is engagement, promotion, or increase in followers or all of the above.
Depending on your goal, you could do an employee takeover to showcase #adayattheoffice, which always makes for great, relatable content. Similarly, to promote a specific event, you could partner with an influencer to have a higher reach. However, to stand out amongst 300 million daily stories, you ought to plan a takeover right. Promote the takeover on your main account page, as well as cross promote it on the host’s page, and strive to create a unique experience for the audience.
Example: Converse teamed up with Miley Cyrus for her to takeover the account, to promote their new collection.
Takeaway: Elevate your storytelling, and make it more diverse, by including Instagram Takeover in your content plan.
6. KNOW HOW OFTEN TO POST 📈
Instagram Stories last for 24 hours, so you don’t need a set time to post it, like when your users are most active, because you will appear on the top of your followers’ feeds for twenty four hours. The point is to be topical and spontaneous.
Certain brands such as @nytimes post as many as 10+ stories a day. If you intend to make Instagram Stories a consistent feature in your content plan, it will definitely help to add it to your content schedule, to plan for it in advance.
Most social media marketers use scheduling tools like Crowdfire to schedule their content in advance and have a constant stream of good, engaging content.
J. Crew post Instagram Stories almost everyday, and their content ranges from promotions of new collections, call to actions, to lifestyle stories.
Takeaway: While spontaneity is a major element of Instagram Stories, having a broad content plan in place is definitely recommended.
Instagram Stories are an extremely fun way to engage with your audience, and your brand can gain a lot from getting that kind of attention. It’s no rocket science, but it is requires skill and precision nevertheless.
Beef up your content strategy with the following checklist:
Include Polls to engage
Instagram Live for Active Participation
Add CTA Links to drive traffic to the brand’s website
Tell your audience a story to entertain them
Surprise your tribe with an Instagram Takeover
Know how often to post and engage
If you have any further tips on how to crush it with Instagram Stories, please do share in the comments 👇 😊
