Did you know that there are more than 400 million Instagram story users every day?
Both consumers and brands are taking full advantage of the function, and it offers a fun and informal way to connect with your audience.
Many people are bamboozled at the thought of adding another thing to their social media to-do list, but if you’re looking for a quick way to create video content for your business, stories is a great place to start.
Here are our tips:
Be authentic
Some might argue that more polished, prerecorded stories are to be avoided.
Users tend to enjoy more off-the-cuff style clips, which means that production time is quick and costs are minimal!
The time limitation on stories (each clip has a 24-hour life cycle unless you choose to save it to a highlight reel) makes them all the more valuable.
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Go behind the scenes
If you use stories as a way to give exclusive access to new features or deals then customers will watch your clips more regularly, because they know they get the VIP treatment.
Use this as a way to show behind the scenes footage of new products, hint at new services and interview staff about what they are working on at the moment.
Takeovers
Allowing other people to take over your Instagram story for the day is an organic way to tap into new audiences.
You could get a blogger or influencer to host for the day, meaning that their existing followers are likely to tune in to keep up to date with what they are up to.
Alternatively, you could hand the controls over to a camera-friendly employee who has a particularly exciting day ahead.
Ask questions
The poll function is a simple way to add an interactive feature to your video and can provide helpful data when it comes to finding out what your customers want.
The function allows you to create banner of text and customise two options which the viewer can choose from.
The screen will then display the percentage of answers showing which one is most popular.
You could use this to let your audience assist with decision-making in your business such as what colours to stock in your shop or when to host your next sale.
Host a Q&A
Use the question sticker to invite customers to send questions directly to your account.
You can either answer them straight away or use this as a basic structure to create a brand new piece of content like a YouTube video or written blog post.
This can be a clever way to drive Instagram users to your website or other social platform.
Boomerang
The Boomerang function allows you to record video which then plays in reverse in a sort of GIF-like video loop.
It’s particularly good for pouring cocktails, doing epic dance moves or making bubbles.
Don’t use too frequently or it gets pretty annoying.
Other tips
Geotagging in your stories is a really good way to reach new audiences nearby,
Each location has it’s own story for the day made up of anyone who uses the tag, so anyone who watches the story will see your video and may choose to follow your account.
This is particularly effective if you are doing something really interesting in that location!
For example if you host regular music events in a local bar, the people who visit that bar might see people having fun on your story and choose to attend future gigs.
One in five brand stories lead to direct messages so make sure that you check your inbox regularly and interact with your customers, ready to answer any questions and send links to appropriate products or services.
Creating a hashtag for your brand is a good way to interact with customers too.
Make sure you use it and find people who are using it on their own feed, and feature them on your story.
People love to be thanked publicly and they might even get a few followers too.
