Everything you need to know about Instagram Stories for brands
Since Instagram Stories first hit the social media scene it has steamed past its rival Snapchat. Every day 300 million users watch and create Instagram Stories compared to 150 million on its competitor platform.
The potential to reach your audience is huge. But what do you need to know about Instagram Stories before you get started and why is it important to feature this particular platform in your social media marketing strategy?
If you’d like to find out more about starting an Instagram business account then take a look at these tips.
How do Instagram Stories work?
Instagram Stories allow you to share 15-second snippets about your business, products or services. You can annotate images or videos with text, emojis, drawings, location tags and augmented reality face filters that give you a different appearance. Stories then stay live on your profile for 24 hours.
You can tell which accounts have current stories as they appear in a bar across the top of your home screen or they are highlighted with a pink and peach coloured circle around their profile picture.
People can either find your Instagram Story by scrolling through the bar at the top of their home screen or by searching Instagram for location tags or hashtags you have included in your posts.
Why Instagram Stories are important
Instagram Stories allow businesses to share snapshots of what’s happening behind the scenes, breaking news or exclusive follower offers. You can give customers tantalising teasers about new products or events. Or you can take them on a tour of an interesting place.
The great thing about Instagram Stories for businesses is that it gives you some important metrics to gauge the success of your posts. You can see how many people have noticed your story (impressions), how many users viewed it (viewers), the number of people who tapped on any of the accounts tagged in your post, and the people who clicked through to a web page. This final feature is only available to profiles with more than 10,000 followers.
The more active you are on Instagram Stories the more likely your account is going to be seen by potential new followers. So it’s a great way to grow your audience.
Instagram Stories tools
Instagram and Instagram Stories are being updated all the time so it’s important to be aware of new tools and features to help you make the most of this social media for your business.
Instagram is and is likely to always be a mobile-first social media. This makes it cumbersome for brands wanting to plan and schedule posts. The way social media managers tend to work is to create images and videos, transfer them to their phone and upload these to their brands’ Story at the moment they want to publish. However, there are online apps in development like Storrito that will allow you to do this straight from your desktop.
A new feature to emerge in 2018 was the ability to save your Instagram Stories to highlights on your profile page. This is a handy little tool, especially for brands putting a lot of effort into the creation and design of their Stories for only 24 hours exposure. When people visit your profile screen you can now draw their attention to specific promotions saved from your Instagram Stories.
It’s guaranteed that Instagram will continue to add features to Stories with plenty of potential for brands to reach and engage customers. If you want to discuss adding Instagram and Instagram Stories to your social media marketing strategy then get in touch.