In today’s digital age, social media serves as an outlet for brands to showcase their products or services and attain their goals. Years before, this visual application was well-known for sharing what we do, what we think, and where we go. But now, it has become a powerful marketing tool that decides the success of brands and businesses. Instagram stands out from the competitors with its interactive in-app features, younger demographics, and user-friendly interface.
Every Instagram feature has unique functionality and enables users to reap different benefits. For example, ‘Story’ is a dedicated section where users can share ephemeral content blended with many fun elements. The primary purpose of Story is to share instant posts on the go and let the followers know what’s happening with your brand right now. Especially many brands buy instagram reels likes to increase the visibility of every Story and bring in audiences to the profile. This significantly helps to build brand awareness, get customers and drive sales effectively.
Still, there are many perks of leveraging the Instagram Story feature. Interested to know more? That’s great! Keep reading this article to learn the essence of Stories for marketing your brand.
How do Instagram Stories work?
An Instagram user share posts that will get disappear after 24 hours. The best part is that the availability of stickers, time stamps, doodles, filters, effects, and more makes your visual content interactive and interesting.
Keep in mind that your Story will be shown to anyone when your Instagram account is public. If you use a private account, the Story will be visible only to your followers. The audience who views your Story can reply by hitting the likes button or send the response via direct messages.
As a content creator, you can able to see who has seen your post when you swipe up. An added benefit is that you can save the important posts in the Highlights section and make them visible on your profile forever.
Being a brand marketer, create separate Highlights to display different Story posts. For instance, create highlights for your products, reviews, discounts/offers, and so on based on your requirement.
Instagram Story Dimensions & Format
If you are planning to make use of Stories to enrich your brand value, then you should know its basic guidelines. For example, simply sharing images or videos randomly will not be effective for your brand.
Either an image or video that you share with Story will appear on a vertical screen. So your content should be a 9:16 ratio with 1080×1920 pixels. Though posts can be shared in varied dimensions, they may get cropped and affect the appearance of your content. So, curate stories in a perfect way to make the most of them. Furthermore, avail the support of FollowFormation to boost your Story and take it in front of more viewers in a while.
Best Ways to Use Stories for Instagram Marketing Campaigns
In order to share Stories, you must have an active Instagram account. If you don’t have one, just create a Professional account or utilize the existing one. Before landing straight away on Stories, get to know the basics.
Analyse Target Audience
The first and foremost thing that you need to do is find to whom you are about to share stories. Ask yourself questions like Who are my audiences? What age do they belong to? Why do they visit Instagram? What interests them? This paves the way for you to craft appropriate stories that meet the demands of your audience.
Understand Your Objectives
You are not a user who has a presence on Instagram for fun or entertainment purposes. Since you’re looking forward to marketing your brand, be focused on your goals. Your goal can be anything like creating awareness, promoting a product or service, generating leads, or driving sales. This shows the way for you to create suitable content for your audience as well as your brand.
Decide What You Need to Share
Now you know whom you are targeting and what you want to achieve. It’s time to decide the type of content, style, format, and all other aspects that brings a story to real-time. You can search all the options and elements that are available in the Stories section. And jot down the ones that help you to enrich your content. Never miss out on the Captions sticker, Hashtag sticker, Location tags, etc., as all of them spread the word about your brand among audiences.
Instagram Story Content Ideas to Get Inspiration
There are endless ways to create and share Story content on your Instagram profile. Since you are a brand, you need to keep the balance between promotional content and regular ones. Viewers may lose interest in your profile if you keep on sharing stories related to your brand. So, post content wisely!
Check your competitors and other Instagram accounts that create content related to your niche. Discover the current trends and determine how you can make them suitable for your brand. Some of the common content ideas to create Instagram stories are,
- Show behind-the-scenes of your workspace/company
- Show off different products or services that you offer
- Milestones achieved by your brand or your Instagram profile
- Reshare your feed posts, Reels, and other content you post
- Festival offers, discounts, giveaways, contests, or any special events
- Share customer reviews, feedback, testimonials, and user-generated content
Whatever the content you create, enhance it with interactive elements to seek audience attention. In addition, take advantage of FollowFormation to expand the content reach and gain customers for your brand wisely.
The Bottom Line
Instagram is an effective marketing channel that presents various opportunities for marketers and advertisers to accomplish their diverse goals. Understanding the working of the application and its algorithm move your goals forward in the success path.
So, now you have a detailed knowledge of using Instagram Stories to market your brand and reap its benefits to the fullest. Combine these strategies with your existing or new marketing plan to yield impressive results.
Now it’s your turn to let your creativity speaks and showcase your brand personality via Instagram Stories.
Good luck!
