Elevate Your Brand’s Appeal with Instagram Stories: Best Practices

Instagram Stories have become an indispensable part of the platform since their launch in 2016. While these limited photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours might have started out as a millennial-focused gimmick feature on the platform, Instagram Stories have become too big for brands to ignore, especially for those looking to enhance their marketing. 

For businesses wanting to authentically connect and build relationships with their audiences, create unique, engaging content, and ultimately, drive sales, overlooking Instagram Stories means missing out on big benefits. With Instagram Stories having the ability to enhance brand engagement, awareness and conversions, we need to talk about why your business should be using this convenient feature.

Reach a Broad, Engaged Audience

With attention spans fleeting amongst today’s social media users, Instagram Stories have become popular and powerful for businesses hoping to reach a broad and engaged audience. Its ephemeral nature along with the interactive features available makes it an ideal tool to build connection with your followers. So how exactly do Instagram Stories reach a broad and engaged audience?

1. They create a sense of urgency – The immediacy and the limited 24 hour expiry time stamp on Instagram Stories creates a sense of urgency amongst your followers. Followers will often want to click on stories before they disappear which helps to drive higher engagement than regular feed posts.
2. Interactive features enhance engagement – Instagram Stories are not simply photos and videos. Businesses can create polls, encourage viewers to send them in questions, and create countdowns for things like product announcements or launches. All of this helps businesses to directly engage and communicate with their audience which helps foster relationship and community building.
3. Story Highlights – Instagram Stories have a feature called Highlights which enables pages to essentially file and categorise their stories into their profile, just under their bios. This feature extends the lifespan of your content, ensuring that your brand remains visible after the Instagram Stories expire. 
4. Integrated tools to enhance storytelling – Instagram Stories have a range of creative tools that businesses can choose to adopt, such as filters, stickers, and music. All of which helps to create visually appealing and engaging content.
5. Integration with other marketing channels – Unlike traditional feed posts, Instagram Stories can actually share clickable links; this means you can use Instagram Stories to link your content to your website, e-commerce store, or blog.

Showcase Products/Services Creatively

Instagram Stories offer a dynamic and engaging platform for businesses to showcase their products and services in creative and visually appealing ways. By leveraging the unique features of Stories, brands can capture the attention of their target audience, generate excitement, and drive conversions. Here are some effective strategies for showcasing products and services on Instagram Stories:

• Create eye-catching visuals: Ensure that any images or videos you share are high-quality as this helps to build expertise and also aligns with Instagram’s aesthetic. You can add filters to these, for example, a black and white filter, to create a vintage or classic aesthetic.
• Share behind the scenes glimpses: Give your followers a behind the scenes look into your daily life working in your business, or the creative process behind products, etc. Things like this can add transparency to your business and also help to foster relationship building.
• Add user-generated content (UGC) to your stories: Share customer reviews and testimonials, unboxing videos, etc. to create social proof and demonstrate the value of your products or services.
• Use interactive elements: As discussed before, these interactive elements are exclusive to Instagram Stories on the platform, so make use of them here by creating polls and getting valuable insights, get your followers to ask you questions to foster relationship building, or hold quizzes to showcase the fun personality behind your business.
• Use product placements in Instagram Stories: You can naturally incorporate your products or services into your daily life Stories. This subtle approach showcases the products’ versatility and their place in your lifestyle.

By implementing these creative strategies, businesses can harness the power of Instagram Stories to showcase their products and services in an engaging and impactful manner. 

Build Connections with Followers

While Instagram feed posts strive for polished perfection, Stories channel authenticity and transparency. The behind-the-scenes, spur-of-the-moment nature of these disappearing posts helps to make brands appear more human and credible. When your followers get glimpses into your company culture and team personalities, this really helps to build a community.

Instagram Stories are typically quite conversational in nature and have a raw style; they showcase businesses in an unscripted light. Creating content on your Instagram Stories such as effortless selfie videos, quick office tours, or staff Q&As can help to create a sense of familiarity which, in turn, helps your business to build connections with its followers.

Essentially, Instagram Stories allow showcasing not just sleek products and services but also the business and team behind them. When social media consumers realise there are relatable humans behind businesses they support, loyalty compounds.

So, it’s important for businesses to understand that Instagram Stories and feed posts have two different functions. While feed posts sparking aspiration, Stories create meaningful, authentic and transparent relationships. Balancing these two features strikes a balance between status and access.

Advertising Potential

Instagram Stories are an option for businesses wanting to advertise on the platform.

Stories Ad formats slide seamlessly between user content, meaning branded messages don’t end up being drowned in overly cluttered feeds. Viewers tend to be more receptive to ads placed between updates from friends and influencers as they naturally capture attention by design. Specific targeting abilities enable businesses to target users that will most likely lead to sales conversions based on tailored audience parameters. 

The costs of running Instagram Stories ads remains reasonable. Dayparting abilities allow concentration during peak hours for better efficiency.

Post-campaign analytics offer clear insights to businesses through metrics such as clicks, impressions, and reach to help assess your efforts and optimise future campaigns based on these. As Instagram Stories usage grows, so too do the avenues for dialling in profitable paid campaigns. 

Key Takeaways on Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories have rapidly become indispensable on a platform defined by visual media and meaningful engagement. Their ephemeral, casual format helps to develop authentic interaction and creativity that feed posts alone cannot match. For brands seeking more dynamic promotion, fewer barriers between businesses and consumers, and unlocked advertising potential, overlooking Stories carries a heavy opportunity cost.

The range of interactive features like polls, questions, and quizzes bring users into brand narratives rather than passively observing. Showcasing products in real-life settings through behind-the-scenes Stories builds connections that, in turn, can help to drive sales. Meanwhile, streamlined ads entered between intriguing user Stories capture browser attention by design for higher returns.

For more information on how to get started with Stories for your business, check out our YouTube videos, like the one below: