Instagram’s latest Story feature has gained immense popularity and success recently, with more than 500 million accounts using it every day. The timely, tap-friendly nature of Instagram Stories makes it so interesting for users.
For brands and businesses, it is a lucrative opportunity to share engaging content that gives complete creative freedom to make the most out of the platform and the feature.
Business owners and marketers looking to use the potential of the platform cannot afford to miss on Stories. With an Instagram video editor, with dedicated templates built for the purpose, anyone can get in on the action.
In this post, we take a look at some Instagram Story ideas and best practices that would help you get the best possible results.
Best Instagram Story Ideas to Grow your Business
Instagram Stories are integral to any business marketing strategy. However, if you are just getting started, it can be daunting to come up with the right content.
Here, let us discuss some Instagram Story ideas you can adopt to generate engaging content that gets you more followers.
Educate with demos and tutorials
The sequential format of Instagram Stories makes them ideal for how-to style content that involves steps.
From beauty tutorials and product demos to recipes and more, bite-sized educational material offers more engaging content than a traditional blog post or video. If you sell a product that has a little learning curve, it makes a great Instagram Story idea.
Play around with quizzes, polls, questions
Instagram offers several ways to develop conversations and engagement with customers and followers. An effective Story idea is to use stickers to engage the audience on different subjects or ask questions about the product, niche, or industry.
The ‘Questions’ sticker would let them submit questions directly to you, and you can answer or post them in your stories. Such a feature is great for brands as they can easily get feedback and suggestions from the audience.
Another amazing Story idea is to create polls and quizzes. Polls let your followers see what other people think, while quizzes offer multiple options to test their knowledge. These are fun ways to spark conversations with audiences and engage more people on the platform.
Break your news
Brands also use Stories as a dedicated space to break the biggest news and make announcements.
This is a great way to keep your followers updated about what is going on with your business and what you are up to.
For example, you can highlight the opening of new locations through Stories to hype them up.
Highlight your latest posts
Story can also be used to hype up a fantastic new post in your feed. This is a totally fair thing to do to maximize your brand reach.
Based on how often you post on the platform, don’t overdo it. Try and reserve announcing through Stories for the most important offers and news.
Business accounts with more than 10,000 followers can insert ‘swipe up links’ in their Stories to get an easy way to link content you have posted elsewhere.
Share teasers of upcoming products and content
Stories are great for teasing what you have coming ahead. You might be excited about a product launch, an event, or a new collaboration.
The creative nature of this Instagram feature is perfect for building anticipation about something you are about to offer.
Promote time-sensitive deals and offers
Ideal for brick-and-mortar as well as online stores, promoting offers via Instagram Stories is one of the best ways to capture attention. Story can be used to highlight an ongoing sale or push people to check out a limited-time offer.
Share customer posts and user-generated content
Most brands consider sharing Stories featuring content created by their customers and followers.
Using Story to share user-generated content allows you to do so without filling up your feed. Moreover, reposting tagged posts as Stories is easier than doing it the traditional way.
Take them behind the scenes
An amazing thing about Instagram Stories is that they don’t have to be professional-quality videos. You can simply create a Story out of an unfiltered video showing highlights of everyday activities at the company.
You can even share pictures of events or people from your team to develop a personal connection with your followers.
Instagram Story Best Practices Brands Should Follow
Though Instagram Story requires not much optimization and effort, brands should not start using them randomly.
Let us look at a few best practices you should implement in your Instagram marketing strategy to get the results you are looking for.
Take advantage of creative tools and formats
Instagram offers a plethora of tools and options you can use to get creative when publishing your Stories.
Stickers can be found in a great variety – regular, location, hashtag, mention, chat, questions, GIFs, polls, emoji sliders, and shopping. There are so many of them; the key is to know when to use which ones.
Keep track of your Stories engagement
Story is generally treated as an afterthought when it comes to analyzing your social performance.
However, tracking your Story analytics can give you insights like what type of Stories get the most views, replies, and engagement, how frequently you should post, and how much Stories contribute to your total engagement on the platform.
Practice consistency
If you want to stay on top of people’s feeds, you must upload Stories on a daily basis. Instagram sorts things by freshness, so if you post something new, you can be visible to your followers as they open the platform.
However, prioritize quality over quantity; don’t just post for the sake of doing so but also make sure it is valuable and high-quality.
Save to highlights
Stories have a lifespan of 24 hours but you can always add a Story to your Highlights to let people watch it later as well. This is a great way to save an important or valuable Story for better engagement.
To draw more attention to your Highlights, you can improve their look by adjusting the appearance to match your overall theme. You can play around with pictures, colors, and labels to make it easy for people to navigate the section.
Final Thoughts
Instagram Story is a critical component of the platform; you are surely missing out on its potential if you are not yet using it regularly to engage your audience.
Posting Stories on a consistent basis along with your regular feed posts helps improve your Instagram performance to a great extent.
The ideas and best practices discussed here should help expand your reach and engagement on the platform and ultimately benefit your business.
