400 million people using Instagram Stories daily represents about 40% of Instagram’s base of active users (1 billion). Although they are wildly popular, not everyone is on board quite yet.
Stories allow users to create a feed of sequential content that disappears within 24 hours of being posted. Story content can either be static photos or video, including video created via Boomerang.
Think of Stories as a sort of secondary, exclusive feed of content for your most dedicated followers offering a quick, convenient way to share short-form content on-the-go to easily engage with your customers on a daily basis.
BRAND YOUR STORIES
Customise to make your Instagram Stories feel on brand you can choose colours of your choice. Upload a brand photo and use the drawing tool to tap and hold to select custom colours.
USE INSTAGRAM SHOPPING
This enables you to tag your products in your Instagram Stories to make it easy for your customers to shop your products directly through Instagram.
A worthy feature for small businesses!
POST VIDEOS WITH STICKERS
So which stickers are the best for your small business to use? Try using the question and quiz stickers to ask your followers a question – this is a great way to get feedback directly from your customers! you can also copy and paste a paragraph of related hashtags into the font option and make the font the same colour as the background or hidden behind a GIF.
SHARE YOUR VIDEO POSTS
Many small business owners forget to promote their content and sharing your posts to your Instagram Stories is a free way to help boost both the reach and engagement on all of your Instagram posts. By sharing your post to Instagram Stories, your followers will be more likely to see and engage with your post right after you’ve posted it (which is an important strategy when it comes to the Instagram algorithm!).
SHARE STORIES TO HIGHLIGHTS
The Story Highlights feature allows you to organise Stories you’ve previously posted into easy-to-access collections directly under your Instagram bio. Utilising Instagram Story Highlights helps your customers quickly find the content they are looking for, drive more traffic to your website and provide another way to engage your followers.
Not only are Instagram Stories fun and creative, but they’re one of the best ways to grow your engagement, build brand awareness, and even drive sales!