The Importance of Instagram stories and why you should be using them

May 17

Instagram stories have been growing quickly in the Instagram world and for good reason. Videos, photos, advertising, promotions and more are being used across stories by an increasing amount of businesses, getting their messages and brand personality out to their audience and potential audience.

Here are our main reasons as to why you need to be using Instagram Stories for your business.

It is quick and engaging

The great thing about Instagram stories is that they can be done on the spot, or saved videos and photos can be uploaded at a time that suits an announcement or offer from the business. It is a great way to be more personable with your brand which will resonate with your followers and community.

Geo Location and hashtags

Wherever you are, you can use a geo location tag to let people know where your business is or if you are out and about showcasing your work. This is also a way for other people outside of your followers to find you through your stories.

Hashtags are also a great way to get more people outside of your current followers to be able to view your stories and lead to your profile. For example, if you were to use #visitwagga, anyone that follows this hashtag or sees it in their explore tab will see this story and can view it.

Give more to your followers

It can sometimes be a struggle when you have some great information to share with your followers but they may not fit into your instagram feed. Stories is a fantastic way to be able to share more information with your audience without clogging up their own feed too much.

Another great aspect of sharing on stories is being able to save these videos or photos to your highlights reel on your own Instagram profile. This means that anyone that views your page is able to watch these well after the 24 hours on the standard stories area. You can choose what you put into these highlights and even make various ones, for example, if you have some behind the scenes videos and photos of your business you can make a highlight reel called behind the scenes.

You can tag your own profile and others

From collaborating with other businesses to wanting people to click through to your profile, you can add tags of Instagram accounts on your stories to make it easier for your followers and new people to click through for more information. Tagging other businesses you may be working is also a great way to be seen by their followers and that business will have the opportunity to share that story on their profile also, meaning you are exposed to a bunch of other people that may not yet follow you.

Share stories from your followers

A fantastic thing about stories and what I mentioned above about tagging businesses, is that your followers can also tag you in their stories. If this happens, you will have some great User Generated Content (UGC) that you can share straight from your inbox to your stories. This is a great way for your other followers to see that people are using your products or services.

Stay on your audience’s mind

Putting at least 1-2 stories up each day means that you will most likely pop up in your followers stories along the top of their instagram home page. This is a great way to stay on your followers minds each day because remember your followers might not buy anything straight away from you but after a few times will see you.

Create beautiful stories with other programs

If you want to create graphics for stories that are on trend or sticking with your business colour scheme and branding, there are many different programs that can help you create beautiful Instagram stories graphics that you can create on your phone or computer to upload. Some programs/apps include Canva, Over, Mojo and Unfold.

No ‘best time to post’

Unlike your feed where Instagram Analytics recommends your best times to post based on your audience being most active, stories are available for 24 hours for your followers plus others to be able to watch, meaning you can upload stories at any time of the day or night.

Interact more with your community and followers

Instagram stories offer a range of great options to allow you to interact more with your followers and community including asking questions, creating polls, using stickers and slider polls where the emoji can be changed to suit the circumstance!

How to use stories for your business

How-to videos and photos for using a product, styling a product, cooking a recipe
Educational videos
UGC from your community
Behind the Scenes
Announcements
New Post on your feed
Offers for limited time only
A day in the life of a staff member
Run a contest
Create ads

Now it’s time to get started with some stories on your own Instagram account! Get your audience more involved in some decision making within the business (within reason of course!), showing that their opinions matter to your business.

Have you seen our other posts on social media? If you are not sure what social media platform might be best for your business, check out this article.

Cristy Houghton

Cristy's unique career has taken her from country NSW to the city lights of Clarendon Street South Melbourne and back again. With an early career in radio as a copywriter and creative strategist, she is now a Jill of all trades as a graphic designer, website builder, blog writer, video editor, social media manager, marketing strategist and more.

In fact, give her any task and this chick will figure out how to do it! Go on, we dare you!

No, really, we DARE you!!

Cristy has won two Australian Commercial Radio Awards (ACRAs) for Best Ad and Best Sales Promotion, and even has an 'Employee of the Year' certificate with her name on it.

Cristy and her husband James have traveled extensively through Russia, China and South East Asia, and have two fur-babies, Sooty (cat) and Panda (puppy). Cristy loves drinking coffee, meeting people to drink coffee, coffee tasting and coffee flavoured cocktails. She also enjoys road trips, TED Talks and watching cat videos on youtube.

http://www.embarketing.com.au