How to Use Instagram Stories to Boost Your Brand Engagement

04/03/2019 | Share:

Whether you already use Instagram for your business, or you only have a personal account currently, you’ll most likely be familiar with Instagram Stories. Showing snippets into users’ lives via static image, video, text or music (and sometimes all 4- and then some!), Instagram Stories provide a great opportunity for your brand to show a new, more personal side to grab the attention of both new and existing followers. Using Instagram Stories for your business can help to drive traffic to your website, as well as build brand awareness- you’ve got nothing to lose by giving it a try!

Set Yourself Up

First things first- if you’re not already using Instagram for Businesses (a free tool which gives you access to additional features that personal accounts don’t have), then you’ll need to set your brand account up as a business to benefit from some of the following tips.

It’s really easy to do this- just go into the ‘Settings’ menu and choose ‘Switch to business profile’- then you’re good to go!

Have Something to Say

Make sure you’ve got your message secured before you decide to post a story on a whim. Think about what you want to say- or rather, what your followers want to hear. You don’t have to be promoting a huge sale or a shiny new product, you just need to show your followers something that will stop them in their tracks when flicking through the latest Stories. Post content that conveys the everyday life of your brand- show that there’s a human presence behind the product.

Highlight Your Brand

You can easily showcase interesting or useful content on your profile so that you don’t need to keep reposting it, by creating an archive called a ‘Highlight’. These will always appear on your page when someone visits it, so they can watch these Stories no matter how long ago they were posted. Do you get asked the same question in your Instagram messages over and over again? You could set up an ‘FAQs’ highlight and answer common questions here, so you can simply refer customers to this as required. Make bespoke covers for your highlights reel so that it’s easy for viewers to distinguish between them- all you have to do is create the graphic, post it to your story, and save this as the cover for the highlight it relates to.

Use Video

Imagine you’re tapping through the last Stories in your feed- if there is some movement in one of them, would you be more likely to stop and watch? The answer is most likely yes. Obviously the quality of both the video itself and the content are important factors- if you’ve had any professional video footage taken of someone wearing/using your product, why not use snippets of this in your Stories? Watching your product come to life is much more likely to get your followers’ attention than a static image.

Keep It Clean

If you’ve got a lot to say, don’t fill one Story with your entire message, especially if this means squeezing in loads of text onto one slide. By keeping the layout of your Stories clean, you maximise their impact- plus, you can repost the same Story with added content (just make sure you have this turned on in your Settings > Privacy and security > Story controls > Save to camera roll) so it displays as multiple Stories- think of it as the new PowerPoint presentation!

Make Your Story ‘Shoppable’

When showing products in your Story, you can add stickers to these to turn them into links to the product on your website. This means that if your followers like what they see, they can buy it within a couple of clicks, and don’t have to go to the effort of going to your website and searching for it themselves (which they’re unlikely to do unless they are really invested in the product)- this means more sales for you!