The Complete Guide to Using Instagram Stories for Business

Instagram Stories should be part of any brand’s marketing strategy. They help you efficiently connect and engage with your audience, boost visual branding, and build authentic relationships that foster customer loyalty.

Moreover, the short lifespan of Stories brings a sense of exclusivity. In fact, 39% of people have become more interested in a brand after seeing it on Stories, which makes this format excellent for getting more leads and conversions.

If you want to jump in on this hot trend, today’s article guides you through the top tips for using Instagram Stories the right way in 2022.

Define Your Brand’s Identity

When publishing Stories, you don’t have to go all-in with production. In fact, by blending in with what regular users post, you can create a less intrusive user experience. However, you shouldn’t overlook the basics of visual branding.

Consistent visuals help you establish and nurture a relationship with your audience; they will be able to recognize your Stories even without checking the username. In addition to using your brand’s colors and fonts, be consistent with the gifs and Stories templates.

Create Branded Highlights

Instagram Stories last up to 24 hours, but Highlights let you extend their shelf life. When creating Highlights, think strategically. For example, you may want to make a highlight Story for each product you launch so that users can quickly discover your offering.

Create a different category for each topic, and make sure to update your highlights regularly. Adding new Stories to a highlight will push it to the front of the queue, giving it more visibility. Consider also creating custom cover images for Highlights to stay on-brand.

Monitor the Competition

The Small Business Blog suggests that monitoring your competitors is critical for any business marketing strategy. It provides you with helpful insight into what your direct competitors are doing and how they engage users. You can use that actionable data to stay ahead of trends and differentiate yourself.

If you don’t want your competitors to know you’re watching their Stories, you can use a third-party Instagram Story viewer. This tool lets you watch Stories from public accounts anonymously and even save them.

Share Important Announcements

Instagram Stories are great for sharing important announcements such as new product launches, introducing new staff members, or making general updates.

These moments are also an excellent opportunity to post behind-the-scenes footage and make your followers feel closer to your brand. By giving a peek behind the scenes, you can convey the human side of your business while boosting engagement and brand awareness.

Create Shareable Brand Assets

Creating visually appealing and shareable assets for your Stories can be an excellent tool for boosting your virality. For example, you can post branded templates that users can screenshot and personalize. Moreover, you can repurpose important content into graphics, use Q&A templates, how-to visuals, recipe cards, and more.

The key is to design assets that will resonate with your target audience. Finally, make your branding visible so that you benefit from each share.

Use Questions to Engage Users

The question sticker made it possible for brands to talk directly with their audience. You can ask them any burning questions or have them ask the questions themselves. This is a fantastic feature for building a community and encouraging customer interaction. You’ll show how much you value your customers’ opinions while also getting closer to your audience. In addition, you get a unique opportunity to present your brand as reliable and human.

Poll Your Audience

Thanks to the Instagram Stories poll feature, you can get answers from your audience with just a tap. It’s a great way to spark interactions with your followers but also conduct market research and get valuable customer feedback.

The poll sticker is versatile, so you can also use it to learn more about your followers and even crowdsource ideas for new content.

Leverage the “Add Yours” Sticker

The “Add Yours” is a relatively new sticker on Instagram Stories. Its purpose is to allow you to create content chains on Stories with other users. This feature encourages your followers to respond to your posts uniquely and interactively. In a way, you’ll be starting a trend or a challenge. The benefits for businesses are huge; you’ll get more exposure and higher engagement.

You should simply add a Story photo or video relevant to your business, tap the sticker, write a catchy prompt, and you’ll be good to go.

Conclusion

Instagram Stories are a powerful marketing channel for businesses. Hopefully, these few tips and tricks will help you use it to its full potential. However, you choose to use Stories, make sure to be creative and focused on boosting engagement and nurturing authentic relationships with your audience.