With over 500 million daily active users, Instagram is one of the top social media platforms used today for both personal and business purposes.
Similar to the other popular social media platforms like Facebook & Snapchat, Instagram has the features of posting photos, videos, commenting, direct messaging, & even posting stories. All of these are great features to have, yet one of these seems to be a key part of potential success for businesses on social media: Instagram Stories.
Why should a business use Instagram Stories?
Instagram Stories give marketers one of the best opportunities to reach a large portion of their target audience. This encourages users to visit your profile & stories more often and even stay on for a longer amount of time. Beginning a new marketing method can be overwhelming, but one of the best things about Instagram stories is that the content can be whatever you want it to be; you have complete control. Instagram is constantly updating features, so whatever content you want to be published can be “spiced up”, making it more effective. A third of the most viewed Instagram Stories are from businesses (embedsocial, 2019), so take advantage of this!
Be yourself!
What’s important to remember when creating your own content is to not worry too much about the language or style of it. In fact, users tend to connect more when they are reading posts that sound like an everyday conversation you would have with a friend. If you’re posting a video, make it fun! Overall, just be yourself! The easier it is to connect, the easier it will be to sustain customer loyalty.
Increase Engagement
Using Instagram Stories also allows your business to be top of mind with your audience. Frequently and consistently posting on your Story encourages users to check your business profile for the most recent posts. This is a great way to keep your users engaged because they have more opportunities to interact and become more familiar with your business.
Instagram has become such an interactive network that it can now generate 4x more interactions compared to Facebook. After releasing the story feature, Instagram engagement “increased by 29% between october 2017 and may 2018” which highlights how effective instagram has become (Socialbakers, 2018).
Real-Time and Go Live
Stories are also a great way to incorporate the use of real-time marketing within your business. By using Instagram’s “Go Live” feature, you can easily post live during special events, sales, or any other event that may be beneficial.
Doing this does two things for your business:
Encourages users to attend the next event
Help those who can’t be there to experience it in person can feel connected to you & your business at the tip of their fingers
Instagram has grown to be so popular over the years that it has become a great way to connect businesses with customers. If you’re just getting started on using Instagram stories for your business, a suggestion I have for you is to create a “Welcome Story” that introduces yourself and your business. In this story, you can even ask others to introduce themselves as well!
So tap that camera icon in the top left corner of your Instagram homepage and post that first story!