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Whether you are a business or you are trying to grow your own personal brand, one of the best ways you can do this is by leveraging Instagram stories. Unlike posted content, Instagram stories have a finite amount of life, they stay on your feed for 24 hours and can give your Instagram followers a snapshot of what you’re up to rather than posting all of your activities to your feed. If you’re not sure where to start, don’t worry, we’re here to help. Here is what you should share.
Reviews
If you are a business, why not use the stories function to show your followers what other users think of your product or service? You can screen shot a few reviews and then upload them onto your story. If you do this across multiple stories you are giving potential customers a good idea of the service, they can expect from you. It also means that you can post multiple stories with different reviews that they have to click through rather than just one post that they may not engage with.
Text
Stories are an excellent way to do just that, tell a story. You aren’t limited with the amount you can upload, and you can really give your followers a narrative with what’s going on You have more artistic freedom with stories than you do posts. You don’t need to be as curated on stories, you can over lay text and make it look like a scrap book if you so wish. If you are creating product, why not upload the step-by-step process of it, or just a snapshot of the process. You can put the text on the story to let your customers know exactly what they are looking at.
Time Sensitive Deals
One of the best things about stories is that they disappear after 24 hours, this means that you can really capitalise on the urgency of this. If you are working with a brand that you want to get other people to buy into, or you want to increase your sales over a short period of time, why not upload a discount code to your story. Not only is there a higher likelihood of people seeing it and clicking through, but you should also see an increase in the number of sales. People love a deal, especially if they feel as though the same deal won’t be there tomorrow.
Polls
Want to know the inner most workings of your followers or customers? Why make a guess when you can ask. Instagram stories allow you to ask questions and get the answers by using vote options. You also aren’t limited to how many of these you can use, as there is no upper limit on stories. If you have burning questions about which direction your current brand should go in or whether or not customers would like to see a change, why not ask them? You can use the voting set up where customers/followers can one of two options. This way you can really get an insight into what your client base is thinking. The access you have to your market is unapparelled with previous times and a marketers dream, so why not capitalise on it.
You!
People buy from people that they like; this has been proven time and time again the world over. So, utilise the stories and show your best self. You can film yourself giving an introduction to your brand or business. If you have staff working with you, why not introduce your audience to them? The more personal you can make your business, service or brand, the better off you will be as customers or followers will want to engage with you. This also gives you a level of transparency that we haven’t seen before in the business world and this humanising reduces the barriers to entry for customers.
Final Thoughts
Instagram stories aren’t far off a gift from God if you know how to use them.
You can show your customers/followers a side of you that can’t promote on your feed, without disrupting the curated layout. Not only can you make your business and brand more transparent, but you can also get customer feedback which can help you forge a new path that you may not have considered previously.
All in all, Instagram stories are an excellent way to increase engagement, and gain access and insight into your customers that you wouldn’t have had previously.
