Do you really think Instagram posts are better than a story for a business and a brand? Does the relevance of the content disappear with the story?
The new features of Instagram stories have made them inevitable and can act as catalysts for growth to your business.
Around 500 million active users use Instagram Stories & over 1 million advertisers place Insta Story Ads at least once a month. Businesses who have started using this feature are able to efficiently increase customer engagements.
Instagram stories are similar to snapchat stories they are viewable for 24 hrs & they appear on the top of the followers’ feed-in colorful ring format, they consist of vertical photos & videos for 15 seconds. You can add GIFs, Stickers, Location & Mention people in your story.
After the introduction of this story feature of Instagram, the number of snapchat users has gone down to 60%. The advantage of Instagram stories is that a user can search a specific brand/business/blogger etc and look into the profiles story or details without following them.
Let’s dive into some of its Features & know how beneficial they can be:
- Live Videos, an ultimate real-time video feature that helps to create conversations with users. It can be used for launching a new product or demonstrating its features, hosting an interview or a Q&A, recording the live events in the company. Around 100 million Instagrammers watch or post live videos. Through this, the brand/business can connect new or larger audiences.
- Boomerang- A super short & fast video, played forward & backward stitching burst photos into a mini video. This is an interesting feature to showcase topical content.
- Story highlights – A business or a brand can promote its products or showcase its important memories by pinning down the Instagram stories into different categories. This feature can be used as a digital brochure by the brands.
- Polls- If a brand wants to understand their customer’s views, then this is the best feature to use. This is useful to connect and converse with the consumers on a daily basis.
- Questions- A way through which a brand builds transparency among its customers by letting them ask questions related to the brand, an open forum for specific customer feedback. (check again)
- Count down- This can be used for deadlines, offer announcements, any campaign/contest alert, etc. by keeping as a reminder in the minds of the users.
- Links- An account that has more than 10k followers can access this feature. They can add a link to their stories with “Swipe up” heading alert. The links can either direct to website or shop now, book today, order now. Around 15-25% of people swipe up brand stories.
- Reaction Slider- An interesting and funny way of keeping the followers engaged & understanding how much they like the product by their response towards it
- Hashtag- If a specific #hashtag is used in relevance with the content of the story. It appears under that hashtag for 24hrs hours
- Stickers/GIFs/Emojis all these are used to make the story look more attractive
- Mention & Repost- A person can mention a brand or another person to its story & it gives that account an option to repost it. In this way, the brands can repost the stories in which the users have mentioned them.
- Location- Adding a location to your story makes it visible to the users from that location, hence the best way to geo-target the users.
All these features of Instagram together give a brand/business a unique way of presenting itself in front of the audience & keeping them engaged. Instagram stories are best for business announcements, new product, live events, specific details, sneak peek into the activities of the brand etc a better way of not cluttering the profile with too many posts.
The relevance of the content doesn’t disappear. It gives them the freedom to play with the content in a very interesting manner & promoting the brand, engaging the customers & maintaining brand loyalty.
If you need any guidance regarding Instagram stories for your business/brand? Get in touch with us now. You can write to us at [email protected] or say hi on Facebook / Twitter / or Instagram.
