Skip to content Visual content is unbeatable. People will always process visual information much faster than plain text or audio content, no matter how hard you try to write a compelling story or record an outstanding podcast. Social media developers realized it a long time ago and based entire platforms on images, infographics, and videos. But you need a marketing guide to creating Instagram stories.
At the same time, marketers also use this content strategy to target and approach potential customers. While platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter foster multimedia content, Instagram managed to attract more than 800 million monthly active users focusing almost exclusively on visual content.
To put it more precisely, Instagram inspires people to think about and express feelings or opinions through images or Stories – sets of correlated images.
Here is an interesting story that perhaps will inspire you.
In 1960 two men made a bet. There was only $50 on the line, but millions of people would feel the impact of this little wager. The first man, Bennett Cerf, was the founder of the publishing firm, Random House.
The second man was named Theo Geisel, but you probably know him as Dr. Seuss. Cerf proposed the bet and challenged that Dr. Seuss would not be able to write an entertaining children’s book using only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss took the bet and won.
The result was a little book called Green Eggs and Ham. Since publication, Green Eggs and Ham has sold more than 200 million copies, making it the most popular of Seuss’s works and one of the best-selling children’s books in history.
t first glance, you might think this was a lucky fluke. A talented author plays a fun game with 50 words and ends up producing a hit. But there is actually more to this story and the lessons in it can help us become more creative and stick to better habits over the long-run.
The marketing potential of a guide to Instagram stories
Although Snapchat was the first to introduce the story feature, Instagram quickly managed to respond and offer its version of the same product. According to the research, Snapchat saw a big drop when Instagram launched Stories in 2016.
Digital marketers immediately realized the potential of the new feature and started creating Story-based campaigns. It proved to be a big success, but marketers can still learn a lot about this communication channel.
There are many ways to enhance your Stories strategy, so we decided to show you the top 10 options in that respect. Let’s check them out!
Exploit Geolocation
Audience targeting is the first step towards successful marketing. For this reason, it’s not enough to rely on generic features. You need to micro-segment your target groups instead and address specific sets of consumers. To do so, you have to exploit geolocation. There are three basic ways to do it.
First of all, you can choose geolocation for the scheduled Instagram Stories. Most places are already listed as potential geo targets, but you can set up your location in case none of these suits your business.
The second thing you can do is to add the geotag sticker to Instagram Stories. It doesn’t only reveal your location but also makes your Story more interesting and interactive.
The last option is to add location hashtags. It doesn’t require any special knowledge as you only have to enter a hashtag that precisely describes your location. Local Instagram followers will recognize it immediately and engage with your content more actively.
Remember to Use Stories Highlights
A guide to Instagram stories is a special type of ephemeral content that disappears after 24 hours. Younger audiences find this feature very entertaining, but some Stories can become so successful that you want to make them permanently available.
Stories Highlights give you the opportunity to display evergreen content forever. Adding Stories to Highlights is a simple procedure. You can turn on this feature on your profile for every post separately. There is an arrow next to your Instagram name where you can access your Highlights.
If you haven’t created any Stories so far, you won’t see anything in the Highlights menu. But as soon as you start publishing Stories, you will see a Highlight option that enables you to activate permanent visibility of a post.
Don’t Forget Hashtags
We already mentioned how important audience targeting is for Instagram Stories. Hashtags are another way to make the visual content more efficient because they help you to reach the right group of followers promptly.
Namely, Instagram users don’t pay attention to every topic, brand, or product; On the contrary, they carefully choose who or what to follow so you need to understand their preferences. Using relevant hashtags, you will approach the right kind of audience and let them discover your Stories quickly.
As a matter of fact, hashtag relevance became much more important in 2018. Instagram users can now flag inappropriate hashtags (Don’t Show for This Hashtag) and prevent your campaigns from reaching them. Besides that, Instagram will detect your Stories as spam in case you constantly add the same hashtags to your content.
However, there are some good changes as well. For instance, you can now analyze each post by the number of different traits, including hashtag productivity. It’s a great option because you can discover hashtags that produce the best results for your marketing campaigns.
Tag Instagram Influencers
Successful social media marketers are aware of the power of word of mouth. One of the easiest ways to increase brand awareness with Instagram Stories is to tag Instagram influencers. Of course, you should do it carefully, or else you’ll cause a negative reaction.
But if you can establish a good relationship with influencers, they will be willing to share their popularity with you. This is a win-win situation because you will probably introduce part of your followers to these social influencers.
But how exactly do you contact an Instagram influencer? It’s not rocket science, but it does require strategic thinking. It all depends on the nature of your niche or business, but most importantly you need to be polite, friendly, brief, and straightforward.
Create Opinion Polls
Opinion polls are always a good way to engage your Instagram audience. The reason is simple – polls give people the opportunity to express their opinion, which makes them feel acknowledged and appreciated. Instagram Stories are not an exception in that respect, so you should use this tool to make the marketing campaign more productive.
How can you do it? Once again, the process is easy to complete. There is a sticker icon on the screen – you should click on it and choose the “POLL” option from the menu bar.
Everybody can take advantage of this Stories feature. Fashion designers can ask followers to choose favorite colors; sports clubs can invite fans to predict the result, etc. The options are countless, and it’s only up to you to think of a good poll and engage the audience.
Add Links to Stories
Adding links to social media content is the best way to invite people to take concrete action, but this option did not exist on Instagram until recently. Today, you can add URLs to Instagram Stories in case you have more than 10 thousand followers.
If you’ve been struggling to increase the follower base but didn’t see concrete benefits so far, now is the payback time. Links you add to Instagram Stories are practically called to action that can turn passive content consumers into active participants.
Send Direct Messages
Direct communication is the best type of interaction. It’s a time-consuming process, but it grants you access to every single person on your follower list. Sending customizes messages; you can prove to potential customers that you care for them and want to build a long-term relationship.
However, you need to know how things work in this area. Teresa Jones, a digital marketing specialist at Best Essays, recently noted: “You can’t just address a follower out of sudden and expect him to be thrilled about it. On the contrary, each Instagram message must have a concrete purpose”.
In that respect, you should pay attention to three important elements of direct messaging via Instagram:
Personalization: A communication with your followers must be formal but polite. It’s good to call them by their names and provide them with useful information or entertaining content.
Avoid group messaging: The whole point of direct messaging is to avoid talking to multiple followers simultaneously. When you send group messages, you prevent customization and need to stick to the more general style of communication.
Avoid auto-responders: The idea of immediately answering or thanking users might seem great at first, but it’s a poor practice. Why? That is because it dehumanizes your brand and gives followers the impression of talking to robots instead of a real person.
GIF-based Stories
If you thought it’s impossible to add GIFs to Instagram Stories, you were wrong. It’s a relatively new feature (available since 2018), so most marketers still don’t know anything about it. You can use GIFs for a variety of reasons.
For instance, GIFs can make your stories more amusing and funnier. At the same time, GIFs can help you to share news and brand updates more efficiently. As always, your inspiration plays a major role, and you should find a way to integrate stories and GIFs to fit the overall style and values of your brand.
Use the Type Mode feature
Have you noticed how all social platforms are trying to come up with a more unusual feature, artwork, or style? Well, Instagram is no different than competitors, so it recently added a new option called the Type Mode.
This component of Instagram Stories allows you to change fonts, background colors, writing styles, or illustrations. You can find it on your camera, under the Record button and next to the Normal Mode. You only need to click the Type button to try out a variety of different designs.
Ads in Instagram Stories
No matter how hard you try, sometimes you won’t be able to increase brand awareness on Instagram organically. Even the biggest brands use paid advertising to stand above competitors, so you should not run away from this feature either.
Fortunately, you can place ads on Instagram Stories as well. But there is a catch – you can’t do it on your own Stories. What you can do is to place promo banners next to other people’s stories. Although it seems wrong and counterintuitive at first, it’s a great thing because it allows you to advertise using two different channels.
The first channel is your own Instagram Story, while the second channel represents Stories shared by other Instagram accounts. Of course, you should keep in mind that all ads must be highly relevant and informative if you want to grab the attention of an average Instagram user.
A combination of education and entertainment is often the best solution for Instagram advertising. You should create ads that speak a lot about your brand while still keeping the informal tone and adding a slice of humor.
The bottom line
Visual content is dominating the social media universe, which is the main reason why Instagram attracts millions of users every day. The platform became even more popular in 2016 when it launched its version of Stories.
Marketers immediately seized the opportunity to create Stories-based campaigns, but some of them failed to reach the full potential of this feature. Stories give you a wide variety of interesting options, and you should learn how to exploit them all effectively.
In this post, we showed you the top 10 ways to use Instagram Stories in marketing campaigns. Did you already try some of these features? Do you have other interesting suggestions to share with our readers?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing created by remarkable customer service. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing strategies. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
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Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
