Instagram Stories for Marketing – Here’s what you should know

You probably have a brand up and running, and you’ve just joined Instagram and want to learn how to market your brand. While the internet has made it easy to find your target audience, your competition is also high, which means that you will have to post content and promote your brand incessantly to keep yourself afloat.

Creating new, engaging content and optimizing it to generate new leads regularly and boost your conversions is key to your success as a brand. You might be tempted to post a lot of content on your news feed. However, you run the risk of spamming your audience. Instead, you should opt for an option that many brands do not take as seriously as they should – Instagram stories.

The Fundamentals of Instagram Stories

As you may know, an Instagram story is one of the most useful features that Instagram has to offer content creators. It lets you post content that lasts temporarily – 24 hours.

Your followers may view your story and reply to it. Instagram stories are fantastic because they are temporary. You can post how much ever content you want without spamming concerns, as opposed to your Instagram feed. Instagram stories have many benefits. Here are a few:

• Holding polls, asking questions, encouraging replies, and taking their feedback.
• Replying to comments and creating content based on those comments and questions.
• Showing your followers what your life looks like and what they can expect from you.
• Posting different types of promotional content like images, text, video, to promote your brand.

What should you know about Instagram Stories?

As you utilize Instagram stories for brand promotion, you need to take various factors into consideration like improving engagement, brand recognition, boosting sales and conversions, and enhanced communication with your audience.

• You can further your brand recognition substantially by consistently posting content including pictures, videos, and so on, letting people know about your brand and industry, optimizing your Instagram posts to get the best engagement, and collaborating with Instagram influencers.

• Another thing you can do to increase your engagement with your audience is using polls and questions to engage them, replying to their comments, addressing their concerns, talking to them on your live stream, organizing contests, giveaways etc.

• You can also put out an Instagram story to promote a product that you feel your audience will find valuable. If you manage to trigger your followers’ curiosity, you must ensure you maximize this and seal the deal. Be sure to include a purchase link to the swipe up feature to let them check it out.

• Communication does not only mean talking to your audience and getting them to buy your products and services. It also means you show them that you value them and consider them a part of your community. If you are a brand worth your salt, you have to let your followers know you care about them. As mentioned, you need to reply to their comments, answer direct messages, re-post their posts when they tag you, give them a shout-out, prioritize customer service, and so on. Ultimately, customer service is key.

How to create Instagram stories to market your brand effectively?

There are several things you can do to use stories for promotion. Here are the main ones:

Release content

As you may have expected, produce content, and do it at scale.

• Make use of the create mode that shows you a blank space. You can use that and a selection of templates to help you start. Include text, interactive templates, post questions, organize polls, etc.

• You could also use the normal mode where you use an image or video from your gallery or photo album, or click a new photo using your camera and include some text or a GIF.

• The other option is using Instagram’s live feature to stream yourself live. This feature allows you to talk to your followers in real-time. Once you finish streaming, save the session and upload it later.

Market yourself wisely

Sure, killer content is the name of the game. But are you marketing it properly? Hiring an Instagram growth company is an excellent way to go about this.

• You need to invest time in looking for the right people and business profiles and tagging them in your stories to better your chances of getting them to see your posts without having to send them a private message. You also have a shot at exposing your content to an entirely new audience.

• Hashtags are indescribably valuable for Instagram marketing. They are highly underused. People post millions of posts with hashtags, which means you can click on the hashtags and find other pictures with the same hashtag. Why not look for hashtags relevant to your industry or niche and include them in your posts? Better yet, use your own hashtag for specific product launches or your brand itself. You may also use these hashtags in your contests, polls, and so on.

Promotion

Continual promotion is vital. A lot of brands worry about getting their Instagram verification done. However, promoting your content consistently to expand your fan-base is more important. Use targeted advertising once you identify your target audience. You could also categorize your most important stories into highlights for people to check out later. As you can see, Instagram stories can do you a lot of good if you want to promote your content and expand your brand.