Instagram Stories: Tips For Your Business

Are you using Instagram Stories for your business?

Because you should be.

Instagram has constantly evolved WITH businesses and users to make their story function exceptionally efficient.

Your audience can get behind-the-scenes footage, be more interactive and get a real-life peek at content that isn’t necessarily “Instagram straight flexin'” (you know, not as aesthetically pleasing).

Increase Your Discover-ability

Instagram has actually added stickers that provide a direct link to where you are and the hashtags you use! Meaning that people can actually search for and find all of the rad things that your company is doing. Just click on the ‘Stickers‘ button and select Location or Hashtag. It’s THAT easy!

Create Some Hype

Meet the COUNTDOWN sticker! This is the ~perrrrfect~ feature to amp up an upcoming event or announce a big launch date! You can name your countdown anything you want (Countdown name: Days Until I On-board with SOS) and pick the end date and time. Anybody can follow your countdown and share it to their story! Talk about an opportunity to get your audience jacked up.

Brand Yourself

Instagram has given us some super fun features to add to our stories. You can basically set the tone for your branding, voice, and colour scheme just by using stories. Do you have an easygoing, lighthearted brand? Throw in some funny GIFs!

Do you have a moody brand? Throw the perfect black-and-white filter on a picture of you standing against a wall with your arms crossed. Now you look Insta low-key. Not to mention, you can even add your own fonts and colours now! That’s kind of a #protip though, so we’ll leave that to the professionals (AKA us…we are the professionals).

Highlights

I bet you haven’t seen the opportunity to flawlessly separate products/services from your biz since 2018 Shopify. Highlights are found on your main Instagram profile, right under your bio. Use the highlights to draw attention to different parts of your business or to separate events, topics, etc.

All of your highlights are separated beautifully and create a seamless transition for your audience!

Drive Traffic To Your Website

Did you know that you can actually drive traffic to your website via Instagram? You don’t even necessarily have to spend money to do it. If you have over 10,000 followers (whoa, Instagram influencer status), you can have a swipe-up function that brings users to your website. This tool has proved to be extremely helpful in terms of sales, leads, and website traffic.

You know, we are all just looking for something that makes like a little easier. Instagram’s new swipe-up function does that for you. And if you have LESS than 10K followers? You can still promote your Instagram stories and choose whether you want to send people to your profile or website. You can even prompt them to message you via direct message.

Encourage Users to Subscribe to You

Not everyone knows that this feature is available. You can actually subscribe to your favourite Instagrammers now! Subscribers will be notified every time you post.

Don’t want to get lost in the slew of Instagram competition? Encourage your followers to Subscribe to your stories.

Be Interactive With Your Audience

Cue a world that allows us to be interactive with consumers WITHOUT having to sit on the phone all day. Instagram has introduced Question and Poll Stickers! This feature means that you can ask your audience questions and take polls.

For example, a clothing company can ask: “What product do you want us to drop next? (A) Pineapple shorts (B) Graphic T-Shirts (C) Leggings”

Spoiler alert: The answer is A.

Seriously though, this tool is HUGELY helpful to business owners. Whether you offer a product, service, or online blog, you can get a better feel of what your audience wants to see. Also, you can host a Q&A and humanize your brand by letting users ask you personal questions – like what your favourite cereal is. (If your favourite cereal doesn’t have AT LEAST 60 grams of sugar per serving, then I automatically assume that you’re one of those *MOODY* brands with your arms crossed).