How to Use Instagram Stories To Grow Your Online Audience

Instagram Stories feature lets users publish photos, texts, and videos that appear on the platform for 24 hours after posting it.

They are also interesting and fun. Instagram Stories can also boost organic traffic and bring attention to your website. You can make them as interactive as you like, giving your followers excellent reasons to engage with your brand and even come back for more.

So, are you tapping into Instagram Stories as part of your social media marketing strategy?

Maybe you have already published a couple of stories, but you are quite unsure how to turn them into sales. Instagram will help you craft more engagement, brand awareness, and conversions. In fact, most brands today tap into it to promote themselves and their audience.

Here are some useful tips on how you can fully implement it in your social media strategy and grow your audience over time.

Post Daily IG Stories

IG stories can last in the platform only for 24 hours, and each time you post a new Story in your content, your profile image will have a red circle around it, which draws your audience’s attention.

When you publish content daily, you are creating a repository of content that you can recycle later on.

Leverage Story Highlights

It is possible to categorize your stories and share them again via the Stories Highlights feature. It is an excellent way to show the stories you have done in the past, as you follow a specific theme.

The stories you have highlighted will show up on top of your profile as well. Categorizing it makes it easier for other users to look for the content that they are potentially interested in.

Imagine your Story Highlights as if it is a movie trailer. At this point, it is time to get creative and show off your products or services in a way that attracts your target market. That’s why we always recommend using Story Highlight in showing some of the behind-the-scenes footage of events you have participated in.

You can also do the same to highlight the industry experts that you interview. You can even show photos of your customers who bought and are using your products.

Use Polls, Questions, and Swipe Meter

Polls are a great way to survey your audience and ask them for feedback. You can utilize this feature for the development of your new products.

Meanwhile, questions go with an “ask me anything” format, which lets you share anything. Your followers can also ask you questions, as they learn more about your brand, as well as the team behind it.

Finally, the swipe meter lets you survey your audience so that you could figure out their thoughts on something.

You can utilize it if you want to know much your followers are interested in a particular product, outfit, recipe, and so on.

Add Hashtags to Your Stories

Just like with regular IG posts, you can also use hashtags in your Stories. In fact, a lot of accounts double their number of views just by simply using specific hashtags. So why not experiment a little, and then see what happens.

For best results, use hashtags that are broader and more popular, as long as they stay relevant with your content. Then, keep track of your results and use specific hashtags for your brand and content.

Use a Call to Action

Do you want users to take action after they view your Story? Then you need to give them a little push.

A highly effective call-to-action (CTA) will turn your Story from just purely entertainment to driving in sales for your business.

If you want to include a link in your Story, you should place a call-to-action to entice people to swipe up. When you place a link in your Story, Instagram will place a small arrow with the text “See More” found on the bottom of the post.

But remember these people will know nothing about what they will see when they swipe your Story. So why should they even do so, in the first place? What will they find in the link?

Well, it is up to you to tell them.

Use Videos in Stories

More and more businesses are tapping into the power of videos. In fact, it is expected that the majority of traffic online will be mostly videos by 2021.

Instagram gives you a way to share your recorded videos as if they are live videos through the Stories feature.

Remember that Instagram is already saturated. A great way to stand out from the rest of the pack and boost your brand’s visibility is through live videos. Even if you have a lot of competition, you would likely get noticed.

Share Personal Stories

People will always be naturally curious about how things work. To feed that curiosity, you can share stories about your brands and products, all about the experiences of your previous customers, the process of building your products or even get to know some of your employees.

Instagram stories help humanize your brand, making it more relatable to your audience, so that you can connect with them at a much deeper level. Get personal with your viewers by sharing a couple of behind the scenes.

Use the Swipe Up feature

As of the moment, the Swipe Up feature is only available for accounts that have 10,000 followers or more. So if you have not reached that yet, it is an excellent goal to aim for.

Once you have this feature, you can place it at the end of your Stories to entice people to swipe up and learn more about your brand. This usually directs people to your website, helping them learn more about your products and services.

Get Creative

It is time to be innovative and experiment with various features like GIFs, background music, font types, and so on.

See to it that the app you are using is always updated. That way, you will be one of the first few to know if there are brand new features that are being introduced. This also significantly affects your engagement. 

Final Word

If you want to boost your reach and to follow on Instagram, then it is high time that you tap into its Stories feature and include it as a vital part of your overall strategy.

About the Author

Kevin Urrutia is the founder of Voy Media Advertising Agency NYC. He helps businesses maximize the benefits of Facebook Advertising, leading to a dramatic improvement in sales while pushing down costs. Voy Media thoroughly studies each client and comes up with tailor-fit solutions to bring about the best results.