Instagram has recently become one of the important social networking platforms that many businesses seek to use in more professional ways to reach more users, target them with marketing messages that are relevant to their interests, and encourage them to constantly interact with the content they publish.
But there’s more than just the usual posting of photos and videos every week. Instagram’s stories are an important feature that can be used professionally to increase the rate of interaction with your brand and ultimately acquire new customers.
Indicate reports that the publication of content through stories feature will be the basic feature of the social networking platforms during 2019, as the posts through the stories grow at a rate 15 times faster than posts based news feeds because of the presence of more than one billion users of this feature on Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp and Snap Chat, and for companies that rely on social networking platforms to reach their customers, this presents new opportunities for them, although there are some challenges.
Stories are another platform that requires more attention and follow-up, and perhaps this news is not welcome by businesses that are already making great efforts to manage content across multiple social media channels. Stories require a mix of videos, photos and professional designs, but from It is difficult to ignore the power of their impact and the potential return on investment. In other words, the use of stories may not be an option for business activities, but rather a prerequisite.
Here are 5 ways to use Instagram stories professionally to promote your brand:
1. Encourage interaction and public reaction
Instagram stories can be a great way to get customer feedback, ideas, and evaluate feelings about products and services as well as new ideas you want to test.
Simple and effective ways to do this include using survey features and Ask Question. Which enables you to get a better understanding of what your audience likes and dislikes, and you can plan the content of social networking accounts through the answers you might get.
2. Design templates for stories dedicated to your brand
Remember that Instagram is the social media platform that primarily relies on visual content – in the news feed or in stories – so keep your brand consistent with stories with custom templates, to dazzle followers and encourage them to interact.
Design platforms like Canva provide an easy way to create these templates, and then add the usual story features like GIFs, Hashtags, and polls. Using a custom template for your brand will show your stories as professional and distinct among competitors.
3. Diversification of the submitted content
It’s important to think about the type of content that fits your brand audience, and you should diversify content such as: contests, behind-the-scenes footage, collaborating with influencers or employees to talk about product development and new features.
Effective stories are an essential feature for many users – the desire to share their own photos and videos and see themselves on the screen, rather than just watching others. Some brands have been able to discover ways to produce high-quality content through users and leverage followers to enhance brand credibility.
Competitions are one of the most popular types of content to encourage interaction on social networking platforms in general, including Instagram, so you must hold contests regularly to keep your followers competitive and interactive. You must, of course, assign a prize to the winners but not necessarily expensive.
There are many types of content that keep your stories fresh and encourage your audience to pay attention to what you offer, and as stories tend to be more “exclusive” they help strengthen relationships with your brand followers.
4. Use tags to reach a larger audience
Instagram’s stories are a great way to get more people to discover your content and follow your brand. So be sure to use relevant tags within your stories to make it easier for your target audience to reach your content when they search for it.
Including a large number of tags is a good practice recommended when posting content on Instagram with an average of 9 tags per publication according to the user guide for the tags published on the Hootsuite blog, where it was found that including this number of tags helps to obtain the highest rate Interaction, but provided that such tags are appropriate for the published content.
Also use the Signals feature, especially if you’re a local company or service, helping your story appear in search results when someone searches for the tag you’ve used or the site.
5. Include a call-to-action call
Do not forget that some of the key goals of social media marketing are to increase brand awareness and engagement to build relationships with potential customers; however, there is still a need to use call-to-action, which can be used in Instagram stories , Because regular viewers of your stories are already excited about your brand, so they have a desire to act based on what you include in calls for certain actions, such as visiting your website, product page, or purchasing directly.