Step forward Instagram Stories! With stories, every single follower will have the opportunity to view your content. By posting to Instagram Stories regularly, you have a better chance of reaching viewers as they browse their daily stories. The more they watch, like and comment, the higher up you’ll appear in their Stories.
As Stories only last 24-hours they’re also a super fun and an effective way to show off your personality and get your audience engaged. In this blog, our social superstars outline a few tried and tested tactics that you can use to increase your Instagram engagement using Stories.
Try polls, questions & quizzes
Using these strategies encourage your audience for feedback. Followers love this too because they feel like their input matters. There are tons of different ways you can use this feature and so many questions that will get your audience thinking, anything from ‘Who has the best lunch?’ to ‘What is your favourite branding?’ will get people reacting to your story.
Use the swipe up feature
If you have more than 10,000 followers you will automatically have this feature, so if you are not quite there yet it’s a good growth aim to hit. The feature allows you to link a URL such as a recent blog post, offers and more.
A super handy feature to have as Instagram posts will not allow you to link a URL.
Use hashtags
This is very useful to reach more people. When people search for a hashtag on Instagram you will be found and if it’s popular enough you will be featured and people will be able to view active real-time stories. If the audience likes what they see, they will then most likely follow your account.
Cross-promote your content
This is a great tool which can work two ways. Use posts to push followers to your Stories, adding something like ‘Don’t forget to check out our live today at 12pm!’ or ‘Top tips added on our story throughout the day’. This subconsciously reminds your audience to look out for your content.
The same goes with Stories, you can add your post to your story and add a sticker such as ‘tap here’ - this is a genius way to get more engagement on your posts as people can easily miss posts on their Instagram feed. Be sure to add a call to action to direct your audience on where to go.
Countdown
Another terrific feature Stories has is a countdown sticker. Do you have an event coming up? A sale ending soon? Launching a new product or service?
A great way to get your audience buzzing is for them to have something to act on or look forward to. When your followers tap the countdown sticker they will be watching the countdown and when the time has run out they will receive a notification to check back in with your post and feed.
Use the mention sticker
The key to using the mention sticker is to only use it where necessary, for example, if you have collaborated with another brand and would like to give them a shoutout.
Another example is if you have brought some business merchandise from a shop and they have Instagram, why not mention them to show your gratitude? This will help them win more engagement and if they repost it to their story then it gives your business more engagement too, what a win-win!
Our Top tips
- Understand what resonates with your audience
- Stories are fun, so don’t be afraid to get creative
- Use stickers, animations and gifs
- Be personable
- Use call to actions
- Post frequently
- Try boomerangs and videos
- Most importantly… enjoy!
It is worth remembering though that stories only last for 24 hours, after that you can save them onto your profile as highlights.
Not getting the most out of your company Instagram? Speak to our team today about social media management and social media advertising.
