It is important to utilize all the social media tools effectively and efficiently to sustain in today’s business environment, which is hugely altered by the digital revolution- Instagram Story is one of them. Undoubtedly, it is getting really harder to gain proper exposure for your content on Instagram. According to an online survey, only 10% of the content you release reaches your followers.
To deal with the Instagram algorithms, many renowned brands are trying their luck on a feature that is rapidly gaining popularity among social media users. Your story feature of the Meta-owned platform Instagram now has almost 300 million daily active users. That means you can reach up to half of all Instagram users if you opt to use the story feature as your engagement medium.
Basics of the Instagram Story Feature
In short, this feature offers to share photos or videos in a slideshow format, which automatically disappears after 24 hours. You must be thinking about the basic difference between an Instagram post and a story, right? Actually, the main benefits of stories over a normal post are that this feature is an ultra-authentic and real-time sharing medium.
Undoubtedly, Instagram stories are fun and creative ways of communicating. But apart from this, they are one of the fastest ways to grow your account followers, create brand awareness, and even generate sales. That is why most of the businesses are paying great attention to this feature to grow their post engagement.
Ten key reasons why you should consider Instagram Story as your marketing strategy are as follows:
- Diversify Your Marketing Strategy
It is important to diversify the content you publish on your social media handle to keep your targeted audiences’ attention and fetch new potential audiences organically. Suppose you are currently not using Instagram, particularly the story feature of this platform. In that case, you must give it a try because you can simply use the existing resources you used on other social media platforms and attract more potential followers (or customers) to your account.
- Maintain Brand’s Visibility in Your Follower’s News Feed
The new algorithm model has been designed in such a way that your post appears on your followers’ feed has been reduced significantly. Because the new algorithm only promotes your content to a particular user according to its relevance. But if you opt for story posting instead of a regular post, it will always appear at the top of every follower’s feed. With this strategy, your brand visibility will certainly increase.
- Drive Sales
The main purpose of every strategy you take for marketing is to generate new sales. Stories are easily discoverable and always remain on the top of the feed, and that means the possibility of generating new leads is very high in this mode of marketing.
- Real-time Post Updates about your Product or Service
Are you modifying your existing product and want to give your audiences a real-time update about it? Then stories are the best medium to do it. You can also have your customers’ instant feedback about the modification before the product’s final launch.
- Create an Audience Poll
Instagram Story offers you a cool feature like creating an audience poll. It’s a fantastic option to drive more audience interactions in a very short time. You can create a relevant poll according to your business and let your followers get involved in it. You can observe a huge impact on your Instagram account growth using this technique.
- Run Ad Campaigns On Instagram Story
If you are new on Instagram and don’t have that many followers to interact with. Not to worry! You can run paid ad campaigns via Instagram stories. That means you will be exposed to more potential customers using this platform within a very short span. You can add external links to your story ad and get more traffic to your website through it.
- Go ‘Live’ on Insta Stories
This is another quick and very catchy song to grab your audience’s attention. In the live session, your audience can post their queries directly as a comment. Thus you can build a trust factor among them easily. And the best part of it is Instagram sends an individual notification to all your followers about your live session. Thus you remain top of the customer’s mind through a simple live session.
- Expand Your Brand Transparency
You can create a behind the scene video with your team and share it as a story on your business account. Thus your customer will get to know about the effort you and your team put into a particular product or service. Eventually, it will increase your overall brand’s reputation and transparency.
- Product Stickers
If your main target is to generate a direct sale from your Instagram story, using a product sticker is the best way. This product sticker will directly take the audience to the specific product you want to showcase. This is a great tool when launching a new product in your online store.
- Share Your Most Engaging Post as Story
The Instagram story also allows you to share the link of your previous post as a story. If one of your conventional posts has gone viral and got more engagement than any other posts, then you can re-share the same post as a story on your account. In this way, you can redirect new potential audiences to that particular post who may show great interest in it. More importantly, it is the easiest way to get free followers.
The Bottom Line
And last but not least, always consider checking the analytics software of your Instagram business account to know about the performance of your stories. You have to click the “Ïnsights” button in the top right corner of your profile, and you can track how your audiences are engaging with your story.
If you can use this tool efficiently, you can easily drive more engagement, create brand awareness, and even generate eCommerce sales.
