Use Instagram Stories Like A Social Media Pro

March, 2021

Instagram Story marketing is the key to your fast content and fun images.

It doesn’t always have to be curated, but there does have to be strategy when it comes to marketing your business on Instagram Stories.

People consume Instagram Stories like they do TV. Swiping pausing, laughing - Instagram Stories fill in the gaps between classes, meetings, and at the end of the day. Instagram Stories is how people discover new brands and shop for products and services.

The best thing about marketing on Instagram Stories is that you don’t need to be a professional behind the camera to make it work. Instagram Stories are all about the uncurated and behind-the-scenes look and feel. It allows your audience glimpses into your brand and who you are.

How to post an Instagram Story

1. In the app on your phone, never your desktop, navigate to your newsfeed. In the upper left corner you’ll see your profile pic with a blue plus sign. Tap that.

2. Here, your camera lens opens along with options on the left and two rows at the bottom. You can tap and hold the white circle to record a video or you can access your albums from the bottom left.

Use all the Instagram Story tools.

Story tools are endless and keep growing every few months, but here are a few that are timeless:

1. Use Captions

Most people view stories without sound, so add captions when your uploading video and you have important messages to share. Captions also make your Insatgram Stories more accessible to people with different hearing abilities. Clipomatic is an inexpensive captioning tool that turns your voice into captions.

2. Use GIFs and Stickers

People love to interact with Stroies and you can make it easy for them by using the Poll, Slider, Quiz, and Question features that Instagram natively provides.

Stickers and GIFs are super fun visual ways to make your brand more approachable.

3. Story Highlights are Your Key

Instagram Stories are ephemeral, lasting only 24 hours.

Saving them to your profile page in an organized fashion allows your audience to scan your offerings and learn more about specific products.

Your highlights need to highlight the best of your brand. If you sell products, categorize those into similar highlights and save them to each highlight reel.

We love using design to make highlight covers that speak to your brand. You’re allowed 16 characters for the name of your highlight, but not all 16 characters will show on your profile. Keep that in mind when you’re coming up with your name. Remember, you need to keep it interesting, so your highlight reel requires maintenance - delete what no longer speaks to your business.

Use Stories to uplevel your existing Instagram Posts by using the same visual from your post in your Stories along with text that encourages people to check out the new post.

4. Use Hashtags in Stories

Hashtags are discoverable on Instagram Stories as long as the font is big enough (regular-sized).

You can use the hashtag sticker or type your hashtags over your pics. Hiding the hashtags so they aren’t visible to people, but the algorithm will still find them is possible when you match the hashtag font to the background color.

You can use up to 10 hashtags on Instagram Stories. If you go for the full hashtag deal, definitely hide some of them so you don’t turn off your audience.

5. Check Out Your Insights

Once you start using Instagram Stories on a regular basis, definitely let the metric insights that Instagram provides tell you how well you’re doing.

To access your Insights, tap the hamburger menu in the upper right corner, tap Insights, and scroll down to Stories. The people who viewed your story will show for 48 hours and each Story metric dump is available for 14 days.

There you have it - your technical guide to keeping it interesting on Instagram Stories marketing.