Instagram stories have been a game-changer in the social media marketing industry. No need to plan your content to match with your feed in advance. You can share as much content as you like, as raw as you like and it will only be visible for 24h.

No wonder most businesses leverage this feature to experiment with various types of content and collect the feedback they need to tailor their content to their audience.

In this article, I will share with you the reasons why you should use Instagram stories and 5 ways you can leverage it to promote your business.

Why Use Instagram Stories For Business

Instagram today has more than 1 billion monthly active users worldwide and 80% of accounts follow a business on Instagram. That is how powerful this platform can be for your business if you know how to use it the right way.

Today, more than 500 million accounts use Instagram stories on a daily basis. That is the reason why you may have noticed a decrease in engagement on your feed posts.

Instagram wants to push its users to create and consume more content using this fully immersive experience, and lately more than ever. Here are a few screenshots of their last ad campaigns to encourage users to create stories.

Hence the reason for you to leverage this feature to experiment with your content and get to know your audience better to tailor your content according to what they need. 

Your goal as a business is to understand your client’s needs and offer them the services or products that will solve their problems. So if you haven’t had used them yet for your business, here is some inspiration to help you use Instagram stories.

Share moments of your day

The great thing about Instagram stories is that you do not have to think too much about the type of content to post. You can be yourself if you are a personal brand and let your audience get to know your personality better. This will help them to get to know you and build that “know, like, trust” factor between them and you.

When asked which communication channels give brands the best opportunity to connect with their customers, survey respondents from sprout social recent study ranked social media as number one.

If you are a bigger brand, you may want to share behind the scenes of what it is to work in your company, or maybe what services or products are coming up soon and share little teasers here and there. More and more people want to learn more about the history of the brand they follow. When customers feel connected to brands, more than half of consumers (57%) will increase their spending with that brand and 76% will buy from them over a competitor.

Share customers testimonials

If you are a business owner, sharing customer testimonials is the best way to gain social proof. Let your customers be the voice of your brand. There are many ways to do it, but here are two marketing strategies that work very well in the current era we live in:

• User-Generated Content. If you are an e-commerce brand, for instance, use a specific hashtag and ask your clients to tag you on their posts for a chance to get featured. This is what GoPro and MVMT have done very well to build their brand recognition.

• Customer testimonials. Whether they are written or in video format, using testimonials to promote your products or services will increase the value of your business and your brand authority. This is also a great selling technique as each customer story is different and will help diversify your reach and sell to customers you may have never thought of before.

According to the Nielsen Consumer Trust Index, 92% of consumers trust organic, user-generated content more than they trust traditional advertising. This is because brands don’t pay for UGC, it is unbiased and created by users because they like the offerings of a business. As a result, UGC is perceived as more authentic and honest.

Tell your business story

Users want to know the face behind the brand and what values you believe in and fight for. 70% of consumers, for example, report feeling more connected when a brand’s CEO is active on social. Every business has a story to share. We start businesses to bring value and solve people’s problems because we also faced it once in our life but there was no solution then.

So share more of the “human” side of your brand rather than only promoting the products and how great they are!

Instagram has released a great number of stickers for the past couple of years to encourage users following an account to take action and therefore increase engagement. Rather than just sharing your story, make it interactive with multiple answers questions, polls, sliders, etc…so that the user can engage with the content. It is all about using stickers that are perfect for your business.

Feature your products and services

This might sound controversial from the last point but if done correctly there is nothing wrong in promoting your products and services. The most important thing is to keep the customer in mind. What are the benefits of your products and services? What problems are they solving? Why should someone buy them? The great thing with Instagram stories is that you can be as creative as you want but make sure to storyboard your Instagram stories and structure them as follow: 

• Introduction: What product are you talking about and why do you want to talk about this product specifically?

• Benefits: What’s in it for the customers? i.e. share customers testimonials 

• Call to action: Where can the customer find more information if they are interested to learn more?

Here is an example below of an Instagram Storyboard I created respecting the structure mentioned in order to promote the online learning platform Skillshare I use a lot to learn new skills as a content creator.

Share tutorials

The best way to encourage a user to take action is to show them the benefits of using your product or service but also to show them how to use it and how user-friendly it is. Customers do not want to learn complicated things. They want something that will make their lives easier. 

So if your product or service can do that, create content that will help them get better results and simplify their lives.

Tutorials are the best ways to do that, especially with Instagram stories.

Each story lasts up to 15 seconds, so you can be as creative as you want to share the benefits of your product or service within that time range.

Or you can create a short-form content with stories and redirect the user to a longer form of content on IGTV or YouTube.

Bonus: Instagram stories highlights

Highlights are those little circles between your bio and your feed that allow you to store your Instagram stories for an indefinite amount of time. So if you notice that a specific IG story performed better than others, why not keep it in your highlights.

You can also use it as your business portfolio to redirect users to specific parts of your business like: About us, services, testimonials, tutorials, etc…

Use your Instagram account as your website home page and the highlight section as your website menu.

As you can see, Instagram stories can have many benefits for your business if you know how to use them the right way and have a social media marketing strategy in place. The goal is not to be all over the place, but rather share content with a purpose. Is it to increase your brand visibility? Is it to encourage users to visit your website? Is it to educate the user and show them the benefits of your offer? It really depends on the type of business that you run.

If you are someone with expertise but do not know how to promote it online. Or if you are a business owner but do not have the results you want for your business yet with Instagram,

I invite you to either register for my 7-day Insta4success bootcamp here where I share with you the exact system that I have used to run a profitable online business using Instagram and how you can replicate it.

Or you can schedule a call with me for free and by the end of it you will have a clear road map of actions you need to take to get the results you want for your business.

As always, If you liked this article, make sure to like it, it actually makes a difference. And if you know anyone that would find this article helpful, feel free to share it with them.

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