Instagram Stories VS Posts? What Should You Focus On As A Brand?
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With the latest updates that happened on Instagram, like removing likes from feed posts, adding more stickers in stories to improve accounts engagement or even long-form videos with IGTV, many business owners are becoming confused about where they should set their focus: on stories or on the feed?
This is the reason why I wanted to break down the benefits of both and what strategy you should focus on as a business.
Instagram Stories Benefits
Stories have been a game-changer since the launch. Today 500 Million + users use Instagram Stories every day. That’s half of the daily active users on the platform. And one-third of the most viewed Instagram stories are from Business accounts. So if you are not using stories yet for your business here are a few reasons why you should be using them.
Relevant For 24 Hours
Instagram Stories last for 24 hours before disappearing. This gives you the opportunity to experiment with various types of content and see which one your audience engages the most. You can also use stickers to learn more about your audience and ask them questions for direct feedback.
If you decide that your story is important to keep you can create categories called highlights that will stay for as long as you want on your profile. This is a great way to highlight your work and lifestyle so that your audience can get to know you better.
Better Engagement
As mentioned previously, with stories you can use stickers that allow you to interact with your audience. Followers tend to respond to polls and Ask Me A Question type of stickers more than random stories.
So, be creative and leverage these features to get to know your audience and let them know more about you too. This is a great way to build that trust factor.
More Casual
The great thing about Instagram Stories is that you can share whatever you feel like. They will disappear after 24 hours anyway. The most common practice is to share behind the scenes type of content and let the viewer have a better idea of how you work and see what you are up to.
This is the best place to share raw content that is not worthy of the feed.
Best For Sales
Stories can be a powerful tool for sales. Especially once you reach the 10,000 followers milestone and unlock the swipe up feature. You can use a storyboard of 3 or more stories to introduce a product and its benefits and redirect the user to the product page on the last story using the swipe up call to action.
Photo from Later.com
Instagram Posts Benefits
Instagram posts are the pet peeves of many Instagram users because this requires to have a good understanding of the Instagram algorithm and how to use a few tricks to increase your brand visibility.
This is something I break down in my free ebook 16 Ways To Grow Your Instagram Account For Success that you can download here for free. But once you understand how it works, here are the main benefits of Instagram posts.
Content Lives Forever
As it lives forever it means that the content is highly searchable through hashtags if used the right way and can be a great source of traffic to your website.
Better Reach
As the content lives forever and not only for 24 hours like stories, you get higher reach in the long term. But again, you need to know how to leverage all Instagram features the right way.
More Curated
The feed is meant to represent your portfolio or what your brand is all about. Hence the reason why it is important to keep a theme.
This way your audience will know the type of content to expect from you. I wrote an article sharing How To Create A Cohesive Instagram Theme For Your Brand. Check it out.
Better For Growth
There is no secret to grow your Instagram account and gain new followers: Content is king.
You will attract more followers from a well-designed feed than from stories. See it this way: the feed is your portfolio, this is the first thing people will see before deciding to follow you or not.
Hence the reason for your feed to be visually appealing to the eye of the audience you wish to target.
And stories are more to nurture your followers with what you do on a daily basis. They already know about your business through your feed but are interested to learn more through your stories and see the benefits or solutions you could bring them.
I hope this comparison has helped you to have a better idea of the benefits of Stories VS Instagram posts and how to use them both for your business.
My advice to anyone is to keep posting on their feeds every day because this helps your account to get discovered and therefore could bring more potential clients organically to your business.
Use stories to engage with your audience and get to know them so that you can tailor the content for them as long as it is aligned with your brand offer.
In the end, your business is meant to provide a solution to your clients. Instagram stories are your direct line to gather material and feedback to improve your products and guaranty your sales.
If you are reading this article and still are wondering how to set up your Instagram account for success and adopt a strategy that will work with your brand.
You can join my 7 day Insta4success Bootcamp that breaks down everything you need to know to improve your account visibility on Instagram and what strategy to adopt to transform your followers into paying clients.
Just click here or on the image below to learn more about the Bootcamp.
I hope that you found this article valuable. As always, if you liked it, make sure to like it, it actually makes a difference. Subscribe to the newsletter to receive future updates right in your inbox.
And if you need any help with your business using Instagram, do not hesitate to book a free 30 minutes call with me.
