SOURCE: ZOOMSPHERE

Users love Sto­ries, and Insta­gram rules that for­mat of all social media plat­forms the best. If you did­n’t add it to your com­mu­ni­ca­tion yet, it’s time to do so! Here are sev­en essen­tial tips on how to take over Sto­ries and boost your Insta­gram con­tent to the next level! ????

Data and Numbers on Instagram Stories

Insta­gram Sto­ries start­ed first in 2016, and since then (the inspi­ra­tion for Ins­ta Sto­ries was Snapchat, obvi­ous­ly) they became num­ber one across all social media plat­forms. Last year, Insta­gram hit 1 bil­lion users, 500 mil­lion are active dai­ly users, and there are 400 mil­lion dai­ly users watch­ing Sto­ries. 400 mil­lion dai­ly! More­over, the users are watch­ing Sto­ries as often as they’re going through their feed.

7 Tips For Mastering Your Stories

Make Stories a Story

We’ll start with the basics. What makes a suc­cess­ful Sto­ry? Well, when you make it an actu­al sto­ry to nar­rate. The sim­ple, yet catchy sto­ry makes users want to see what is com­ing next. There are plen­ty of ideas to get real use out of it – show­ing the back­stage of your com­pa­ny, sto­ry of your prod­uct devel­op­ing or its usage in real-life and so on. As I like to say, the sky is the limit.

Make Stories a Story

And Let the Story Be Authentic

There is no space for fake, bill­board-like con­tent in Sto­ries. Users want to see the world through some­one else’s eyes. Let it be yours, and make con­tent authen­tic and honest.

Use Effects Instagram Provides You

And there are plen­ty of them! Once you start prepar­ing your brand new Sto­ry, you can decide whether to add a loca­tion, men­tion, hash­tag, gif, time, tem­per­a­ture and much more. By using that, you tell your fol­low­ers more infor­ma­tion, and make the Sto­ry aes­thet­i­cal­ly bet­ter. Gifs are fun, time or tem­per­a­ture is anoth­er infor­ma­tion, but those two are essen­tial for busi­ness:

  • Hash­tag stick­ers for bet­ter cat­e­go­riza­tion and shar­ing with oth­er user-gen­er­at­ed content.
  • Loca­tion stick­ers to show your shop, branch or a place where the prod­uct or ser­vice is from (and where they can see more).

Connect with Your Audience

Social media are giv­ing mar­keters a unique chance to com­mu­ni­cate with their audi­ence direct­ly (the one-direc­tion media mod­el was out­dat­ed a long time ago!). Use the oppor­tu­ni­ty and ask your fol­low­ers their opin­ion, expe­ri­ence, let them ask you or sim­ply have fun. Effects like Poll stick­ers, Emo­ji poll stick­ers or Ques­tions are great and high­ly pop­u­lar options to use ????

Go Live ????

If you want to go live on Insta­gram, it hap­pens through the Sto­ries. And live is doing great here! It allows you to share longer videos (up to 60 min­utes), add oth­er users to do the live with you from dif­fer­ent loca­tions, and main­ly, eas­i­ly let the view­ers inter­act with you – ask ques­tions or leave com­ments in real-time.

Don’t Forget to Link

For the real and full “Swipe Up” your busi­ness pro­file needs to have at least 10 000 fol­low­ers. Once you have this amount, you can (and should!) add a Swipe Up CTA but­ton to your Sto­ries to direct view­ers right away on your web, blog, etc. Mean­while, you hit that num­ber, you can still add the links via Sto­ries Ads or nav­i­gate your fol­low­ers to the Bio.

Create Story Highlights

To make out­stand­ing and high-qual­i­ty Sto­ries, it takes a lot of time. And it is a bit frus­trat­ing (even though it is Ins­ta Sto­ries essence) that it dis­ap­pears after 24 hours. For­tu­nate­ly, Insta­gram allows to save the Sto­ries and add them into High­lights. Those fold­ers are vis­i­ble on your account, you can name them, and archive up to 100 Sto­ries into each one of them.

Insta­gram is cur­rent­ly enjoy­ing its pop­u­lar­i­ty and Sto­ries are a great part of that. Make sure to give enough ener­gy and care to gain the results!