Whether you’re building a clearer picture of your brand’s ideology or showcasing your products and services, you want your stories to be engaging and stand out in amongst a sea of virtual competition.
If you’re wondering how to achieve this, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered, just grab yourself a nice big cuppa, and keep reading…
Take the first step towards digital success and let’s start driving results.
In order to remain relevant on Instagram, you want to be as present as possible on social media. Appearing in the stories section daily is a great way of remaining on people’s radar.
With 58% of people claiming to have been more interested in a brand or product after seeing it in Stories, it’s an area that you definitely want to incorporate in your social media strategy. By planning and strategically timing stories to best engage with your clients you can create a clear plan for your week. Whether you’re doing a boomerang of the office or introducing your business’ new colleague, IG users want to know! Decide and plan what works for each day and what’s practical to upload in relation to your busy week. You can then get putting the plan in place!
A trap that is easy to fall down when it comes to Instagram Stories, is the belief that everything needs to be captured ‘in the moment’. Whilst a photograph of your pink gin and tonic works perfectly on your personal social, on your business story you want to appear polished, sleek, and professional. This means no pixelated images, or slightly wobbly action shots!
To avoid this, save some quality images to your device, and simply upload these shots to your story by clicking on your image gallery on the bottom left of the story page. This way you can use strong vibrant images that are branded, on theme, and reflect your business.
Pro Tip: Fancy going the extra mile? Why not use an Instagram story template on Canva? This way you’ll really stand out from the crowd.
It’s time to get creative! Once you’ve selected your image for your Instagram story, you’ll want to add a bit of glitz to it, and a great way of doing this is by adding GIFs.
Gifs give your story a bit of movement and character, livening up the image you’ve uploaded. Just remember to be selective with your gifs, choose a couple that are relevant. You don’t want to start hammering them all over the picture – nobody wants a headache!
Pro Tip: Personalised GIFs are becoming increasingly popular. They have tremendous impact, and give a level of verification and intensified brand identity to Instagram users. Small details like this can give your brand further visibility within the wider Instagram landscape, as people searching for GIFs more generally will notice them.
Peaky Blinders or Line Of Duty? Pepsi or Coke? TikTok or Reels?
These are the types of light-hearted questions, that everyone has an answer to, and are a great way to get your followers engaging and actively participating in your stories.
Ask questions on your stories, that you know your followers will want to answer.
You can do this in two ways, by either using the ‘Poll’ tool (get your followers to vote) or by using the aptly named “Questions” feature (encourage your followers to respond in their own words).
Using these features on your story is a great way to discover more about your clients, and what their thoughts and feelings are about certain topics. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll be interacting with your clients a lot more and boosting your relationships with them!
If you’re not already familiar with the grid feature, it’s time to get playful!
The grid allows you to incorporate different images into one story, which means you can reveal multiple interesting things to your followers at once.
The grid is ideal for conducting market research when combined with a feature such as a poll. This way you can add two interesting images of products and directly ask your target audience which they prefer. Not only is this visually engaging, but it’s also super helpful for you when complimented by a poll!
Adding music to your story post is both very simple and very effective. To add music you simply click on the aptly named “music” button, and get searching for a song!
Pro Tip: we recommend picking something complimentary, and not distracting. You don’t want to take away focus from your great post!
So there you have it, that’s our quick round-up of ways to give your Instagram stories a glow-up!
