What’s the hottest market right now? Instagram, of course! Learn how to use Instagram stories today.
It’s an economic playground which welcomes everyone with equal opportunity to access the pool of 800 million users and brilliant features to up their marketing game!
So what’s the deal about Instagram? Well, back in 2010, this super-charged social media platform made headlines by harnessing the power of visuals. In a 2017 Forbes article, Instagram was hailed for using the power of visual marketing to increase customer and user engagement.
How did they achieve this with an app that took only 8 weeks to make? Simple! Now the most favorite app on the planet, Instagram is also becoming one of the main hubs for marketing, especially with start-up companies, eccentric entrepreneurs and products with a unique profile! Here are a few simple reasons why below.
· It’s got mobile functionality and can be used on the go! You want to edit and put up a picture right now? Go ahead!
· Everything is visual — Instagram is the place for high-quality digital media! Want to see a high-resolution poster of your favorite band? Just type it in search!
· It’s an innovative platform! Who do you think brought the hashtags to us?
· Open to everyone and free to use! And this is why the Instagram community is a diverse and colorful place to be a part of! Lets answer the question how to use Instagram stories.
So Why Market on Instagram?
Instagram is home to 21 million companies at a given time. According to research, 70.7% of businesses in the United States were using Instagram in 2017, making it the most sought-after platform for new businesses and influencers!
Customer/User Engagement
Instagram has 120 times more engagement rates than Twitter. It’s the perfect place to find a huge customer base and enter the competition for your product’s niche.
Besides, with the ability to use geotagging, Insta Stories, IGTV and other forms of media, it’s a great way to interact with customers first hand! How to use Instagram stories?
Generate Sales (And Lots of It!)
Instagram allows you to touch up your photos and videos with various features and choice of showing them off; you can post them to your feed, feature them in a story, and even adorn them with hashtags, location filters and what not!
Just the right number of views is enough to up your revenue. Hence, it is time to know how to generate sales with Instagram stories!
Intelligent Advertising
Using clever logarithms, behavior analytics, and pattern of user behavior, Instagram connects potential buyers to businesses.
As it uses information pertaining to location, gender, platform usage and the profiles that the user visits, your business is sure to pop up in potential buyers’ suggestions if you market yourself right!
Cost Effective Marketing
The free app has various price-friendly advertisement schemes, which are as low as half a dollar!
It’s a super cheap and economical way to market yourself; you have the option to set the duration for your advertisement, target specific types of customers and locations and guarantee great results!
Going Viral
Instagram is one of the most used social media platforms and has a minimal content restriction.
Hence, if your posts are quirky, colorful and innovative, there is a high chance that your posts will go viral! If you went viral for some reason then question how to use Instagram stories shouldn’t be bothering you anymore.
How To Use Instagram Stories for Marketing: The New and Exciting Era of Business
Instagram Story is one of the most famous and loved the feature of the platform.
According to research, Instagram users spend around 28 minutes on average using Instagram Stories! What does this mean?
An Instagram Story is visual media available for only 24 hours or for an elongated time if highlighted. It allows you to seriously up your marketing game in tons of ways. But, how to use Instagram stories?
It allows you to get up close and personal with your followers, giving them real-time information about your business, activities, products, announcements, and what not! Here’s how to get creative with Instagram Stories’ marketing strategy!
Create Shoppable Instagram Stories
Tap for details!
How many times have we clicked on stories which feature that phrase? Shoppable posts mean to tag products directly in your story. This means adding links to the shop, store location, price tags and what not.
With posts like these, users and prospective customers have more ease navigating your profile and products because it lands them directly where they want to go.
The best part is that you can tag multiple products on one story, which means happy customers and more sales revenue for you!
Engaging Polls
Polls are a great way to drive up Instagram engagement rates.
Giving your customers and users the option to participate in decision-making is a great way to get an idea about what products/posts are popular with your followers.
Doing so will also help to increase interest amongst your followers! In fact, polls have shown to triple Instagram engagement rates.
Polls are also great for businesses to discern how to direct their sales and production in the right direction to meet demands, follow trends and see what’s popular.
Call to Action
Including Call-to-Action links in your stories are a great way to get people active all over your profile.
Instagram now allows you to lead users and prospective customers directly to your page via the “Swipe Up” feature, which has shown a massive success.
According to a study by Marketing Land, around 15% to 25% of Instagram users are likely to click on these Call-to-Actions when they’re seen on the story!
And the stats continue; around 20% of those who see Instagram Stories with Call-to-Actions are likely to swipe up, and out of those, 90% had no idea that the site existed!
This simply means you have to use Instagram Stories for marketing NOW!
Show Off Those Testimonials
How to use Instagram stories? Testimonials!
92% of the consumers look at testimonials before shopping for a product. A humanistic touch in advertising is always received positively, and what better way to showcase great reviews than the Instagram Story feature?
A study conducted reported that 72% of buyers trust a business even more after reading testimonials, which means it’s time to screenshot great customer feedback and put it up on your story! This self-advertising is a great way to drive sales and viewer rates up.
In fact, turning these 24-hour stories into Story Highlights is a great way to make them more accessible for longer!
User Generated Content for the Win!
We’ve all seen pages shamelessly advertise their customers’ stories on their own page. User-generated content like stories or posts can be shared onto your own stories to encourage prospective customers to make purchases.
Why does this work? Because real-life, relatable users are giving feedback about your products, increasing its rapport amongst those who are drawn towards a purchase!
So if your followers tag you and their stories are sharable, share them on your stories or Story Highlights now!
Promoting Product Launches
A new product is always a big deal. You’ve worked hard on your product and want everyone to know how amazing it is. Amazingly, in today’s era, this can be accomplished using Instagram Stories!
Creating progressive posts which may tell a story or contain ambiguous hints about your new products is one way to get users to click through your story and Call-to-Actions to know more about what’s going on. In fact, with Instagram Stories, you can even provide a sneak-peak or a little how-to-use tutorial to get everyone excited for the release date!
Your customers will also be glued to your profile for new story updates! This should answer how to use Instagram stories, but there is more on this topic below.
Using Hashtags and Geotags
A great way to increase your chances of sales using Instagram story and to boost your chances of being seen are using hashtags and geotags. These tags allow your story to show up in filtered searches and top recommended searches.
What does this mean for you?
Well, you’ll have access to your targeted customers and market and you’ll have a chance to become locally relevant!
How To Use Instagram Stories That Will Sell
Before you begin, here are some super fun (and very important) dos of Instagram Stories’ marketing strategy!
Less Is More
A recent study showed that the more posts in your story there are, the more you’ll annoy and disinterest your followers.
Chances are that your followers won’t even get to the end of your story before they exit. So make your posts powerful, punchy and attention grabbing!
Say Hello
Using Instagram Stories to introduce your business, team and yourself is a great way to get customers to know your business better. In fact, this humanistic element in advertising will help create an emotional connection and create rapport with potential customers!
Answer FAQs in Your Stories
How to use Instagram stories? FAQs!
Many customers and users will be hailing your direct messages with certain questions about your products. They could be questions pertaining to using the product or ingredients or basic get-to-know-you questions.
Using stories to answer those will increase Instagram engagement rates, leading to customer retention, popularity and sales!
Collaborations!
Using Instagram stories for marketing is a great idea. Using Instagram stories to feature famous influencers is an even greater idea! You can invite influencers who are happy to endorse your product to collaborate with you for a short video for your story.
This will also pool in their followers, thereby increasing your follower rates!
Promotions and Giveaways
Everyone loves freebies! Use your Instagram story feature to advertise about promotion offers, contests and giveaways to increase engagement and encourage buying on your followers’ parts.
It’s a great way to create product hype and will draw in tons of excited shoppers your way!
Stylize Your Story
I hope that we have answered your question on how to use Instagram stories, but styling your story is very important too.
Instagram has amazing ways of stylizing your stories. Here are some of the following
· Type: You can make text-based stories with colored backgrounds.
· Photo/Video Filters: Turn ordinary videos and photos into eye-catching visual art!
· Live: Real-time video that live streams your commentary and can be Highlighted or Story’d again.
· Boomerang: 1-second looping videos for funky visuals.
· Focus: Using photo-effects to blur specific areas of your story’s photo.
· Superzoom: Dramatic zooming features with feisty effects to jazz up your story post.
· Rewind: Recording videos in reverse to catch the viewer’s attention.
· Hands-Free: Recording videos without using the record button; perfect for tutorials!
· Highlights: Turn your story into a featured story that stays on your profile for more than a mere 24-hours!
· Stickers/GIFs/Emojis: Make your story more captivating, humorous and a total hit!
All in all, now you know how to use Instagram stories and start selling through your stories efficiently with provided tips and you will see and increase in your sales soon!
Also, you might be interested in someone helping you out with all of the marketing details, for that you should check out our growth service.
