LinkedIn stopped their Story feature back in September, less than two months after Twitter had ended Fleets (the Twitter equivalent to a Story). Knowing that, I would understand if you are thinking that stories are a waste of your precious time.

However, if you use Instagram as a marketing tool, Stories should be an integral part of your strategy.

Here are five ways that your business can use its Instagram Story:

Create a countdown

This feature is nearly three years old but still works a treat.

Do you have an upcoming event, a new product launching, a new video coming out? Whatever it is, get your followers excited by creating a countdown! You can give it a name, set an end date and time, then change its colour to suit your brand. When your followers come across it, they can choose to follow it to be reminded when the time comes.

Questions / Poll

Both the Questions sticker and the Poll sticker have the same goal: listening to what your followers want. You create content for them, so knowing their preferences can only be beneficial.

An interesting and simple way I have seen the Poll sticker used is to ask “have you bought from us before?”. It might seem like quite a boring question, but it will give you two lists. A list of people who have bought from you in the past and still follow you. To these people, you can send a discount code to thank them for their loyalty. The second list is people who like your business enough to follow you but have yet to buy from you. I wonder if a discount code might encourage them?

Add yours

In a way, it’s similar to the Questions sticker but it allows your followers to reply to you by posting a picture to their own Story. It can be interesting for your business because it can showcase how amazing your products are. Ask people to share a photo of their favourite purchase from your shop.

Links

You’ve probably seen links in other people’s stories for years (with the famous ‘swipe up’), but until recently it was reserved for those with a lot of followers! Now, the swipe up has been replaced with a sticker and is available to everyone -including your business. You can now link to your shop, your website, your YouTube or whatever it is that you want to show people.

Important things to remember

A Story is unlikely to lead to new followers but it’s the perfect tool to make your followers feel like they really know your business. You want them to feel a connection with you, you want them to feel special.

If you are struggling to create enough content, struggling to get much reach or struggling to find the time to engage with your followers, stories aren’t going to help you – but I can! Get in touch and we can discuss my flexible packages.