Instagram Stories For Business In 2024

The world rejoiced when Instagram introduced a relatively new feature- Instagram Stories. Why relatively new? Simply because it was never seen before on Instagram but, users had experienced something similar on Snapchat.

Stories have eventually made their place on Instagram and raised the bar for businesses and marketers to upgrade their efforts to another level.

What are Instagram Stories?

Simply put, an Instagram story is a small piece of Content, be it in the form of text, photos, videos, gifs mostly enhanced using special effects like filters and stickers and displayed at the top bar. 

Instagram Stories exist for 24 hours until they are saved in the archive or the highlights section.

We shall be covering the significance of saving stories on Highlights later and have a full-fledged blog covering the topic.

Check this – How to Repost a Story on Instagram

Why use Instagram Stories For Business?

Surveys suggest that about 1 billion active Instagram users every month, about 500 million people use stories per day. Around 200 million people visit at least one business account in a day.

A small term called FOMO (Fear of missing out) has been doing the rounds lately and suggests that nobody likes to miss out on anything! 

FOMO feels legit with stories as they do not last more than 24 hours. The short lifespan of stories makes them special and brings a sense of exclusivity. 

If people feel connected to your brand, they get tempted to open the vibrant, colorful circle around your profile picture to see what’s stored in! 

Apart from this, we have listed a few points below, making it necessary for you to be a part of the Instagram Stories trend. 

More Engagement With Existing Users 

Instagram stories provide businesses endless opportunities to engage with their audiences and provide them information that can be beneficial for them and increase interaction. 

The Content of the stories can be around discount codes, last-minute offers, How-to tutorials, Behind scene glimpses, collaboration with influencers, and many more.

Reach Your Potential Customers 

Your stories are discoverable,i.e., they can be viewed and found by people who are not your followers. 

You can take advantage of this fact and use hashtags and tag other people to further increase your stories’ reach and ultimately witness your potential customers reaching out to you on your website. 

More Leads & Conversions 

The theory is simple. Once you create an engaging story and give your followers a chance to get in touch with you, you can simply tell them to Direct message you for further queries or tell them to click the link in your bio where the potential customers can go and make their purchases. 

Also Read- Ultimate Guide to Short Form Video Content

How To Boost Your Business Sales With Instagram Stories? 

Even though Instagram was designed to be an ‘Instant’ photo-sharing platform, people have slowly started curating and beautifying their feed to make it more presentable and attractive.

Since Stories have a limited lifespan, Instagram stories are where the Content is more raw and instant than the feed.

Some of your followers may miss your feed due to how the algorithm works. People have switched to Stories and like spending more time viewing them than the feed. 

Instagram has multiple features that can help you draw viewers’ attention, tap into their interests, and convert them into regular customers. 

Drive More Traffic By Adding Links 

If you enjoy a following of over 10,000, then you can have the privilege of adding links to your stories. Remember the Swipe Up option on some accounts? 

You can drive immense traffic to your website and increase user engagement irrespective of whether you use words as a medium or choose to do so verbally.

However, if you are yet to unlock the ‘Swipe Up’ option, convince your followers to click the link in bio instead. 

Instagram Ads

For those brands which have run out of organic ways to drive traffic on your stories, you have Instagram Stories Ads to the rescue. 

According to Instagram, around 75% of users take an action such as making a purchase or visiting a website after seeing Instagram ads. 

Ads are the perfect way to showcase your product, brand, or service to an already engaged audience.  

Explore More – How to Repost on Instagram

Collaborate With Influencers

Collaborating with a famous influencer is a great way to boost your sales and explore opportunities like online earning, as they will be sharing the content they created on their personal Instagram handle.

Simply look for an influencer who is famous in your business industry and contact them to take over your handle and upload Instagram stories on your page. 

Of course, they would be charging you for their services, but the investment would be worth it once you see the traffic driving in. Wouldn’t it? 

Also Read – Effective Instagram Marketing Strategies For Business

How to make quality content for Instagram stories to boost engagement?

If you wish to gain success on Instagram, the key is to create unique content. Blatantly copying someone else will give you no results. You need to present a reason strong enough to make the onlooker click that ‘Follow’ button. 

We have listed below a few ideas that shall be handy and help you create relevant content. 

Run contests and giveaways

What once started as a mere quiz or an engagement trick has evolved into a sensation now. It is a no-brainer that audiences love gifts and look forward to giveaways and contests to win a prize.

Giveaways have the power to instantly boost your engagement and drive more traffic to your Instagram handle. 

Bonus Tip – To make your giveaway more impactful, keep adding time stickers in your stories to encourage your followers to participate. 

Also Read – How To Run A Successful UGC Hashtag Contest

Give a glimpse of Behind the scenes

The key point here to remember is that whenever you run a business on any social media platform, there is always this awkward distance between you and your customers.

Remove that distance between you and your valuable customers by sharing a sneak peek of your office or work in progress for any upcoming product. Don’t hesitate to show them the real you- it will only help your audience connect more with you.  

Style your stories 

As they say, Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. On Instagram, everyone is attracted and looks forward to attractive posts and stories. By creating a unique visual identity, you will be able to make your Content recognizable.

Your followers would know who posted the Content even before they see the identity above. 

Go as per a theme, add filters, play with fonts and colors, add a relevant background. You can add stickers and use Instagram story templates to make your stories more attractive and stylish. 

Make use of User Generated Content

Positive reviews from your customers can prove extremely powerful and convince other users to become your customers.

Make use of the right opportunity and utilize positive feedback and showcase them in your stories. However, it is mandatory to take permission from the creator before using their Content. 

Share Your Blog Updates 

This is a fabulous point if you are maintaining a blog. Tell your audience that you have published a new blog on your website.

To create a buzz and more engagement, you can add a small poll or quiz around the blog and post it on the story. This might make your audience go and check out the blog that very instant.

Use the trending filters and effects

We are sure that the first thought that comes to your mind when you think of filters is big Dog ears and muzzle or enlarged funny-looking faces. Well, apart from trending, they are hilarious and unique.

Watch out for the trending filters/effects and use them while creating your stories. 

Announce latest offers and sales

Make use of the stories to inform your followers about the ongoing sales and offers. Your audience always looks forward to discounts. You might as well add a link to your story to give them more information. 

Must Read – Best Instagram Story Apps For Marketers

How to Build an Instagram Story Strategy For Your Business? 

Be clear of your objective. 

Before creating an Instagram story for your brand, it is mandatory to know the objective behind it. 

You must have the answer to ‘WHW’ first. What is WHW, you ask? 

It is Why? How? What? 

You must be clear about the three questions. 

• Why do you wish to create stories for your business? 
• How are you planning to curate them?
• What are you offering to your audience? 

Understand Your Audience

You must have an understanding of the audience you are posting for. Some important factors to be kept in mind while analyzing your audience are age, gender, location, interests, lifestyle, country/region. 

You can monitor your audience in-depth by tapping on analytics too. 

Do thorough research (Competitors)

Researching your competitors can help a great deal in planning your unique marketing strategy. 

Tracking the performance of your competitors will give you an insight into

• The kind of stories they post
• The frequency and consistency of posting stories 
• Hashtags used by them 
• Paid collaborations 
• The features that they use the most 

Top Examples Of Successful Instagram Stories

Google Maps 

How else would Google advertise other than promoting and tagging places, right? 

Give it a thought again! Google has taken the initiative to encourage local people of areas to take over the account and recommend places to the followers. 

This kind of activity often helps followers resonate with a brand better and tremendously increases overall brand engagement. 

Sephora

Sephora is a brand that utilizes Instagram Stories wisely to communicate with its followers. They have a huge following on Instagram, and hence, saving stories as highlights helps the audience come back and check out the stories later.

Their Content consists of showcasing products and makeup tutorials (considering it is a cosmetics brand). They also go live from their events, giving the followers a reason to connect with them virtually and be a part of the event too! 

Overall, Sephora knows how to do business using Instagram Stories. 

Airbnb

The Instagram profile of Airbnb concentrates more on creating something unique when it comes to their stories. When you initially visit their profile, you mainly see photos of famous venues and destinations. The brand makes proper use of features.

Air Bnb hosts quizzes to ask the followers questions and encourages them to answer them. This kind of activity ignites the traveling instincts in some customers. 

Mistakes to avoid with Instagram stories 

We don’t have an Over Promotional Approach. 

Promotions are much required and necessary for a brand to boost sales and maximize profits.

But make sure you avoid going over the top. 

Let’s assume you run a shoe brand. Redirecting the audience to your website with every link can be confusing and irritating for a few users. This may let them Unfollow you too. So be cautious and avoid overdoing. 

Lack of Consistency

To gain the trust of your followers and make them feel connected to your brand, you need to be consistent. 

Consistency is what will build a good customer-brand relationship. The minute you stop posting frequently, your followers will gradually lose interest and be attracted to your competitors due to their frequent postings. Customers enjoy consistency, and it is mandatory for you to increase social media followers and maintain engagement. 

Boring/Irrelevant Content 

Your audience has seen enough promotional Content and simply linking to blogs on the website. 

They wish to get familiar with interesting and engaging stories. If you do not try something new and keep repeating the same stories, your Content will get zero views.

Don’t make this mistake, and be sure that you create Content that interests your audience and feels like engaging with your Content. 

Giving Analysis a Miss

You need to monitor your Content to avoid making mistakes. You need to give a thorough view of statistics to deliver the best stories.

By analytics, you can have a look at impressions, the number of people who viewed your story, who skipped, and who got redirected to the website. 

You have to keep a track of your analytics quite often, or else all your efforts will go wasted. 

Our Top Tips & Tricks For Instagram Stories For Upgrading Your Business 

Make the most of User-Generated Content. 

User-Generated Content can be your most powerful Content to maximize your profits and upgrade your business.

If your customers create Content for their profile using your products and tag you, go ahead and make use of it! This way, you can build social proof for your brand and increase customer loyalty and trust. 

Upgrade Your Storytelling Skills 

What’s in a name, they say? But this phrase can be contradicted right away. We refer to Instagram Stories as ‘Stories’ for a reason. The most important point to remember here is to make your users a part of the story too.

Make the platform’s right use by engaging the audience and not only spreading information around and about your brand.

Keep it Short & To The Point. 

Everyone wants to check out as much as they can while using Instagram. When you keep your Content long and complex, people lose interest without paying much attention.

To draw their interest, you must ensure that the Content is crisp and understood in the first place. 

Save Stories as Highlights  

Don’t forget that your Content disappears after 24 hours on Instagram. If you have created amazing Content, you can add them to the Highlights to save them for the future.

You can easily organize your stories and categorize them into different categories. It makes it easy for the followers to understand which highlight to refer to as per their requirements. 

Take The Unique Route – Embed Instagram Stories On Any Website 

We are certain by now you must have understood the significance of Instagram stories and how they can effectively give a boost to your user engagement and brand value. 

Since Instagram stories are of extreme relevance, you can embed these stories on your website to make your website more attractive, display social proof, and increase your brand awareness and reach. 

Using a few tools, you can embed Instagram stories on your website, but Taggbox Widget is the best UGC platform and does the needful effectively and efficiently. 

Using the Taggbox Widget, you can embed Instagram stories in a few easy steps. We offer the option to customize your feed before embedding.

You can add themes, layouts, fonts, colors, and styles to the widget as per your website’s overall look. You can use the moderation panel to filter out any unwanted content and have the option to highlight any review you wish.

You can check the performance of your widget using the analytics feature.

 

Final Words 

Undoubtedly, Instagram Stories is a powerful tool that can benefit your brand in the long run. 

You can compare Instagram Stories to a ride in an adventure park. You don’t know how the ride would be and who will be experiencing it with you, but you are sure that you would eventually reach a destination when it ends. 

During the last few years, Instagram stories have surely garnered attention from many businesses, and they are making the most of it. It’s time you join them too in case you haven’t.

The Mantra is to be unique and creative!