How To Use Instagram Stories for Marketing Purposes.

Let’s start by showing you some Instagram stats, according to Oberlo:

• Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users and 500 million of them engage on the platform every day.
• 71% of Instagram users are under 35.
• 500 million IG accounts use Instagram Stories every day and the most viewed IG Stories are from businesses.
• 50% of IG users follow at least, one business.
• Instagram can generate over 4x more interactions compared to Facebook.

Based on these facts, being on Instagram as a business is non-negotiable, especially not when you want to take advantage of the number of people that engage on the platform every day. That is not all, many of us already know IG Stories and most times, we use them to post entertaining videos. But is that all IG Stories are meant for? Are they useful for marketing? How can you use Instagram Stories for marketing purposes?

Before we go into this, let’s look briefly at why you should include using Instagram Stories in your marketing strategy.

A lot of brands already understand that there is a market on Instagram, the stats highlighted above points out to that fact. So, including Instagram Stories in your marketing strategy allows you to reach this wide range of potential clients. Besides, Instagram Stories has more than 300 million active viewers every day and 30% of Instagram users have made a purchase from a brand they first heard about on Instagram. So, there is no reason you shouldn’t include Instagram Stories in your marketing strategy. But how do you do that?

How To Use Your Instagram Stories For Marketing Purposes

Take Advantage Of All The Instagram Stories Features

There are features on Instagram that would help increase your engagement; features like geotagging, hashtags. GIF, stickers, and polls amongst others allow you to get engagement and interact with your audience. For instance, you can use geotags and hashtags to make yourself more visible for your target audience because users carry out searches using hashtags on Instagram and geotag makes it easy for people in your geographical location to find you. And you can use the stickers and GIF to make your Stories more fun.

Be Fun And Relatable

Fun and relatable content will always do better than others because people are naturally attracted to fun things. If you want to keep your audience on your story, especially returning users who single out your Instagram Stories because they love it, you want to give them a reason to be there and what better way than to keep it fun? Plus, Instagram as a platform encourages visually appealing content; it inspires you to humanise your brand and you should take advantage of that.

Interact With Your Audience

Customers like to feel like their opinions are valued and that they are a part of the brand they patronise. One of the ways to do that is to interact with them and the polls feature on IG Stories is a great way to do that. You can ask their opinion on new products and even take polls on fun things that relate to your brand but not directly connected. You can encourage them to ask you questions about the brand by doing a “ask me anything” session, which you should be sure to answer.

Leverage Instagram Influencers

Instagram influencers are a thing and you can get a lot of engagement by including them in your marketing campaign. You can do this by getting them to mention you on their Stories either through a paid contract or sending them free products, depending on what can be negotiated. You can also host a takeover where you take over their account or they take over yours for a specific period, which should be announced to both followers prior.

Add The Link To Your Site

With the “swipe up” feature, you can add your website link to your Stories. With this new feature, you can share some of your website contents to your Stories and add the link to direct them to your website for more information.

In conclusion, social media and by extension, Instagram is more than a social platform, it is a great marketing tool. Businesses should leverage all the features provided on these platforms and take advantage of the Instagram Stories for marketing purposes.