Instagram Stories is one way to engage your audience and thus increase sales. According to statistics in Instagram Stories, one in five stories receives a response in the form of direct messages. Therefore, Instagram launched ads in Stories. This feature is available in the new Insights analytics section for business accounts. It displays analytical data on the number of clicks and information on the reach.
Benefits of Instagram Stories:
- you can see statistics when saving to “Archive”. At the same time, the list of users who viewed your Stories is not saved;
- it is a separate channel for the sale of goods or services;
- photos, videos, just text in the background, animations, live broadcasts, including joint ones, polls, and polls – all this is easy to create with the help of Instagram Stories.
Things to Remember About Stories:
- Instagram Stories sit at the top of your feed and disappear when you scroll.
- All stories are topped with the avatars of their authors and are color-coded if you haven’t watched them yet.
- To add a new post, swipe right from the Instagram feed screen.
- In-camera mode, swipe down to open images from your library in the last 24 hours.
- You can make the story private and select the users from whom you want to hide the story. Or share only with a select “list of friends”.
- You can allow other users to share your story.
- After 24 hours, the post on Instagram Stories will be automatically deleted. If you do not add them to the “Relevant” section, you can now save Instagram Stories to collections and subscribe to them for easy navigation.
- You cannot comment on Instagram Stories. But you can unsubscribe to the author of the publication within this function. However, this option can be blocked if desired.
- You can easily track who viewed your post on Instagram Stories and the number of user views.
- You can post a bunch of frames from any event (for example, a corporate party) once in Stories. So the subscriber feed will not get clogged, and they will not unsubscribe from you.
- Restricting Stories views for users under a certain age allows you to comply with legal requirements (if, for example, you sell cigarettes, adult sex toys, or alcohol online).
- Instagram Stories has been successfully used by popular brands: Nike marketers noted that this Instagram service performs much better than Snapchat.
- Live on Instagram Stories keeps you connected with your followers whenever you want. Just swipe to the right of the feed to open the camera, and click the Start Live Streaming button.
- In stories, you can give an active link to other users.
As a rule, there are two formats for advertising in Stories:
- The advertiser provides photo and/or video layouts, and the blogger posts them with an active link to the advertised profile/site.
- The blogger records a video recommendation from himself.
It doesn’t matter if you are making a story for yourself or for advertising purposes among bloggers, remember the peculiarities of this format. Here are some golden rules for design:
- Do not place a lot of text, make it contrasting, consider the ease of reading in the background. A lot of text or stickers on one slide will scatter the attention of users, it is not very attractive visually.
- When posting a link via @, remember – it should be in a convenient place on the screen and be noticeable. So that the user can easily navigate when needed.
- In Story editing mode, the “more” field for the external link is not visible, so think ahead about the placement of all elements to avoid text overlapping.
- Use emoticons and gifs to make your text more attractive.
- If you speak on video, it is advisable to duplicate information with signatures – some users do not include sound in their stories.
- Do not place important items close to the edge of the screen. Otherwise, it will add inconvenience when flipping through stories.
Stories are good for feedback and gamification of your content, so aim for maximum impact. And your audience will definitely respond.