An Instagram story that you share with your followers lives in your feed and profile for just 24 hours, but its impact can benefit your brand or company for a long time to come. If you know how to craft attractive stories, you can quickly diversify your strategy and take your Instagram marketing to the next level. A whopping 500 million users view Instagram stories every day. These stories have truly awesome potential to stay top of mind and win over your audience.
But do use Instagram stories – to their fullest potential?
Instagram allows you to post both photos and videos to your story and share them with your followers or specific users that you follow. Maybe you’ve shared Instagram stories before and learnt the basics of how to do it, but there’s more to these stories than you know. The option is also there to use an Instagram bot to automate the process of scheduling content, gaining new followers and finding trending hashtags. The Instagram app has tools that you can use to be more creative and engaging with your stories. Whether you have a business profile or a personal profile, Instagram offers this feature to everyone. From brands to small businesses, millions of Instagram users have benefited from stories and increased brand awareness and driven traffic to their websites and newsletters.
If you’re ready to use Instagram stories to your advantage, given below are some tips and tricks to maximize results.
Pick the Type of Story You Want to Share
First, you have to decide exactly what type of Instagram story you’re planning to create for your audience. Is it about an event or a latest development in your niche or industry? Do you want to demonstrate a product?
Instagram stories can take up various styles or shapes. You can create the most basic story with the use of static image and text. You can design a story which presents a speaker or an interviewee. Or else, you can create a story which is a collection of multiple images. Whatever it is, you need to plan it out in advance. Think about what your audience will like. Knowing about the thematic details of your story will make the entire process easier and focused.
Use Customizable Story Templates
Whether or not you’ve heard about Instagram story templates yet, you’ll definitely want to use them for all the benefits they have to offer. To save yourself both time and money and make your design look professional too, you can simply browse through the collection of story templates available for free. These pre-designed layouts come in a wide range to suit specific needs.
Either you can use third-party design apps like Over and Canva or simply run a Google search for free Instagram story templates – and you’ll have tons of layouts to choose from. Download the ones you need for your type of story and then customize them as per your liking. These free templates come along with separate files containing images and fonts. Customize the design of your stories and share them via your account to bowl over your audience. With these free templates by your side, you’ll be able to create visually appealing stories in minutes.
Add Images and Fonts that Match Your Branding
While free Instagram story templates offer images and fonts that you can use, you can always add your own images and fonts to unify your branding efforts. Images and fonts are critical elements to make your stories come alive as well as stand out your brand on Instagram. Whether it’s your own personal brand or company brand, you need to keep the design consistent across all the Instagram stories you create. Many design apps also offer the option to conduct in-app searches on free photo sites so that you can save more of your time while looking for specific theme-based images. Customize your stories exactly as you want.
Include Some Animation Elements
Adding animations to your Instagram stories is yet another way to wow your audience. If you’re using Over, you’ll see that the app also offers a multitude of animated graphics for addition to stories. Other apps that you can use for including graphics and animation elements to your stories include Life Lapse, Enlight Pixaloop and Adobe Spark. Using software apps like these, you can easily and quickly make your Instagram stories come alive in a stunning manner.
Again, don’t forget your brand style while you add animated graphics to your Instagram stories. Design consistency is crucial.
Add Strong Call to Action
Every Instagram story that you create should align with your overall business goals. Whether you want to generate more traffic for your website, boost your online sales or build an online community of passionate followers, you should always act according to a specific strategy. Make sure your Instagram stories are properly optimized with strong call to action and the content isn’t overly salesy. Since Instagram stories are meant to entertain, you’ll only drive away visitors with excessively pushy content. Never lose sight of your purpose, and be expressive.
Schedule Your Instagram Stories
Just like you’ve been scheduling your other Instagram posts, you can schedule your Instagram stories too. To compete with your rivals and effectively target your audience on Instagram, you should be able to share your stories at a time when your audience is most likely to engage. Planning and scheduling in advance will keep you on the right track and help you connect in an effective manner.
Have a closer look at your Instagram analytics and find out when your audience is most active. And then use any of the tools like Later, Storrito and Hopper HQ to schedule your stories ahead of time.
There are no signs that the popularity of Instagram stories will slow down anytime soon. If you’re serious about stepping up your marketing game on Instagram, you should definitely start creating and sharing well-crafted stories to win over your audience. Just remember to pay attention to the analytics and finetune your marketing and strategy to expedite the growth in your Instagram stories.
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