Instagram Stories: The Secret Weapon of Modern Marketing

The wave of social media has reached another peak, with Instagram becoming the most downloaded^[1] application in the world.

It enables users to post photos and videos, interact with followers through comments and direct messages, and shop via Instagram stories online. Its algorithm understands user preferences and customises content suggestions.

This makes it famous among a huge spectrum of audiences, with the demographic ranging from 18 to 34-year-olds, with 18 to 24-year-olds preferring the platform’s content and exposure more than the rest. Today, Instagram has 2 billion monthly active users^[2].

A relatively newer feature of Instagram is Instagram stories. It is an element of Instagram that allows users and brands to briefly display media and is referred to as secret modern marketing.

Read on to learn what Instagram stories are and how to use them as a marketing weapon.

What are Instagram Stories?

Instagram stories allow users to upload a photo or video for 24 hours. After 24 hours, the story disappears, a distinct feature from a regular post. However, another related element is story highlights that act as a story saver on Instagram. Adding a story to one's self-created highlight allows one to save one's story permanently on the Instagram profile.

Instagram stories are a type of slideshow with each slide visible for a maximum of 60 seconds^[3] (for videos), seven seconds^[4] (for photos), or 90 seconds (for reels). This duration can be customised as per the requirement.

When an account uploads a new story, it becomes visible on the top of their followers' feed with a purple and orange ring around their profile picture. The account that uploads the story gets the number and a list of all the viewers, making it a powerful medium for marketing. With this information, brands can get a clear picture of their reach and the preferences of their audience.

Top Elements of an Instagram Story

The interactive elements of Instagram stories help brands establish and accentuate a line of communication with their followers. Some top elements are-

1. Quiz/Poll – Allows users to ask the audience to poll their preferences regarding a particular question.

2. Ask me a question- This enables brands to seek the opinions of their viewers effortlessly. This can also enable users to direct their queries or questions to the brand.

3. Location sticker – This is when brands or accounts can inform the audience about their location.

4. Mention sticker – Brands can use this element to tag other celebrities, influencers or audience members for increased engagement.

5. Countdown sticker – This gives the audience a countdown and a reminder about an event. This is particularly useful during a product launch or for demonstrating limited-time deals. Viewers can also share it or opt to be reminded of the ending of the countdown through a notification.

6. Music- Users can attach a song from the Instagram music library, making their stories more appealing.

Why Use Instagram Stories as a Marketing Weapon?

Besides these interactive elements enabling increased audience engagement, Instagram stories also humanise a brand or business account. Since stories are shorter, brands can upload their daily activities or work culture and share customer testimonials and short interview clips to make their content more relatable for their audience. Growth Jockey understands this and encourages brands to leverage the excellent Instagram story features to fulfil their marketing goals.

Additionally, with a public business account, the access to view the story is unrestrictive and can be potentially viewed by all Instagram users.

Moreover, a story is visible at the topmost row of a user's feed, making it more susceptible to garnering attention and being clicked by the user. Add to this the story autoplay algorithm, where a user clicks on one story, and the subsequent stories play automatically till the viewer manually stops it. This makes stories bankable.

Tips and Best Practices for Creating Effective Instagram Story Content

With the features and demographic of Instagram stories online, it can be a potential weapon of modern marketing, provided marketers and brands use it correctly. Here are some tips to access its benefits -

Leverage Hashtags and Location Tag

Instagram has a search by hashtag and location feature that increases the chances of discovering the profile and stories with hashtags and location stickers.

So, brands must research relevant and high-reaching hashtags and include them in their stories to increase their reach and visibility. However, one must ensure not to clutter the story with hashtags.

Using location tags can make your story appear on the suggestion list of people around the area. This can particularly be useful during a store launch, company event, exhibition or pop-up.

Be Consistent with Uploading and the Story Aesthetic

Create a company aesthetic and upload stories that align with it consistently. For instance, the aesthetic could be a pop of colour. Hence, colourful objects/stickers or coloured text in bright shades will be used to maintain the aesthetic. Another aesthetic that brands follow is a coloured one. Decide a colour tone based on the industry, vision, mission, target audience and product/service offered and try to be consistent with it (E.g., black and white, colours of the company logo).

Another consistent aspect is regularity with uploading stories, even if it’s just one photo or video. This simple act keeps people interested in your brand. A daily post also prevents the audience from forgetting about your brand or shifting their attention to competitors.

Ask Questions or Run a Poll for Better Engagement

This is an interesting element of the Instagram story that helps brands truly understand the preferences of their target audience. It also keeps the audience interested, and they feel valued.

Brands can use this information to create people-centric campaigns or include them in their new product line.

Prepare the Story Content in Advance

Advanced preparation of story content and the time of uploading is a valuable tactic that can help brands' strategies better. Planning also makes it easier to maintain consistency in aesthetics, voice, and theme and plan better engagement tactics.

In this respect, there are online tools that can help schedule the time of subsequent story uploads.

Even with planning, leave scope for impromptu story content or live sessions to make the stories more relatable to the audience.

Include Links for Shopping and Additional Information

Instagram allows users to add links to their Instagram stories. Brands can leverage this to add shopping links to enable users to shop using Instagram stories online.

Brands can also add links to sign-up pages, websites, YouTube videos, product pages, and other external links that direct the viewers to a new page and encourage them to complete an action. Be sure to accompany the link with a clear call to action written in bold text to help users know what to do next.

Top Metrics to Measure Instagram Story Success

After using the above best practices, marketers can measure the success of their Instagram story marketing strategy with these impactful metrics.

Reach Rate

The percentage of the story viewers divided by the follower count on a given day. It helps analyse the percentage of followers who view the story.

Retention Rate

The percentage of the viewers that have watched all the frames/slides on a particular day. This metric helps marketers understand how many people viewed all the uploaded stories and if the content was interesting.

Tap-Forward Rate

The percentage of people who have “tap-forwarded” the story to view the next frame. This helps marketers analyse whether the storyline was appealing and generated interest from the viewers.

Reply Rate

The percentage of the number of people who view Instagram stories and then reply to them. This shows the engagement level of the audience.

Exit Rate

The percentage of the people who exit the story either by swiping right, down or closing the story tab. This metric can help marketers understand which content is not liked by the viewers.

Conclusion

If leveraged appropriately, Instagram stories can help brands increase their reach, engagement rate, and relevancy.

Various elements like stickers and polls can help brands build a rapport with their audience, which can serve as a key factor in the long-term growth of a brand. But this cannot be achieved by just uploading random stories. They should understand the target audience, their pain points, and preferences and create a strategy to address them in a relatable manner.

Instead, they can connect with marketing solution providers like Growth Jockey. Our team of experts help brands by understanding their unique marketing problems in-depth and proposing customised solutions to their challenges. We derive measurable marketing results for all businesses and help them seamlessly achieve their goals.

Grow your business the right way with Growth Jockey. Contact us today!

FAQs

How to check the views for an Instagram story?

To check the views of a story, open Your Story and swipe up to see the users who have viewed your content. The viewer count helps you improve the content quality for better engagement.

Can Instagram stories help brand storytelling?

Instagram stories allow brands to share employee journeys and stories about the company's growth. This type of content improves storytelling and humanises the brand.

Are polls effective for Instagram stories?

Yes, polls can be an effective tool to connect with the audience. Brands can use polls to ask questions and gather audience insights via stories.

1. most downloaded - Link ↑
2. 2 billion monthly active users - Link ↑
3. 60 seconds - Link ↑
4. seven seconds - Link ↑