Relying on Instagram posts and reels might not be sufficient to expand your current follower-base and attract new followers. Instagram stories offer an innovative opportunity for businesses to build brand awareness and engage with their customers. 

Instagram stories are short visual narratives that capture the essence of your brand voice. They are fun, spontaneous, creative and exciting. In fact, Instagram stories only stay on the feed for 24 hours, allowing brands to explore different kinds of content and see what fits their brand the best; both in terms of being aesthetically pleasing and garnering desired results. 

Studies have shown that over the past few years, brands have realized the importance of integrating social media stories to achieve their company’s goals and hence, doubled the number of stories posted per day. Here’s 5 reasons why you should build on Instagram stories to take your business to the next level. 
 

1. Create brand awareness 

Instagram stories serve as the perfect outlet to express your brand personality and appeal to your target buyer persona. Think about your company’s personality and voice. Which characteristic traits do you associate with your company? Innovative, exciting, cool, sophisticated, friendly, passionate, affordable, so on and so forth. Now ponder upon how you can bring these qualities to life in your stories. You could be informative or entertaining. Ask questions, post a poll, share a moment, promote an event or even help your customers solve a problem. 

2. Showcase your products and services 

If you’ve been thinking about different ways to promote business without coming across as spammy, then it’s time for you to hop onto Instagram stories. You can start by adding snippets of your products and services to your stories. Moreover, you can also come up with innovative ideas such as:

- Guided instructions on how to use the products

- Answering Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

- Testimonials from other customers 

- Countdown to new launches 

- Announcement of sales, giveaways, or discounts 

In addition, if you wish to put up a link to your website wherein your followers can have a look at the entire catalogue of your products or services, you can do so using the ‘Link sticker’ or add clickable product icons to your story using ‘shopping story’. 

3. Generate sales 

Day in and day out, brands count on Instagram stories to drive traffic and sales. By providing detailed information about your business along with relevant links and stickers, you can entice your target audience to send in their inquiries or even buy the products and services through direct messages. Quick tip: Make sure you create a separate story highlights so that anyone who stumbles upon your accounts gets an insight on your products and services. 

4. Boost engagement

Let’s go back to the basics for a minute and see what engagement exactly means. In order to crack the Instagram algorithm, it’s imperative to entice your audience to stay on your feed, give likes and comments on your posts and even share it with other people. By capitalizing on innovative story stickers offered by Instagram, you can multiply your engagement. A variety of stickers could be put to use for this purpose. Such as:

- Poll sticker: Polls are a fun way to know the taste and preferences of your customers. 

- Question sticker: Every conversation starts with a question, use the question sticker to cater to the needs and demands of your followers. 

- Quiz sticker: Put your followers’ knowledge to test and spread awareness about your business. 

- Add yours sticker: Encourage your followers to contribute to your ideas through their own creative take on it. 

5. Authentic connection 

Instagram stories serve as the perfect outlet to put out real time content and build an authentic and genuine connection with your customers. People feel valued when they can get in touch with the company on a one-to-one basis and they’re involved in the crucial decision making of the business organizations. Ensure to put up engaging stories and regularly check your ‘Direct Messages’. Take special care to respect your followers’ time and efforts and don’t forget to reply back to them. 

To conclude, Instagram stories are a great way to build awareness, boost engagement with your target audience, and shoot up your sales. Just make sure to have fun, be creative and try to come up with new ideas that your followers will look forward to. 

Struggling to integrate Instagram stories into your content marketing strategy? 

Get in touch with our experts at UpfluencingYou and seek the best advice to curate and schedule stories ahead of time that fit your brand voice.