Is your brand struggling to connect with an audience via Instagram’s story feature? Does your content translate well to full posts and even to IGTV videos or Reels, but fall flat when posted on your company’s story? You’re in luck because today the Perfect Imprints team has three strong tips to help your company find success with stories.

Ask Questions

Whether your company is new to Instagram or more seasoned than others, getting to know your Instagram audience should be a quarterly goal. With ever-changing algorithms and best practices, your company can see a massive fluctuation in followers every month. A way to understand and get to know your followers, who by the way are potential customers, is by asking questions via your stories and getting their input. Your questions can be as simple as asking whether or not they viewed the latest post all the way to as interactive as asking them to help choose what they would like to see. It will be important to balance the type of questions asked via your story so that followers do not become bored by them, but one set of story questions that always excites followers is inviting them into any business process you can share. Followers enjoy feeling like they have a say in what they see and enjoy aiding processes along by having an option to provide their input.

Be Interactive

Building upon asking questions via your story your company should also focus on creating stories that are interactive. Some ideas we like to share are creating templates that your followers can screenshot, fill out and share on their stories to their followers. This in turn creates traction on your story but also markets your brand to people who may not follow you or know your brand as more of your followers share their completed template. A widely popular template for this idea is the “This or That” columns template. This template is created by placing an “A” and “B” column side by side and encouraging followers to fill out the template by choosing one item from each line in either column then sharing the completed story with your company’s chosen hashtag. 

Vary Your Content

While it is crucial that your company is posting something to your Instagram story five or six days a week, it is also important to realize that no one enjoys filler content or brands that over-step their welcome. To combat this issue your company needs to become comfortable creating various forms of Instagram stories and stories of various lengths. Followers are more likely to quickly press through a story or even worse unfollow your company if your stories are consistently very long and not interactive or sharing valuable information. Shorter stories and stories that allow for follower interaction are the preferred method of variety. There will be days when your brand does need to share a longer story so it is best to bookend those days with days that have short story content planned.

As always, we are here to help! If you have any other questions or concerns about how your business can utilize other platforms, contact us now!