How To Use Instagram Stories For Brands To Gain User Engagement

Instagram acquires the fastest-growing story features to select from for its users nowadays. Every marketer should try all features as Instagram stories are a great way to engage with fans. It develops discoverability and helps to boost up your presence on social media. Here, you can know how brands can utilize the story section on Instagram to gain more user engagements.

1. Use Stickers

Last year, Instagram introduced more graphic elements and stickers added to video contents and images on the story section. Where hashtags and location tags stand as the primary stickers, recently, Questions, DM me, and polls could help gain more user engagements on the platform.

With polls, every brand could insert an admiring question and practical two answers through the stickers. The audience who gets the story section could select any answer of their choice. Then, marketers are able to grasp who has responded to the poll and check the percentage that each answer acquires. It’s a perfect way for every brand to receive feedback about a campaign, product, or anything and gain statistical insight.

You could get many answers from your fans through the question sticker. Brands could post their question similar to the polls, but here, users could write anything they need for your question. Every marketer could use this feature to gain more user engagement through asking feedback from their fans about service and product, gather Q&A sessions, or bring the FAQ with this excellent feature.

Features of stickers

The sticker “DM me” allows every user to click the option, thus opening up a message feed with your brand. Attaching DM me into the story content makes it easy for every user to connect with your brand directly. And also, every brand should check before using a DM me sticker whether they regularly monitor their messages and spend some time to reply to their customers.

Marketers can also share their feed posts in stories. By tapping the small airplane option on the post, brands can share it on their stories so that your new fans get your older posts which might increase your views. It helps in gaining engagement rate.

Also, marketers can use AR filters for their stories. It’s an effective way to get a younger audience and increase Instagram story views in a shorter time than expected. Also, utilize the filter feature to shine their brand in a visually appealing manner.

2. Highlights

While story contents disappear in a day, a perfect way to save your story is by bringing a highlight option. These are placed on the top of your Instagram profile page below the bio section and won’t disappear after a day. Brands need to make sure that they bring clear categories for every Highlight while creating it. So that you could make your profile more professional and clean in a visual manner. Highlights are the perfect way to maintain your story contents organized.

The “How-To” category is the Highlight’s great example where a brand could add stories that provide instructional points about using their services or products. “About Us” category is another instance that provides every fan about the business’s products, services, and values through story contents. Brands must analyze which Highlight categories they need on their brand profile and craft the story contents with these categories.

3. BTS(Behind The Scenes)

Story content’s other ideas are the highlights which include special announcements, the promos and offers, BTS(Behind-The-Scenes), and any information about a brand. However, Highlights are the perfect way to provide customers and prospects a business snapshot that helps gain brand awareness. So, every brand makes sure that their story contents are as eye-catching and more engaging as possible, which means possibilities for creativity are endless.

4. UGC(User Generated Content)

UGC(User Generated Content) is another perfect way to gain more engagements on the platform. When any fans tag your business or use your brand’s hashtag, you can share these posts in your story section. Sharing the contents of your customers helps in promoting the brand’s campaigns, services, and products. Also, it helps in developing the credibility of your brand. These story contents could be used in the highlight reel as dedicated.

5. Join Hands With Micro-Influencers

Influencer marketing on Instagram becomes more famous on the platform and every marketer uses it to reach their brand key information to a wider audience in the short span. Influencers are more independent in adding more authenticity to your brand messaging.

Many marketers fall with the celebrity option for their influencer marketing strategy. Sometimes it works but fails more if you don’t choose the right one. Selecting the right influencer from your industry is the major part and a challenging task.

Instead of picking macro-influencers investing high budgets, you could go with micro-influencers creating more trust to your brand. While choosing an influencer, monitor their fans count and the engagement rate to reach your content to a wider audience.

Micro-influencers are affordable, have personal contact with their followers, and they shine as authentic. According to the research, micro-influencers have more engagement rate on average than the macro-influencers.

After selecting your right influencer for your marketing strategy, ask them to promote your product, service in their story section. Most of the people get the story contents rather than the feed part when they enter the platform. So, it is perfect to promote in Instagram stories to gain more audience.

Summing Up

Statistics show that Instagram contains over a billion users, in that 550 million users on the platform are more active on story contents every day. So, every brand must utilize the story section on Instagram and every feature it provides.

Also, the statistics concluded that a brand on the platform uploads three-story contents in a week approximately. In this way, marketers need not upload daily to gain more engagements through story sections. Marketers could track their Instagram insights to get which story content performs well through analyzing its impressions and reach.

Though in this covid pandemic, many users are spending their time on online space mostly to stay connected with their lovely brands, every business should make sure that they’re aiming at gaining more engagements on social networks than driving traffic. Developing engagement and gaining a community sense among fans is the perfect way to grow loyalty and build an authentic and trusting relationship with prospects and customers.

The growth factors of Instagram include highlight reel, GIFs, and Stickers options that bring the story contents to be insightful, interactive, and fun for fans.