There are tons of reasons why Instagram Stories are what your business needs, but they all come down to a few core tenants. The basics idea of Instagram Stories, from a business perspective, is to keep your followers interested in your brand.
Content marketing is very time consuming, creating memes can take forever look right, and videos sometimes don’t come out right. Instagram stories are meant to be simple, off-the-cuff, and bite-size multimedia content. This is why they are so addicting, and this how your business can profit from them.
You’ll notice after reading this article that most of the material is probably something you already know. If you’re here it means that you need a reminder to start taking action. There are so many tools out there to improve your business, yet we take advantage of so few.
My goal is to get you back on the horse of taking massive action and getting your business to its potential. Instagram stories are a great way to inject some casual fun into your social media life, so pull out your phone and start now. If you’re stuck, keep reading to get unstuck.
Should You Be On Instagram?
Instagram has over 400 million daily active users, which is double the size of Snapchat and is still growing. They have an advanced ad campaign manager and have added the ability to turn your profile into an online store. This means people are now starting to go on Instagram to shop.
The user interface is simple and anyone can figure it out in minutes. If you think you should be on Instagram, the answer is yes. Get on right now. It takes
Are Your Clients on Instagram?
If you’re not sure if your clients are even on Instagram, do a quick search for your industry. The hashtags that come up will tell you whether or not it’s worth your time.
These three examples clearly show there is a market for these three industries. The largest hashtags are a little too big for where I would post, but ones within the 50k to 250k range are perfect to build your following.
If you’re not seeing any hashtags within that range it might be too early, but that is not a bad thing. Check out those hashtags and find out how active they are. If they are picking up steam, it could be the perfect time to get in and capture the attention of a rising star market.
What Are Instagram Stories?
I’m sure you’re somewhat familiar with what Instagram Stories actually are. If not, check out this post we did earlier, How Social Media Stories Benefit Your Business.
Now that you have a firm grasp on exactly what Instagram stories are all about, I think we should take a more advanced look at them.
Instagram stories are the best way to keep your clients, leads, and fans abreast of all the daily activities you do. This is a great way to keep your company fresh in someone’s mind. I wouldn’t use it as a daily deal disseminator, that can get pretty old fairly quickly.
My strategy is to use Instagram stories to create short conversations. It’s not hard to do if you ask the right questions. The key is the do your research and find out everything you can about the pain points your customers go through. Then ask them questions with the stories function or tell them about something you’ve been doing.
Instagram stories take far less time to create than a normal post, so keep it simple and remember it will be gone in a day.
Instagram Stories Equal Money
The easiest way to lose a customer is to let them forget about you. Instagram stories completely change the game for businesses that can create at least decent content. Remember, it’s only microcontent so don’t sweat it.
All you want to do is continue to show people who you are and point them in the direction of your other more thorough content. Many marketers use Instagram stories to send traffic back to YouTube or Facebook. You can even use it to send people back to your website with a discount code.
With 400 million daily active users, it’s no surprise that Instagram stories are becoming more popular by the day. Get on there and start earning, however you do it.
Benefits of Instagram Stories
Real-Time Marketing
Sometimes creating a blog everyday or a video isn’t feasible, so an easy way to keep your followers up-to-date is to utilize Instagram stories for daily updates. Look to active users on Instagram for how they use their stories and then adapt it to your business.
Not everyone is the greatest at making multimedia content at first, so practice a lot and you’ll start to get in a groove. Once you establish a routine of documenting your business daily, you’ll never run out of ideas. Each day presents a completely new opportunity to broadcast something even if it’s not that special.
Instagram stories is a lot like television, and people love reality television. This is the best app for documenting exactly what happens in real-time. A lot of you might think that you don’t want to share that often or think that you’ll run out of ideas. That will never happen if you stick to documenting instead of creating. This is the main difference, between Instagram stories and regular posts.
Make An Emotional Connection
People connect with the realness of Instagram stories. It’s not about being amazing at all times. Sometimes what you eat is enough, however you have to mix up more than that.
Try posting at least 5 key events everyday on your story. Don’t worry if it comes out badly, and don’t worry about editing. That’s not what is important not what your followers want. Instagram stories are a way to show your imperfections. This could also be a way to rectify bad situations and build trust again.
Instagram stories are the perfect mechanism for documenting daily improvements with products and services. By highlighting, people that take the time to comment on what you’re doing right and wrong you can ensure that your customer service is perfect and continually improving. This is a great way to establish an emotional connection with you following.
Sell Products
You’re in business, right? Instagram stories will get you more business whether you believe or not. Check out how other brands use stories to drive traffic back to their website or affiliate links. It’s really simple if you continuously create content and show that you’re business is full of living breathing people.
I can’t stress the human connection more with Instagram stories. It is vital that your audience is continuously reminded to be interested in you and your business. Without that connection you’ll struggle to sell products.
I don’t care how boring or “non-Instagram” your product is. If you create creative content and post unscripted Instagram stories you will generate more leads and more money. It’s that simple.
Ask Your Customers Questions
Take the opportunity to start a conversation with your customers with Instagram stories. Don’t ask generic questions, like “how is your experience with the product?” What you’re looking to highlight is their pain points and address them.
If you’re clients are complaining about a clunky user interface, ask them specifically where the issue is. They can send you direct message very easily and if you show a track record of answering promptly, highlighting that you actually appreciate their question, and take action to correct it you’ll eventually have a close-to-perfect product.
Business and product management is all about listening. Try asking your customers in a multitude of ways what they experience, but be specific when you do it. General questions get general answers. You want specific questions that get you to take action on the suggestion.
What good is a critique if you do nothing with it?
Do Giveaways
This is something I shouldn’t have to say, but businesses should giveaway their products every once in a while. That means for the right reasons, you should use your products to promote charitable causes, elicit information from customers, get product ideas and critiques, etc. from product giveaways. You can even use this to get more clients.
Dropbox created a system to give more storage space for shares via social media. You can do the same with your product and services with Instagram stories.
You’ll have to customize your approach a little bit to fit your industry, company and product, but it’s the information that makes it worthwhile.
Instagram Stories Are Simple
Last but not least, Instagram stories are super-simple to add to any Instagram profile. Just click on your story button and start making impromptu micro-content. Then use the stickers and graphics to make each story unique.
Make sure you stick to your core beliefs and brand, but just document what you do. Documentation makes creating content easy and less stressful. Believe me as a writer I’m constantly creating new ideas, Instagram stories keep that muscle going and make it more and more interesting.
For more information on Instagram marketing, check out these articles: The Ultimate B2B Instagram Advertising Guide and The Most Advanced Instagram Marketing Guide You’ll Ever See.
