Storified Guide: 5 True and Tested IG Story Engagement Boosters
It’s a truth universally acknowledged in a digital marketing world, that a brand or a company in pursuit of greater follower engagement must get the hang of IG story format.
Since 2016, when they debut it on Instagram, web stories have gained popularity, outreach, efficiency, and profitability. Whether they are casual or regular Instagram users, everybody got an opportunity to express themselves in a new, interesting, spontaneous, and delightful way that - conveniently - evaporated after 24 hours. From then on, companies, brands, celebrities, micro/macro-influencers, and regular folks, have all jumped on this evaporating wagon. They got a chance to present two sides of them:
Instagram Profile (Feed) vs. IG Story
Instead of having to polish, re-touch, and carefully plan every single post, because it had to make sense next to all other pics on your page and fit your whole profile’s narrative and aesthetic, folks got a chance to improvise. After all, once posted, the pictures on Instagram are for good (if you don’t take them down), and that certainly adds a lot of pressure with every "share" tap.
Once the story appeared, the pressure of perfection was lifted. Folks got to present an “unofficial version” of themselves in the little bubble that left no permanent record. A perfect place to share those blurry pictures that would spoil your carefully constructed feed with these imperfect experiments. And guess what? People loved it and engaged with this “less than spotless” presentation of your company, products, and life in general.
Insta Stories: All the Shades of Reality and Creativity
In a recent post, Storifyme covered the basic “techniques” you can use to start to use in your everyday stories: from sneak peeks and teasers, over the most useful stickers to hashtags and how to use them to your advantage, to begin with.
In case you had any doubts, yes, this is the storified article about slightly more advanced options you’ve been promised. Venture with us down the captivating rabbit hole of Instastory options that will get your the reactions, responses, likes, and shares you want:
Go Live!
Not only that going live is an easy and trendy move to get everybody's attention (as soon as you start to broadcast, they’ll get notification about it), it’s a wonderful way to establish a real-time, authentic connection with your audience. Viewers can ask you questions, add comments, likes, and the thing remains available for the next 24h, even after you stop broadcasting! Everybody interested can take part and there’s no demanding preparation beforehand. What’s not to like?
Make the Most User-Generated Content
Put your customers front and center! Share the pictures where they tagged or mention you. This can be extremely useful when it comes to product storytelling, so screenshot the DMs with their happy testimonials and share them on your web stories. Give shoutouts, answer their questions, actively ask for suggestions, and (most importantly) follow up. By doing this you’ll show them that you care, you’ll humanize your company and make it more approachable. Besides, when they share-back the shout out, their followers will see it too.
To get the desired engagement, you have to engage first, right? You have to constantly think of innovative ways to motivate people to include your brand in their posts. Speaking of:
Experiment with Contests, Giveaways, and Offers
You can ask your followers to do something to officially enter the competition, anything from sharing, liking tagging, commenting using a specific hashtag, or any combination all these actions mentioned. Keep it simple though, we don’t want participation to disappoint because there are too many steps to follow!
Create special, exclusive offers for the quickest and most dedicated of your followers, you can even create a storified ad about them and see your promises through. It’ll give new followers a reason to come aboard, tell their friends about you, your fantastic products and services & your dreamy storified microstore.
Stay on top of your notifications, keep your followers on their toes, and watch your engagement grow!
Promote Your Blog Posts & Co
If you have more than 10k followers you can go all fancy, and add a “swipe up” feature that will take them directly to your storified article. In case you don’t have this option, worry not, you can still promote your little heart out with a simple picture, screenshot, interesting description, and “checkout link in bio” mentioned. Done!
As mentioned in the previous blog, you can do this also with Instagram posts and new launches: announce and hipe up the fresh ones, but from time to time you can repost older content with #tb, to mix things up!
Any kind of self-promotion reminds the internet, algorithm, and your community that you’re alive, productive, and worth their time. Just be careful not to over-do it!
Show “Behind the Scenes” Action
Get personal, show people what’s happening behind the scenes. May that be just a coffee shop, that you’re working from, shared office space you’re using, or a whole building full of co-workers working hard. Naturally, the more products, projects, and activities you have around, the more material for sharing you’ll find. But don’t despair if you don’t have crowds of coworkers to interview and show off, that where your creativity can shine. For starters, a quick snap of your surroundings will do, whether they’re your coach, park, forest or beach, or the beach.
People will appreciate these little sneak peeks into the inner workings of their brand and transparency it offers. Showing how you function, what’s behind the polished post builds trust and credibility. It’s beautiful in all its imperfections, and it demonstrates that you’re not afraid to show how things truly are!
Increase Engagement, Live Long, and Prosper!
As social media platforms evolve, users multiply and the latest tools and options are being added - marketers have to adapt. To excel in modern storytelling, you have to master all the little intricacies of social platforms, to get everybody interested and have them stick around.
Instagram story is the perfect way to promote yourself, engage customers, and rise to the top, increase awareness. Since more than half of a billion people watch Instagram stories daily, it would be a crying shame if you wouldn’t utilize this corner of a very popular platform to your advantage.
Tap into a completely new world of possibilities, build connections, stay curious, continue with experiments, and engage away!