According to Instagram, only half of the business accounts use their story feature at least once a month. So let’s step back, consider this tool, and evaluate its effectiveness for your business.

Stories are a relatively new part of a culture that clearly undervalues their marketing potential.

Here’s what you can do to optimize your story features for any platform, but first…

What are Instagram stories?

The story feature allows users to post photos, videos text, emoticons, and stickers to create long-form or short-form content directly from their mobile phone.

Stories appear at the top of feeds, making it impossible to miss when users sign into their account. Users can also tap on another user’s profile photo to see their story.

When stories are published, they are made available to friends and followers for 24 hours from the time it was published.

The story functionality can be found on:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Snapchat
• Twitter

Recently Twitter launched its own take on the stories, calling them “Fleets. ”

where did Instagram stories come from?

In 2013, the social media platform, Snapchat, introduced the concept of “stories”. At this point in time, Snapchat had only 10 million users worldwide, so needless to say, this became the new benchmark.

Five years later, during the first quarter of 2018, Snapchat’s ad value increased by 234%. Now businesses were allowed into the social sphere. Just like “The Facebook’s” notorious business change, this is widely considered a “sell-out” period.

Why should I use Instagram stories on my business page?

In 2019, content shared through stories rose to the popularity of the traditional newsfeed. Your temporary content is now just as relevant to the average consumer as your permanent content.

By posting more often you can build a deeper connection with your followers. It will make your business look active, find loyal followers, and add to your creative outlets. When you haven’t posted in a while, your followers will get a notification to let them know that you have posted new content. It is always important to strategize, maybe posting less is your strategy to get that notification. Notifying customers directly is a great way to get traction to your more important announcements!

Create and publish short bite-size stories to show your audience the behind the scenes of your business to help humanize your brand. Your followers will be able to relate the content that you are posting and will get to know you and your business better.

Posting stories also help you re-engage with your audience. If they ever miss a story, it will be at the top of their news feed. You can also track the performance of your stories by seeing who watched or engaged with the content. Once you’ve posted to your story, it will save privately to your account for you to access and republish. Instagram provides great insights, even to private accounts.

Best practices for designing instagram stories

Now that you know everything about stories, it is time to dive into some best practices for creating your own content to engage your audience.

1. Have quality content

For your posts, you’ll want to use high-quality creatives, including vertical orientation images and videos. You will also need to think about text, fonts and placement in your posts.

If you are posting multiple stories break it down by having one idea per post and create colour contrast between the slides. This will engage your audience by enticing them to click to see what you have in store.

2. Keep your brand in mind

Always consider your branding. Create a message that is reflective of your business, so users know who it’s from.

Branding elements you can add in stories are:

• the narrative (message)
• imagery and colour scheme
• your logo
• brand hashtag
• your slogan

3. Choosing the right visual effect

Once you’ve picked your source image, you can decorate it with sticker and text features. Your options are practically endless. This is why you must not spam your stories.

Having too many design effects can overwhelm your posts and distract your users from getting to the core of your message .

When learning to use these effects, make sure that they are relevant to the content and use a maximum of 2 elements.

In sum

There is A LOT to play around with, so go ahead, swipe left in the app, take a photo, and have fun with the editing tools.

The best way to learn what works best for you and your audience you simply have to start. From the data you gather you can pull lessons, test, and try new things to determine what works best for your business.