How to Use Instagram Stories to Build Your Audience
Using Instagram Stories to Grow
Who can resist a fleeting glimpse that appears at the top of the Instagram app? Not only does it play on limited viewing time, but the tapping is addictive, with many chances to engage by reacting, participating, or commenting on a Story. Additionally, it is content that you needn’t commit to by displaying it on your profile, though you can increase its longevity by including it in a ‘highlight’ on your profile.
Stories present more authentic in-the-moment content, compared to the usual staged photos and videos that are shared on the app. This feature is so popular that the app shared insights revealing that over 500 million Stories were published each day in 2019, a figure which we’re sure has grown since then.
As one of the most essential features of Instagram, you’ve got to be using Story content to build your audience.
When we say "build an audience," we mean to grow and develop with a community of people. Customer engagement online is all about relationship building, so you’ve got to be able to share and connect with users. Posting needs to be thoughtful in the sense that you want to encourage interest and responses by sharing unique content.
There is so much that you can shar online russian phone number Instagram includes several features within Stories that encourage user engagement. Let’s take a look at some of them:
How to Use Instagram Stories to Build Your Audience
Story content
Before you can include these various elements, though, you’ve got to start with the content itself. Whether it’s a video or photo, you should be thinking about ways to add in captions or text for content, overlays that make it pop (think unique layouts that transform an otherwise very ‘flat’ visual), and mood enhancers by adding in music. To increase visibility, be sure to include location tags where possible and hashtags where appropriate.
Strategy
The thing is, Story content is a lot of work for businesses. With its limited lifespan, you’ve got to keep working at it daily (ideally), be creative with what you’re posting, and then also be prepared to interact with people when they respond to keep the momentum going. In other words, there needs to be a strategy to the madness.
Humanize
Since Instagram Stories can shed insight into the personality of a brand, you’ve got to consider who this audience is. There are many helpful insights available to Instagram business accounts that can be used to help tailor content that works. Additionally, when building an audience, you’ve got to consider reaching out to new users. This could be people who come across your profile, or ideally, people being drawn to your profile by the Stories you post.