words Alexa Wang
Instagram is undoubtedly one of the most popular social media platforms out there today. With over 500 million users actively involved in the platform on a regular basis makes it one of the undisputed marketing platforms for various organizations.
Various studies clearly state Instagram users are regularly posting over a billion stories every day, and they prefer to purchase products and services that they saw on IG stories. So, by now, it must be clear how important Instagram Stories are and how you can build your audience’s network with its help.
Let’s check how to use Instagram Stories properly to build your audience:
How to post a story
If you are already in IG then you know how to post a story and share it with your followers. Nonetheless, let’s do a quick walkaround, the “camera” icon on the top left-hand corner of your IG home page is where you need to click, and voila, you are all set. There are various filters and features like superzoom, boomerang, animal filters, stickers, etc. However, it suits you.
Aesthetics are important
The best part of Instagram is the aesthetic pleasure it offers. Even for its story, they have recommended sticking a particular size (1080 X 1920). IG will crop your photos if you post a more significant size one in your story. So make sure about the size before posting. After all, you will not want your followers to lose focus from what you are trying to portray.
Along with that, you may also be the victim of cross-dimension if you fail to adhere to the size guidelines. For example, if your photos’ dimensions aren’t 1080X1920, they will appear differently in different devices (phone, tablet). Plus, remember to keep the aspect ratio at 9:16. Even if your resolution fluctuates a bit, you will be good to go if you manage to maintain the aspect ratio of 9:16.
Engage with your audience
Instagram offers various features to help you engage with your followers and stay connected. Features like Question & Answers, Polling, etc. can help you communicate and engage with your viewers through your stories. Carefully use these features to get the best from your IG stories. Conduct question-answer sessions regularly on your stories, allow your followers to ask you questions, and personally answer each of them. It will help your audience connect with you more strongly; when they receive answers to their questions, they will feel more attached to you and regularly watch your stories. You can also conduct polls on common issues, doubts, debates, etc., and allow all your followers to express their views on a particular topic. Post the result as well on your stories for your viewers to see. It is another excellent way to boost engagement with your audience.
Post interesting things
You will only be able to engage with your current followers and attract new viewers if your contents are attractive to your viewers. So make sure to create interesting and engaging content. Use a proper and free Instagram video editor and post well-edited and engaging videos in your story. After all, IG stories are not only about posting photos. You can efficiently utilize its video posting feature and attract more engagement to your account. And don’t make all your stories about promotion and engagement, sometimes for a change give a sneak peek to exciting happenings in and around your life through your stories, this will make your viewers even more connected with you. Generate simple yet aesthetic and interesting contents that force your viewers to check into your stories every single time.
Use Proper Hashtags
Hashtags are a convenient tool to garner more followers and engagement in social media sites like Instagram. You can also use hashtags in your stories, too, tap on the sticker section of your story, and you will be able to put hashtags as a sticker or even type them as primary texts on stories. Carefully choose quality hashtags to generate the expected outcome from your stories. You can always create your unique hashtags and use them on your stories and posts so that your viewers can be accustomed to them and can relate to your account through those hashtags. Apart from that proper hashtags help your stories to be discoverable to away the larger pool of audiences. Instagram’s algorithm will also select your posts to appear on the page of the particular hashtags according to its popularity. You can use a maximum of 10 hashtags in your story. Still, experts recommend keeping them low and possibly hide them behind some quirky stickers to maintain the aesthetic quotient of your stories.
Using Templates
Attractive creations are never overlooked, so creating aesthetically appealing content for your stories will boost your engagement. Hence it is highly recommended to use promo video templates online to promote through your stories. It will offer you higher chances of visibility and coverage. Though you can always create your templates using some of the video editing software like InVideo. If you are starting your journey, we recommend you choose a template that closely matches your style from online, and you can always edit them to suit your taste.
Highlight your popular stories
Instagram offers a handy tool known as analytics. Using them can provide you very statistically convenient figures regarding the performance of your posts and stories. The stories that became very popular with your audience and you received a great response, but unfortunately, it will only last for 24 X 7 hours, what after that? IG heard you, then came up with an excellent feature “story highlights,” it lets you save your popular and informative stories as highlights in your account for your followers to see anytime.
Conclusion
Instagram is a great platform for entertainment and can even be used to promote videos. Carefully observe the trends around the world and sketch out a simple yet effective plan to fully utilize the benefits of Instagram marketing, and you will be in for a great ride.
