In the Instagramming age, has your brand ever considered the importance of Instagram stories for business? Do you have an account or have heard about Instagram Stories? As a commercial entity you must be thinking, why use Instagram stories for business? Without further ado lets find out –
1. Proven Statistics
The Instagram boasts of more than 500 million everyday users, so it would be a good marketing step ahead to use Instagram Stories for reaching out to potential customers, while building a stronger connect with the existing ones.The growth rate indicates a rise of over 300% within three years. The figures have been last updated in December 2019, sourced out from 99firms.com.
The feature is enjoying an increasing higher popularity range amongst the crowd who uses social media on a regular basis. The idea has caught its speed and shows no signs of slowing down in near future. Below is the statistic list which will further confirm the point of using Instagram (IG) Stories for betterment of your business:
- 1 out of 4 millennials and also the Generation Z always look for Stories of the products/services they are planning to buy.
- One-third section of the most-viewed Instagram Stories are from business pages.
- 36% of business houses use IG Stories to promote their product.
- 59% of brands are linking Instagram Stories onto a shopping page.
- On an average the posting frequency for Instagram Stories is approximate of weekly 2.3 posts.
- Instagram Stories cover 34% of the sponsored content on Instagram.
The importance of Instagram stories for business thus is a data backed thought from the business point of view, which should not be ignored or undermined.
2. A Smart and Trendy Engagement Tool
Instagram Stories was initially launched in 2016 and ever since has grown in popularity on the Insta platform. Factually speaking the average feed post numbers published by influencers has been reducing every year from the time the stories option came in. Rightfully so, the consumers would expect and prefer a more authentic connection from the brands they regularly use and support.
The 24-hour stories format has risen as the perfect channel for camera content that is more natural and human. Another positive here is that, it has negligible and most of the times zero investment involved. Only some minimal post production, work involved. Businesses can take a cue from brands like Everlane making the pathway.
The Instagram Stories has been an evolving concept in the last few years, all the while introducing better features that would help you boost engagement.
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3. Brand Transparency
So, posting of Instagram Stories (as discussed above), which give a glimpse of your work culture and the positive vibes your brand generates could be smart way to open a dialogue with your customers. Let them know better about your process and the highlights of it. For example, if you are using the freshest of ingredients, show it to them! You can let them see you buying and hand picking these, while not revealing the secret recipes!!
Your employees can be your biggest brand promoters. A crew of dedicated, enthusiastic work force people that love your brand, doing the best job while spreading happiness will be the brand face. When the team will share these IG Stories, they will feel a personal connect and at the same time the customers will get a ‘behind the scenes glimpse’. Building a sense of loyalty and credibility. Talking about the product exclusivity the brand can display the unique qualities it has to offer to the people, creating brand awareness.
4. IG Stories Advertisements
March 2017, Instagram came up with the Instagram Story ads feature for all the business accounts. The option enables your business page to use targeting and hence reach out to use capabilities that making your advertisements relevant personally for the people you want to precisely reach. In order to run the advertisements on IG Stories, you can make use of Ads Manager, Creative Hub or the API. Else you can simply hire a well-known and capable agency who provides social media marketing services in India.
5. Reutilize Content
You can reinvent the content you already have in a different format; this can strengthen you’re the reputation of your brand. And again, encourage your audience to convert. Obviously increasing your chances to be heard by people who must not have seen this content piece on an alternative platform where they would not be active.
For instance, if you have a content piece or a blog that did pretty well on another social media/blogging platform that can be recreated. Making it fun and pictorial you can send the same message while sharing it on your Instagram Story. Make use of some really stunning and authentic photos, telling the story of your business.
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6. Strategy Diversification
Diversifying your marketing content in order to hold the attention and interest of your target audience is crucial. Catering to their different preferences many a times, it involves adding a new channel outlet or a social media platform to your existing strategy. Here most likely you will have to start afresh with your new profile and audience. Using Stories would be easier, because it is a new feature on an already existing platform -Instagram. On the business IG account, you would also have an audience, one can simply branch out your content with the resources you have.
Also, you would be using real time marketing, which has been mentioned as one of the important marketing trends in 2017. IG Stories is a space which particularly supports the real time marketing where you can reach the right audience at the right time. Live posting of an event or sale exercise can well encourage more people to be present and interact. Kristen McCormick describes in the article – 10 Reasons to Use Instagram Stories for Business penned for Thrive Hive.
As a company doing good business, if you are planning to showcase real yet creative and aesthetic brand stories on Instagram, one needs to draw a thin line between professionalism and rawness of the IG Stories. So then, playfully sending across the ‘appropriate’ and ‘to the point’ message about your brand, its way of functioning and other interesting but serious information through the Instagram market place would be tricky.
It would be a wise decision to consult the experienced social media marketing service provider, Litmus Branding. A sensible yet imaginative and inspired journey of daily Instagram Stories, a professional can work out, based on your brand background and vision, designing a tailor-made version for you in an intelligent manner.
They can impart absolute clarity on the answer to the same question we began with – why use Instagram stories for business? And explain the practicality with help of existing examples of their on-board client cases they have been handling effectively.
Understand …… Explore …… Conquer …… Way to go Insta!!!