10 Powerful Reasons Why Businesses Should Use Instagram Stories

It’s 2021, and if your business is still not on Instagram, you might be missing out on a whole lot of opportunities.

Instagram has brought a drastic change in any business that wants to connect with its audience and boost its sales. It’s more than just a photo and video sharing platform now. Especially when Instagram launched ‘Stories’ back in 2016, most people thought they were trying to compete with Snapchat.

But guess what?

Instagram successfully left Snapchat behind by continuously adding new and innovative features for Instagram stories to keep the users engaged. Now, Instagram’s story feature is the ultimate game-changer for businesses because now they can reach more audiences than they reach with their feed posts.

What is an Instagram Story?

Before we jump into the reasons why your business should make the most of Instagram, let’s know more about what Instagram story actually is, what its features are, and how it actually works.

An Instagram story is basically a format that combines images, videos, text, and various interactive stickers. Each story stays for 24 hours, and they can be kept in ‘Story Highlights’ so that the users can view what they missed later.

Instagram stories appear at the top bar when you log in to Instagram using a smartphone. Even though Snapchat created the concept of ‘Stories,’ Instagram took the concept and made it even more successful by adding so many new features to it. Your audiences can reply to your stories, engage in interactive stickers, and so on.

Why Instagram Stories are the Best Tool For Business Marketing?

There are so many business marketing strategies that are useful to grow your audience. However, applying to most of them can be a tiring process. Most businesses spend tons of money just to market their products.

Thanks to Instagram, marketing your products is now a much simpler process and won’t cost you a fortune. All you have to do is be a little creative to earn the trust of your audiences.

Given below are some effective Instagram story ideas to help your brand get noticed by more potential customers. Let’s dive into the top ten powerful reasons you must use Instagram stories to grow your business.

Improve Your Brand Visibility

You can’t make more than 10 posts per day, right? Feed posts take a lot of work. Your photos and videos have to be of high quality, and your captions have to be on point.

Plus, there are specific timings to care about because, according to some recent studies, posting at a certain time will help your posts reach more audience than usual. Also, with Instagram’s new algorithm, your posts will reach only 10-20% of your followers.

Hence, it’s clear that most of your audience will miss out on your feed posts. Thanks to Instagram stories, this isn’t a problem anymore. Posting up to 5 stories a day will boost your retention rate to over 70%.

Every time you post a story, your profile will be shown at the top bar of your follower’s Instagram feed with a colorful ring.

Interact With Your Audience and Reach More Users

Gone are the days when you had to sit down for a meeting to discuss what consumers wanted. Now you can directly interact with them via your Instagram stories to better understand their needs and wants from your brand. There are so many interactive stickers available on Instagram to help you out.

You can add the question sticker on your stories to get reviews, suggestions, and so on. You can even ask your audience about their day and build a better connection. The questions don’t always have to be about your brand; it’s all about getting them involved in your stories. Thus, Instagram stories require way less effort, and they reach a greater audience.

Instagram had ‘swipe up’ links for profiles that had above 10k followers. Now, with Instagram’s latest update, you will find an option on top of your stories that will allow you to add a link to websites to your story. This will help in driving traffic to your website even easier.

Generate Leads

Like your feed posts, your stories appear on the explore page of users who don’t follow you. As mentioned earlier, stories do better than feed posts now. Thus, you will have a higher chance of getting noticed by new users.

Instagram’s smart algorithm always makes sure that people find things according to their taste. This way, you will reach the people that you want to reach.

Get Instant Feedback for New Products or Services

Before working on a new launch, you can use Instagram stories to collect more information about people’s preferences. You can simply put up polls, question stickers, etc., to ask your audience how they feel about a certain product or service.

After your product is launched, you can do the same thing to know what your customers are thinking. You can even share the responses as stories to gain your audience’s trust even more.

Repurpose Your Blog Content

Want to create a unified strategy throughout your digital presence? Try repurposing your content. This will not only strengthen the power of your videos or blog posts but will also improve your brand awareness and will encourage your audience to convert by increasing your chances to be heard and remembered.

Thus, if you have a piece of content that performed well on some other platform, you can simply recreate the content and share it on your Instagram stories.

Increase your Brand Transparency

Your audience would love to see the faces behind your brand; they would love to know more information about the products they are using.

So, include your crew in your Instagram stories sometimes, give sneak peeks of the next launch, or just simply share a moment when you are on a break. Doing this will add a human element to your product marketing strategy and help you build a personal connection with your audience.

Use Real-Time Marketing

Another great way of getting your audience’s attention is by creating an Instagram marketing strategy focused on current, relevant content with topics of utmost importance to them. And to do this, Instagram stories can be of great help because it encourages the use of real-time marketing.

For instance, if you are attending an event, record a short clip while you are there and upload that to your Instagram stories along with location to encourage more people to attend.

Run Instagram Story Ads

Back in 20117, Instagram made a smart move by launching a Story ads feature for business accounts. This feature will help you reach out to the people you want to reach.

To help you gain more potential customers, this feature uses targeting and reach capabilities to make your ads relevant to audiences with similar tastes.

Increase your Instagram Engagement

The more you put stories, the more audience you bring to your profile. Instagram is simply one of the best platforms to market your brand. This will allow you to build a community if you just set aside a few minutes of your day for this.

Stories are a great way to keep up with your audience. However, if you want to maintain a lasting impression, you’ll need to put more effort into your overall profile for better engagement.

Start by putting a catchy bio on your Instagram along with your brand’s website. Make sure that your feed posts include fun elements because those who admire your brand will engage with your posts just like they do with your stories. Adding location to posts is very important. You can add location in your stories as well as your feed posts.

Hashtags are one of the things that boost your engagement effectively. So, make sure to use relevant hashtags on your feed posts as well as your stories. Always use high-quality pictures for feed posts and make sure that your overall feed looks aesthetic. The anesthetic profile is something that makes a user stay.

Stay On Top of Mind

The key to being remembered is to be present. So, always keep posting stories to show up on top of your follower’s profiles. The more they interact with your content, the more they will remember you when their need for your brand’s products arises. So, don’t refrain from posting multiple stories a day.

Conclusion

It’s no longer the time when you can be all professional to boost sales. It’s all about being present and being creative.

On Instagram, you can personify your brand; you can tell a story, you can be yourself to reach more people. Besides taking inspiration from the top Instagram story ideas, you can be all creative and make something unique that works for your brand.

So, document your and your brand’s journey with Instagram stories and take your brand to the next level.