Your Quick Guide to Using Instagram Stories for Your Marketing Initiatives

Instagram Stories is more than a space to share your fun, interesting, and short-lived content.

With the right approach and reliable tools, you can use IG Stories to share relevant, compelling content that helps you engage your audience quickly, supporting your marketing efforts.

Stories also allow you to get your creative Instagram posts right where people can easily see them, raising your brand’s visibility and driving audience awareness.

The question is, how do you use IG Stories for your marketing campaigns and business?

Continue reading this guide to learn how to leverage Instagram Stories strategically to give your marketing initiatives a boost.

1. Include stickers to invite audience interaction

Use built-in tools and interactive functionalities within Instagram and IG Stories to engage your audiences.

Some of these interactive features are IG Story Stickers, such as Product and Poll question stickers.

Entice your audiences into interacting with your Stories, content, and brand with these Sticker use case tips.

Include relevant and viral Instagram hashtags with your stickers to make your Stories searchable and more visible to your target audience.
Run brand-related and trending topic-focused surveys or ask random, engaging Instagram poll questions with the IG Story poll sticker.
Use the Questions sticker to host Q&A sessions. It’s a great opportunity to interact with and engage audiences by answering their burning questions. You can also gather data about your followers’ interests and preferences.
Include relatable GIFs and memes with your stickers to help draw attention to your Stories.
Add Product stickers to make your IG Stories shoppable and boost click-throughs to your website. It can also help increase your conversions and sales.

Try to embed Instagram stories on website to boost your dwell time and user trust on your brand.

Create and share your Instagram Stories easily with Vista Social.

The Social Media Marketing (SMM) platform lets you create your IG Stories, posts, and other social media content and schedule them for auto-publishing.

You won’t need to manually post your Stories and find the best time to publish them since Vista Social can do the heavy lifting for you.

Add your posts to a queue to auto-publish multiple content pieces on your predefined dates and times.

You can also schedule and auto-publish many posts quickly with the platform’s bulk scheduling option.

A reliable social media management tool can save you from boatloads of manual work. You’ll have more time to work on other crucial marketing tasks, such as creating a content writing playbook. You can employ a task management software to manage your deliverables more efficiently.

2. Post timely announcements and news

Your Instagram Story is one of the perfect places to share announcements and news of your promotions, sales, giveaways, live events, etc.

After all, Stories appear at the top of the Instagram IG feed, making them one of the first things your audiences see.

Make the most of your 15-second Stories by creating compelling content and eye-catching visual elements.

For example, create a vibrant video or photo with catchy text overlays to draw attention and generate excitement with your Stories.

ILIA beauty’s IG Story promoting the brand’s C Beyond serum is a good example.

The video shows macro shots of the product’s components.

The IG Story is creative and eye-catching while giving audiences the impression that the product contains quality ingredients.

You can use a similar approach when promoting Software-as-a-Service products, such as idea management software.

For instance, you can share a quick infographic-like video clip announcing the software’s latest feature.
If you collaborate with another SaaS company, share their announcements in your Stories. For example, repost a Story on the best Shopify apps to grow sales for ecommerce business owners.

3. Share useful content

While Instagram Stories are generally visible for only 24 hours, you can make them last longer by adding them to your highlights.

With this, you can make the most of your IG Stories, increasing their visibility and, in turn, helping expand your content’s reach.

Plus, you can use IG Stories to save content useful to your followers and potential customers for a long time.

For instance, share a tutorial on buying SEO articles to help promote your SEO services in your Instagram Story highlights.

You can also use IG Story highlights to share engaging Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) with potential customers, the way Ruggable does in its Instagram highlights.

Leverage IG Story highlights to share timeless, relevant, and bite-sized content. Doing so lets audiences learn more about your brand and offers, helping you drive engagement and conversions.

4. Create shareable branded assets

If you create content promoting your brand, you might as well make it highly shareable to make the most of it.

Post visual assets in your Stories to draw more eyeballs to your social feeds, products, and services while encouraging viewers to share your content.

It’s one way of getting your content to go viral on Instagram, which can do wonders for your engagement rates and brand’s reach.

For instance, popular project workflow software Asana shares practical #Asanatips to help teams work harmoniously together in its Stories.

Consider the content types your audiences are interested in and would likely generate reposts and shares. These can include Q&A templates, data visualizations, how-to tips, etc.

Include branding elements, such as your logo, name, and branded hashtags, to drive awareness and recognition while helping your content reach more people.

5. Run IG Story ads

Include branding elements, such as your logo, name, and branded hashtags, to drive awareness and recognition while helping your content reach more people.

If you’ve exhausted organic options to drive leads and conversions, or if you want to see results faster, you can always run Instagram Story ads.

IG Stories ads are some of the best ways to showcase your business, products and services, special offers, and others. to already engaged audiences.

Made.com’s IG Story ad is a classic example with its playful, animated ad promoting the brand’s winter luxury furnishing line and sale.

The ad is eye-catching and fun to see. It can be a great format to emulate to draw attention to your products and promotions on IG Stories.

You can also promote your organic IG Stories and turn them into ads. Doing so allows you to test the waters with your content before investing resources and adding them to your marketing initiatives.

Remember to weave your IG Stories ads in your content tracking strategy to assess their performance and effectiveness.
You’ll know whether your Story ads support your efforts to meet your marketing goals effectively.