How to Make Stories That Benefit Your Business
Want to attract more leads with Instagram? Curious how a story arc on Instagram Stories can help? PTC works closely with clients to ensure the message is definitive, interesting, and relevant. Instagram needs to be even more so.
Why Create Instagram Stories?
Within the world of social media marketing, and especially within the world of Instagram, Instagram Stories is an important place for your business or brand to show up. Among all the social platforms, Instagram is where people engage the most. Tyler also loves Instagram because you can easily and organically find your ideal customer or client. The Social Media Examiner explores more on the ins and outs of Instagram Stories..
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Instagram and Instagram Stories are important because so many people use them. Currently, Instagram has more than 800 million monthly active users, and more than 500 million people are on Instagram every single day. Of those active daily users, about 300 million are on Instagram Stories. In other words, more than half of Instagram’s daily active users are using Instagram Stories.
Instagram reports that one in five Instagram stories leads to a direct message. In other words, when you create some content, you have an opportunity to start a conversation with a potential customer or client 20% of the time. You don’t even have to do any selling. For a business owner or marketer, that opportunity for dialog is a huge win.
Since Instagram Stories launched, users spend more time on Instagram and focus more on stories than the feed. Both Tyler and his students have seen user habits shift from scrolling through the feed to only watching Instagram stories.
Branded content is incredibly popular on Instagram. More than half of Instagram users (200 million people) look at a business profile every single day.
For any business, followers forgetting about the business is the biggest hazard. Because so many people watch Instagram stories, they allow your business to stay top of mind and open the door for conversation.
Instagram stories allow you to connect with people a little more authentically because stories don’t need to be as polished as other content on Instagram. In fact, in the entrepreneur, solopreneur, and personal brand spaces, highly curated Instagram stories don’t get you as far because they need to offer an honest, genuine look into your business or life.
Instagram Stories Algorithm
Although social networks don’t give users the details about how their algorithms work, Instagram has recently been demystifying the algorithm because many users have recently expressed their dislike of it. Instagram says the algorithm creates a unique experience for each user.
Instagram’s algorithm looks at a few key factors to determine when you’re served content. Much of what you see depends on the way you engage with specific content. How much time you spend on the app also influences the content you see.
As an example, if you are on Instagram for a couple of hours a day, you will see more fresh content than someone who logs on for only a few minutes a day. For the person who spends only a short time on Instagram, it shows only the top few things that interest them.
PTC has noticed that different areas on Instagram (like Stories) and the feed speak to one another. To visualize this, if you watch someone’s story, engage in their store, answer their polls, or reply to them via direct message, you’ll likely see more of their posts in the feed. Conversely, if you engage with someone’s content in the feed, their stories seem to be bumped up in your queue.
Also, Instagram Stories refreshes every time you open the app. Say someone adds new content to their story, and you always watch their stories. As soon as they add new content, their story is bumped up so you don’t miss their content if you’re away from the app for a few hours, or even a day or so.
Timesaving Tips for Instagram Stories
For marketers who struggle with creating content for all the different platforms, There are some tips for creating Instagram stories. For instance, you can repurpose content from other platforms. You might turn a quote from a podcast or captioned video into a fun graphic. Or repurpose a blog post into a talking-head video on Instagram Stories that highlights the bullet points from the blog post.
With an Instagram Stories takeover, someone else creates content for your Instagram Stories for a day. If you work for an agency or large business, takeovers offer an incredible opportunity to feature your employees or team members and their stories. You can also allow customers and clients to do a takeover.
User-generated content is another low-effort way to create Instagram Stories content. In fact, Instagram has simplified your ability to share user content. If someone with a public account tags you in a story, you can add that story to your own story. Instagram also recently released a feature that lets you share posts from Instagram to your story as long as the post isn’t from a private account.
With these features for sharing user content, you can spend a few minutes per day sharing customer or client posts or stories in which they’ve tagged you or your business. When you share their content, a shortcut to their post appears in your story. You can also thank the user for the mention and point your audience to the product or service the original poster is enjoying.
For example, to share a 60-second video that somebody posted on their Instagram account, you tap the little airplane icon and share that post to your story. Instagram creates a photo in your story that shows the user’s post in the center and picks a color from the post as a background. Tapping the photo then takes you to the video post.
When you share user content to your story, you don’t need to worry about people leaving your stories. Although someone who taps to see the user’s full post leaves your story temporarily, Instagram removed the bottom bar that would allow someone to return home. The user has to return to your story before they can navigate elsewhere on Instagram.
In fact, Instagram Stories users typically don’t navigate away from stories. Some people who manage business accounts focus on getting 10,000 followers so they can get the swipe-up feature, which is the only way besides a link in your bio to take a user from Instagram to a website. However, given user behavior, swipe-up doesn’t solve many Instagram marketing problems.
How to Measure Instagram Story Results
Tracking a few metrics to determine whether the stories are working is important. Retention is a key metric that shows how many people are left at the end of a story relative to the number of people who started the story. This data indicates whether his content resonates with his audience.
If you are using direct messages as calls to action, you should also track how many direct messages you receive on a regular basis. You can use direct messages to continue pushing people to the products and encourage them to join your community. A concentrated direct message strategy gets you further on Instagram than any other strategy.
For a large business, direct messages can be unmanageable, and this metric may not be a figure for you. Instead, your call to action might ask followers to swipe up, and you can measure the traffic you get from Instagram.
You can access Instagram Insights whether or not you have a business account. (You do need a strong following to see insights on a personal account.) However, a business account provides in-depth insights about your stories. Specifically, you can see swipe-aways, exits, people who go back, and engagement. For more story metrics, you can choose from a ton of great third-party tools.
Although we recommend never deleting content, you might archive a post with low engagement and repost it later or repurpose the photo or caption. By not deleting content, you always have access to data about that content. That data helps continue learning how to create better content for followers.
After 24 hours, your Instagram stories are archived automatically. You can pull those stories out of your archive later or add them as highlights on your profile.
Find out what makes your customer experience a better one and go after it. Take your time and make sure you’re looking at the complete picture before you move forward, however, as every customer has a different need. If you’re not secure in your abilities to develop a proper experience, rather than risk the potential errors you can make, consider hiring a professional in the field such as PTC Computer Solutions. Your success depends on it.
PTC Computer Solutions works extensively on understanding the Needs of Our Clients and what they are looking for so that understanding of the Internet and business technologies for their needs and objectives is fully explained. Don’t fail to meet your objectives with your customer experience and other technologies. Stay on top of things. Train your employees or hire an agency that can handle it for you such as PTC Computer Solutions.