If you think the Instagram Stories feature was only developed to serve as a bucket for all your IG-worthy escapades throughout the day, think again. This Snapchat-like feature can be utilised for digital marketing purposes. That’s right; you can use it to promote your brand online and to generate more sales if used correctly.
The important question is: how? There’s dozens of ways, actually, but let’s just do a rundown of five of the most practical and feasible ways.
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Drive traffic to your desired page.
Instagram allows business accounts with over 10,000 followers to add swipe up call-to-action on their stories to outbound links. You can use this feature to drive your followers to landing pages that promote your products or services.
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Highlight your products or services.
Before the highlights feature of IG Stories was launched, stories could only last for 24 hours. Now, you can select stories that you want to highlight and they can be stored in archives visible on your profile—for as long as you like. You can use this feature to group your stories to showcase your brand’s products, events, and campaigns. This allows your followers to easily find the things they are interested in your account.
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Get your Instagram page discovered through hashtags.
While the stories you don’t highlight will only last for a day, this doesn’t mean you are not allowed to use hashtags in them. Instagram’s algorithm allows stories to be searched by users through hashtags. So when you place hashtags in your stories, there’s a good chance that people in Instagram will find them by using the search option. That’s a great way for your page to be discovered.
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Know your followers’ pulse.
Another hack you should know about IG Stories is that you can use its poll feature to know what your followers want. If you are planning to drop a new product, you can post a story with a poll to test the waters. Will your target market buy it or will they pass up? The poll could be your guide.
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Engage followers by going live.
Broadcast your event, Q&A session, product demonstration or review, unboxing, and basically anything you want to show your followers real time. You can use this feature to engage your followers, drive traffic to your desired outbound links, or just have fun with your audience. Going live can also be a good way to beef up your brand’s presence and reputation online.
In a nutshell, IG Stories can be used to promote your business and to create a solid network of loyal followers. Go and try it as it could be the key to your venture’s growth that you’ve been looking for a while now.
Here at Search Insights, our highly skilled team of Social Media specialists is here to help you navigate the ever-changing social media landscape. For more information on how your business can best utilise Instagram Stories and and other social media platforms, contact us today.