Top 5 Tips to make your IG Stories pop
Mark Zuckerberg must live by the saying “if you can’t join them, beat them” as evidenced by the introduction of the Instagram stories feature soon after his offer to acquire Snapchat was rejected. Within weeks, millions of users were already converted to this new feature – first with influencers, then moving to personal Instagram users, and finally businesses. And now the competition is higher than ever to make sure your IG stories are top notch, so now bears the question: How do you keep customers engaged with IG stories? Well, the good news is we here at Milk Bottle Projects know our stuff when it comes to Social Media Management and we love to share our knowledge with you, so here are our top five tips on how to make your Instagram stories pop:
Tell A Story
Ask anybody in the world and they would tell you that they’d prefer to be told a story than sold a product plus, they’re called Instagram stories for a reason. In order to engage your customers you need to tell the story of your brand and its day-to-day operations. The point of an instagram story is for each addition to the story to carry on from the last, creating one overall, cohesive story. When creating a story make sure you know what you want to say and how you want to say it, then use the text tool to carry the story through to each individual post. This way the audience will want to keep clicking to see the next part of the story, so keep them guessing, keep them wanting more!
GO BEHIND THE SCENES
Instagram stories are the more-authentic sister of your Instagram profile. Where your Instagram profile is constructed to portray a certain image or message, your stories are there to humanise the brand. People want to see what goes on behind the scenes, the good, the bad and the downright funny. They want to be able to connect with human beings, see how the brand operates and what happens in order to bring them the products they love! Whether you’re a fashion brand showing the #BTS of a fashion shoot, or a cafe showing how a meal is made, or even just a savvy marketing agency showing off your work, people want to see it!
SPEAK WITH YOUR AUDIENCE NOT AT THEM
Social Media platforms are putting brands on the same level as their customers and creating opportunities for two-way communication. Use your Instagram stories to ask your customers what they like seeing and what they don’t, ask them what they think about certain products, even let them take control and ask you questions! Instagram stories are designed interaction with a whole range of tools just begging to be used. Here’s some to try:
Poll tool: Use this tool to gauge customer preferences, do they want to see certain content? Which of two options do they prefer? You can even use two positive answers if you’re really in need of a confidence boost!
Slider tool: This tool simply tells you how much your audience likes something. Post a picture of your new delicious Nutella pancakes (@5_lire we’re looking at you) and ask customers how good it looks?! You’re basically just pumping people up and getting them excited to come in and try your best and most interesting products, its a win-win!
Ask me a question tool: Instagram’s newest tool and certainly most annoying. Use this tool sparingly because if you start using it every day you will see your follow count drop instantaneously! This tool allows you to put an open question out there to your audience and for them to ask any questions they’ve ever wondered about your brand! Make sure you answer all questions openly and honestly and a heads up that the questions are not anonymous so you can see exactly who is thinking what!
MIX-IT UP
The key to Instagram stories is having fun! They’re supposed to be informal, fun and a great way for you to connect with your audience on a deeper level! Try to mix-up your stories with professional photos, videos, boomerangs, use text, gifs and emojis… whatever you need to express the story you want to tell! If you constantly post photos of the same things, people will quickly lose interest but if you’re throwing in live videos and graphics, boomerangs and text posts your audience will always be interested to see what’s up your sleeve this time!
DON’T BE AFRAID TO TEASE!
Stories can be a great way to tease a new product to customers without telling exactly what news you’re about to reveal! Say you’ve got a new product being released or a new menu item, take photos of elements of it and post it on the story saying things like “sneak peek”, or “big things coming” or “guess what we’re working on.” Not only will it engage customers but it will start a conversation with people trying to be the first to figure out your teaser. You can also use emojis or gifs to cover up parts of a photo to obscure it enough to keep people guessing!
We offer Social Media Management to Hospitality and Lifestyle clients and if you think you could do with a helping hand, contact us today!