Instagram for Business

It’s imperative to your Instagram strategy to determine what your brand plans to use Stories for. This ephemeral space deletes the content after 24 hours, so you might feel that your hard work gets wasted by not existing in perpetuity. Instead, consider approaching your Stories content from a lens of exclusivity, timeliness, and behind-the-scenes access. Stories can be less dressed up than standard posts. They can have some of the raw, unvarnished look that’s hard to come by in the newsfeed. Once you know how your brand will act in Stories, set about creating your content.

There are 5 layouts you can add to your Stories, depending on how many images you want to share in one image. Because each Story post plays before the following one, you may be best served by creating multiple stories to tell your story instead of cramming too much into a single frame.

Story videos can last up to 15 seconds, and if they’re any longer they’ll play as a subsequent story. If you are posting multiple Story videos at a time, make sure you apply any stickers and widgets to as many Story segments as relevant.

You can also create videos for your Stories using static images. Photobooth is an editing tool within the platform that creates a short clip from multiple shots, like a digital photobooth. It’s an easy way to get video mixed in from photo stills. Select it from your options on the left side of your Story canvas, along with other tools like Boomerang, Multi-capture, and Hands-free modes that can add dynamic elements to your photo and video Stories.

Within the Instagram app you can curate and create a list of “close friends,” for whom you can create exclusive Story content that is visible only to them. It’s up to you, and your brand, how to use this tool. Think of it like a less programmable dark post.

For today’s creators, “close friends” lists provide a space for even more exclusive content for the most rabid fans. Some use it to enact a paywall and create a new revenue stream. Other brands use the “close friends” list to create an employees-only space on the platform. Consider who would value that exclusive content the most amongst your brand’s followers. 

Consider placing followers on your brand’s “close friend” list as a prize in contests and promotions. It’s a great way to encourage continued engagement after your campaign has gotten them through the door so that you can continue to provide value

From Giphy™ stickers to location and hashtag buttons, there’s a variety of ways to express and show off your brand in Stories. Using these features will place your Story amongst the others with similar tags. For example, if you tag your location as the Eiffel Tower your content will appear amongst other people in the area, on Instagram’s map. There are other widgets to encourage charitable giving or to support a cause, too. You can even use stickers to add music and countdowns to build hype. All of these widgets will help boost your user engagement through interactions with them.

 

The final embellishment on Instagram Stories are the filter and backgrounds. Choose these from the Story “home,” your camera, before capturing your shot. You can download custom filters or see what’s new seasonally. If your brand’s design team has the bandwidth, you can even design and upload your own filter to share with the world.

Use the filters and backgrounds sparingly, unless they really enhance your brand. Filters can certainly enhance a photo that might otherwise be plain or boring, but they can also turn off your audience – distracting from your message and blending in with other content using that same filter.