Instagram Stories are a casual, fun way to connect with your audience. When you start planning your Instagram Stories strategy, keep consistency and creativity at the top of your priority list. Don’t make stories for the sake of making stories— make sure every story has a purpose.
#1 Q&A
Instagram Stories are a great way to get to know your audience. You can ask your followers questions and answer in short videos.
Have a loyal customer, friend of your brand (influencer) or employee take over your Instagram Stories for the day! Customers/influencers can show off the shopping experience and employees can share their day-to-day activities and job highlights.
These Stories might seem like all fun and games, but they act as little building blocks that strengthen relationships between your brand and its followers.
Use Instagram Stories to get feedback from your followers using Instagram’s Questions Sticker. Ask your followers how they like your products and website, what they’d like to see in the future, what their favorite product is, and what they’d like to know more about. You can share their responses in the following stories (more content, yay!).
Use the Polls feature to learn more about what your followers prefer. This is super helpful for feedback in the product development phase and it makes your followers feel like a part of the creation process.
For those marketing a personal brand, try answering personal prompts every now and then (“Who are your role models?”, “How do you deal with stress?”, “What’s your relationship deal breaker?” etc). You can google topic ideas - here’s a list of 650 prompts by the New York Times. Answering these questions on stories helps your followers learn more about you and your brand, while also inspiring them to answer the questions for themselves. You can even prompt them to share their answers in a Question and post them to your stories afterward.
When you’re consistent with your story posting schedule, your followers will get excited to watch your stories each time you post (hopefully daily). Now, go give them something to get excited about!
And most importantly, have fun with it! Your numbers will grow when you genuinely enjoy the experience and your followers can vibe with your energy.
Be well, stay safe.
-Nikola
