Easy & Creative ways of using Instagram Stories for Your Business

It’s no secret that Stories are a big deal on social media right now.

Did you know I get most of my leads and customers for my Signature Freelance course and YourSocial meetups on stories alone?

Stories are Ephemeral content. I bet you didn’t know what ephemeral means before!

Ephemeral content is a highly diverse way to engage an audience. Your audience is likely to take faster action on content that is bound to disappear.

No wonder Stories are so popular. Creators and businesses are hopping on to the Stories bandwagon to make the most out of it..

Despite having so many unique Story features, a lot of businesses and creators still struggle in creating a unique content strategy for Stories alone. It baffles me to see businesses using Stories to only reshare the posts on the feed and not taking advantage of its standalone features.

During my free Discovery call sessions with a few local businesses in Amsterdam, I got a chance to speak to many entrepreneurs, creators, Etsy sellers, and social media managers. They were all having trouble wrapping their heads around how to use Stories for their businesses.

The most asked question: What do they do differently on their stories in comparison to what they post on their feeds?

Stories are like a blank canvas and therefore sometimes that kind of creative freedom could be confusing and that is normal.

Here are some creative ways of using Stories for your content.

1. Stories’ unique sequential style format

Stories allow you to create a set of content pieces and post them in a sequence. This sequential feature allows you to create step-by-step, how to mini-tutorials that work great for brand content.

2. Polls:

The new poll stickers on Instagram stories let you survey your Instagram audience’s about their interests, likes, and dislikes.

Instagram polls are a cool way of driving interaction with followers and using this information for market research, customer feedback or just getting to know your audience better.

3. Ask Questions in Your Instagram stories for your Business

The Questions sticker is one of the most interactive Stories feature on Instagram. You could collect feedback or crowdsource content ideas from your audience using this feature. A lot of businesses do it during the pre-launch of a campaign or when they are building something new and exciting. The questions feature allows your Instagram audience to respond in private which makes this feature even easier for followers to engage with.

4. Sharing Instagram-live on your Stories

Instagram Live is one of the most underrated Stories feature that is not being used enough. Did you know when you do an Instagram live to your stories, Instagram sends a notification to all your followers even the ones who do not engage with your post regularly? When a non-engaged follower watches your Instagram live broadcast, Instagram helps your stories to reach all these non-engaged users as they watched your Instagram live. So, do make more of Instagram live updates because they really boost impressions and eventually your engagement goes up.

5. Behind the scenes content

The most amazing thing about Instagram stories is you can be as raw and real where you don’t have to worry about making them super polished.

Stories are great to give your audience in-the-moment updates like behind the scenes content about your campaign or show real-time presentations of your work or show them what your workplace and team looks like.

Have you figured out how to use Instagram stories for your business? The Stories format on Instagram is only getting bigger and bigger with new features rolling every quarter. By understanding creative ways of making uses of Stories for your business, you can stay ahead of the curve and keep your followers engaged.