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It’s no secret that Instagram Stories are a big deal. With over 500+ million Stories published daily, they’re the platform’s most popular feature. Instagram Stories are a casual, fun way to connect with your audience, making the tap-friendly, timely nature of Stories addictive to your followers. Learn more here about the fundamentals of Instagram Stories:
An Instagram story is a vertical photo or short video (up to 15 seconds) that disappears after 24 hours.
Insta stories are shown differently and separately from your Instagram feed. Instagram stories are located in a bar at the top of your newsfeed and are represented by a multicolored ring around the profile picture of the story’s creator. Tap the profile picture, and the story opens for full-screen viewing.
Making an Instagram story is actually easy to do, even beginners can make it happen! Whether you’re getting creative or keeping it simple here’s how:
In the Instagram app, tap the ‘+’ icon in the top-left corner of your screen, when a new window pops up tap ‘Story’ on the navigation bar on the bottom right.
Next, tap the white circle at the bottom of the screen to take a photo or film a video. You’ll notice more circles after the plain white circle. Those are your filters. You can also upload photos from your camera roll by clicking the photo button in the bottom-left corner.
It’s time to personalize and bring your story to life. You can draw on your photo or video by hitting the pen icon, choosing a color, and choosing the pen you’d like to use. You can add sound by clicking the music icon, or add emojis/GIFs by clicking the box with a smiley face (in between the music icon and the pen icon). Finally, you can type any text you want by clicking the Aa icon in the top right corner.
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. When you’re consistent with your story posting schedule, your followers will get excited to watch your stories each time you post (hopefully daily).
Don’t Know What To Post, Or Where To Start?
Check Out This List Of IG Story Ideas to Try:
Instagram Stories are a great way to get to know your audience. You can ask your followers questions and answer in short videos.
Instagram Stories allow you to connect with your audience on a deeper level. What better way to do that than by lifting the curtain and showing them what’s going on behind the scenes (or behind the chair)? You can share clips of your team in action, give inside scoops on upcoming retail product releases, or fun salon FAQs.
Have team members take over Instagram Stories for the day to share their salon day-to-day activities, talk fun facts, reveal before and after transformations, or make retail product recommendations.
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.
For an educational story, think of tips and tricks pertinent to your specific services. Easy-peasy.
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.
Templates are a fun way to engage with trending content (or start your own). Find a fun template— there are so many available by searching on the internet. If you want to get creative, design a brand-relevant template and ask your followers to fill it out in their stories.
You can use Stories to start a fun series on any topic of choice. Maybe it’s reviewing products in your industry, trying new workouts, or even just chatting about the daily news. Creating a consistent series on your IG Stories will give your followers something to look forward to and keep them coming back to your account for more.
So go now and create a dynamic client journey with video Insta Stories, and breathe life into your brand in a way that staged images can’t.
Need help with Stories and Reels? Need help with SMM? Learn more about how we can help here
