How Instagram stories can increase brand awareness

Insta stories may look daunting, how do you know you are utilising them to the best of your abilities? In this blog, we are going to be talking about all the things you should be doing to ensure your stories are reaching the intended audience and generating you both traffic and sales and increasing brand awareness. 

Why are they important?

Insta stories are arguably one of the most important features on your feed, why? Because this is most likely the first thing someone will see on your page. About half of Instagrams monthly users are using stories. That is 500 million people posting 1 billion stories every single day! A staggering 62% of those people say they’ve become more interested in a brand or product as a direct result of seeing their stories. 

Increase brand awareness

Adding a hashtag to your story makes it more discoverable to a wider audience, as it may be selected by the algorithm to appear on the page of that hashtag. It’s a great idea to start incorporating this into your stories to increase your views. 
Similarly, adding your location (if you feel comfortable doing so) can also help your stories potential. Often businesses have a location page (which users can find by tapping a hashtag or searching in the explore tab). If your story ends up there, you have the potential for a lot more views. 
Meanwhile, if you have a brick-and-mortar business, your location page is where your happy customers can showcase their experience with you and potential customers can check out your work.
The highlight feature allows you to pin certain stories to your page indefinitely meaning they won’t disappear after 24 hours. Highlighting them to your profile can create a great place for your best brand-defining content. Each highlight you pin can be categorised under different names and you can add new stories whenever you wish.

How to get your stories on the explore page  

The allusive explore page is the endless cascade of algorithm-selected posts and Stories.  For brands, getting on the Explore page is the holy grail. This usually means a boost in reach and engagement, due to the algorithm. Instagram says that the biggest ranking signal is interesting: a user is more likely to see Stories similar to ones from accounts they already follow. However, things you can do to help your chances include:

• Posting video (they get more attention because they auto-play in Explore, but a good photo will do better than a mediocre video)

• Posting highly visual Stories that don’t have too much text

• Posting stories that are representative of your brand’s visual identity (for more on this, see Tip #1, below)

Instagram stories tips 

So now you’ve got the basics these are our top tips for ensuring your stories are top quality:
Nail your visual identity - Stories are a full-screen immersive feature, play up to this create something that is engaging and entertaining to your audience. Your followers should know it’s your stories without having to look at your username, find a style and stick to it. Use consistent colours, fonts and gifs to maintain your brand.
The brand first and fast - According to Facebook, users move 41% faster through mobile feeds than desktop. When it comes to stories the most effective brand is able to convey their message within the first 3 seconds. Don’t be shy put your most exciting, on-brand frame to the front of your story.
Shoot vertically and think stories first - Generally reposting identical content across different social channels isn’t the best option. Each platform has its own unique feel. Ensure that you are creating new and fresh content to suit each page.
Get creative - According to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, stories are where people “share a lot more funny moments, raw moments and authentic moments.” This is the same for brands so get real try shooting your content in a different more creative way as you would your feed. 
Don’t forget your CTA- When it comes to monetization, Instagram Stories is kind of at a sweet spot in its growth: the audience is increasing, ads aren’t drowning out other content, and the platform has provided plenty of interface mechanisms to make it easier for users to convert (whether that means sales, downloads or traffic.)