It has been merely five years since Instagram launched its stories feature. And yet, we can’t even imagine a time before those! The 15-second shots became overwhelmingly welcomed within a short period. Seemingly because 24 hours short-lived post accentuates the viewers’ curiosity and interest, hence offering maximum audience engagement. They are the perfect place to be to connect and communicate with your audience. But here’s the question that you have been wondering! How to create a charming story that stands out and makes the viewers curious to explore your business more! We will address that question in this blog, so stay with us by the last, and it would be like a piece of cake to create some highly engaging stories for your business. Before getting started, here’s an exciting thing about stories: using several in-app features and a slightly creative approach, you can effortlessly create a crispy, engaging, and appealing Instagram story that grabs your audience’s immediate attention. So, without any further ado, let’s get started!

1) How To Create an Instagram Story   

You would probably know this very first step but let’s be assured not to leave loose ends. You can create and upload a story by; Either swiping left while on the app’s home screen. Or click the ‘Your Story’ button on the top left corner below the Instagram logo. It will initially open a camera. You can either capture live or upload an already saved picture/video by swiping up. Once you create the content, select the ‘Your Story’ option in the bottom left corner to upload.

2) Things To Keep in Mind   

The first thing you should know is the story’s part of the content. And before curating any content, there should be two things you shall always keep in mind. One is identifying the core component of your messaging or brand. And the other one is how you want your potential customers to interact with your content. Keeping the goals fixed makes for consistent, more genuine content and is more likely to convey your brand’s message. All you need to do is to ensure your stories either Educate, Engage, Entertain or Inspire like every other viral content & you shall be good to go.  

3) Chronology Is the Key   

Instagram shows stories in a chronological way, from oldest to latest. You can tell a story within a story. We mean to say that instead of uploading a single Ad-poster, you can use the 15-second slate to tell a story about a happy customer or video testimonials, how your product/service works like a tutorial, or a case study in a rather exciting way. The options are seamless. 

The most significant advantage is that almost every user tends to scroll through it all, as everyone likes to know it all. We already know how annoying it is if someone doesn’t conclude or complete their story. Hence, you can use the same instinct to convey a long message or something impossible to tell in brief, as the audience is most likely to drift off from long posts or captions, unlike the stories.  

4) Connect On a Personal Level   

You need to make the audience realise that your account is not just a business profile for better engagement and a high conversion rate. You need to establish a personal connection with your audience. They need to know the story behind your whole brand or product/service. There are several ways to do the same such as;

BTS – Behind the Scene

While your team is putting efforts into a project or working on a final product that you think customers will find interesting to watch, you can either go live or capture a video to upload on the story. That way, your audience would be happy to see that you are giving your best as a brand for quality and satisfaction, and they would be more likely to go with your service/product.

Be Yourself – Make Jokes 

Viewers won’t just follow you or your brand to watch ads or product descriptions. They will follow you if they are getting something out of your profile. As mentioned earlier, your stories need to entertain, engage or inspire! You can share jokes or a humorous take on something that relates to your brand so that audience can enjoy it, and you can convey the brand message without being too subtle or direct. It increases brand engagement and conversion rate significantly.

5) Use Instagram to Create Instagram Stories   

The best thing about stories is that Instagram offers many features to create catchy stories. All you need to do is to have a creative approach and a little information about these features. Well, isn’t that why you are reading this post! 

So here you go! Instagram offers various tools to interact with your viewers and let them convey their opinions, comments, and suggestions. And let’s be honest here, who doesn’t want to share their opinion these days, right? But ultimately, it benefits you by understanding the audience better and using these insights to improve your deliverables. 

You can use; Polls; Questions, and a form-block where viewers can ask anything and later allows you to post answers on the story; You can also use Sliders to rate something using a particular emoticon from the left being lower to the right being higher on the reaction scale to obtain a review or reaction over something. 

The audience can also react to your stories with a set of emoticons without much effort. The audience is more likely to engage with the stories than long posts or captions, which strengthens your potential leads and results in a better conversion rate!

Conclusion 

Insta Stories is a blank canvas where you can use brushes, colours, GIFs, stickers, Hashtags, Mentions to other relevant brands, Music and many more. It all comes down to your creative skills and perspective and how you want to appeal to your audience, as no one knows them better than you! A strong marketing campaign or viral video has emotions and relatability at its core, and it’s not that difficult to establish that once you realize that your audience/viewers are not just potential customers but beautiful people, a community, or a family if you will. Then no one can stop you from creating an omnipresent brand image! Best of luck with your stories! Pun intended! 🙂