The Hottest Marketing Outlet: Instagram Stories!

The Hottest Marketing Outlet: Instagram Stories!

What’s the Point of Instagram Stories?

Instagram stories are an engaging tool that quickly creates memorable experiences through social media. Lately, many businesses have decided to take advantage of stories for their marketing efforts, since Instagram provides traffic data.

These Instagram stories are super fun to make, watch, and most importantly allows your brand to stand out.

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about using Instagram Stories:

Super Active User Base

Instagram reports there are more than 400 million daily users for stories which is great for increasing the chances of exposure & engagements.

Stories Require No Need to be Extra

No one expects you to put a lot of time into a 16-second clip that will only last 24 hours.Keep this in mind when deciding what message to get across via your Instagram stories.

Even when you have a lot of valuable information to share it’s best not to overload your audience. Unloading a lot of information is not something you want to consistently do on your Instagram stories, because it will just bore or distract your audience.

Instagram stories are perfect for a quick idea or interesting creative moment.

Vault of Features

There are many available features that can make your "Instastories" a bit more intriguing for your viewers. Some of  the available options include of drawings, stickers, countdowns, polls, questions, or cool filters to liven up your story content.

The Chance to Drive Traffic

A super effective way to direct traffic to your website or to learn more about your products or services is by using links within your Instagram stories. This makes discovering products or services you offer really easy for your target audience.

Swipe-up links

For those who have more than ten thousand followers under the Instagram business account, you have the benefit of using the swipe-up feature! This is a great feature that allows your viewers to go directly to the link you provide

#Get #Discovered

Tags! Hashtags and geotags, which are for physical location purposes, each helps viewers and other Instagram users to be more reachable and gain access to your content and profile.

Barely scratching the surface, we’d like to share a few ways to utilize Instagram stories as a marketing outlet for your hair business!

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Here’s the How-to!

As mentioned above, Instagram gives you a variety of features to apply to your posts. The thing about these features is they help you to be more creative with your content. You should definitely take advantage of these features to maximize your story's creative potential. There's also an option to upload things from your own personal albums within your phone.

Here’s how to use Instagram Stories:

  • Click the "+" icon on the top of your screen
  • Tap the white circle in the middle to take a picture, hold it for a video, or to access your own content from your phone, click the tiny icon in the left bottom corner next to the ‘flash’ option.
  • Easily edit the photo or video using Instagram’s different editing options.
  • Tap the “Your Story” button to post to your public Story, “Send to” to send it privately to your followers via a Direct Message, or “Save” to download it to your phone for later use.

Instagram stories also give you options of modes to create content in other forms:

Type:

Create text-based posts in a variety of fonts with a colored background.

Live:

Stream yourself live for In-the-moment action where your viewers can connect with you in real-time. Don’t worry; you can post it afterward where it doesn’t just disappear.

Boomerang:

Looping videos are always fun and animated! Do a cool action for 2 seconds.

Focus:

Take portrait-like photos that ‘focus’ on the whole point of the picture, the subject, like bundles or eyelashes.

Superzoom:

Give a dramatized zoom in on your subject from a certain distance, using a variety of humorous effects like TV Show or Dramatic.

Rewind:

Record a video that will play back in reverse.

Hands-free:

For much convenience, record a video without having to hold down the record button.

Instagram Stories offers you a variety of ways to get creative. Use all the options we’ve covered at your disposal to bring your content to life and make it vibrant. Feel free to combine text, pictures, videos, stickers, filters, polls for major engagement to produce fun and interesting content.

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Less “posting,” More “programming”

Just because stories don’t last longer than 24 hours or as long as an Instagram feed post does not mean they don’t need strategic planning or effort. As a brand, you should think and consider your Instagram story content as you would any other outlet of content with proper timing.

Consider it as schedule programming and think in advance about what kind of content you’ll be sharing and how you want it to flow will help you strategize a more appealing and consistent experience for your viewers.

Support your Stories with Instagram Live

IG Live is super fun and engaging to watch for your viewers and even yourself.

But when it’s time for you to record in real-time for your brand, things can seem a bit intimidating and scary. Like you have to be well put together with how you’re going to flow. Even though this may have some truth to it, the point of a live is to operate in real-time and be real to your viewers just as you would in person.

Live videos give you less control since they’re done on-the-spot but make for an interactive tool.

An awesome advantage that Instagram provides for live videos is the automatic notification your followers receive once you start so that they can join. If you have a decent amount of followers, try out Instagram live! Give insight into what you have going on within your hair business and allow them to be more engage with who you are.

Remember it’s all about interaction, which means that you consistently acknowledge the video comments and reactions left by your viewers. Inviting others to your live is great way to increase engagements. Before diving into your live video, be sure to provide enough time, about 2 minutes, until you're ready to get started so ample amount of people can join in.

Some Instagram Live ideas include:

  • Running a contest or giveaway
  • Hosting a Q&A about your hair brand
  • Covering or hosting a hair industry event
  • Vlogging live
  • Influencer takeover

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Curate Stories into Highlights

Stories might have a short shelf life, but they can be constantly seen by easily storing them within a story highlight.

These are pinned at the top of your profile, so Instagram users have immediate access to your content. You can create your highlight with certain stories created over time based on a certain theme such as hairstyles, client reviews, new products, latest events, etc.

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Analyze Like a Pro with Instagram Analytics

Having a personal account makes it harder to keep up with your stories' performance. As a business account, you can easily access various results of your Instagram stories by viewing the metrics for impressions, views, clicks, replies, and reaches which will help guide you towards your next step.

Use this tool to figure out where most of your engagement is coming from and where you need to pick things up from where you’re losing engagement. Focus on making your content better and better over time.

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Tell a Story, Instagram Style!

Looking for ways to become more creative with your marketing strategies through social media platforms like Instagram?

I’m sure after reading this article you see that Instagram stories are a great tool for doing so. There are so many advantages and features to stories that make them more appealing to viewers, and as a hair brand, that’s what you should care about. Use this information to utilize Instagram stories effectively and get creative in the process.

What are some ways you have used Instagram stories for the marketing of your hair business? Share with us by leaving a comment below!

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