Content is everywhere and taking the time to put together good content is vital for success online. Easily digestible information and beautiful imagery will be the winners in social media and will help elevate your brand to one that is instantly recognisable. Stand out from the crowd with our tips on how to create engaging Instagram Stories.
What content to share
Instagram Stories is a full-screen visual format, modelled on Snapchat, where you can post videos and images that disappear after 24 hours. Here’s a list of what a business should share on Stories:
- News, promotions, updates about events, courses, workshops and giveaways
- Behind the scenes moments at your office, manufacturer or workshop, or of your team to promote authenticity and honesty
- A feed post that contains information about a product or service
- Videos relating to a product or service. For example, if your business is a café then a simple recipe might be a fun way to introduce a menu item to a potential customer
- Tips and tricks on how to use your products or apply a service. This could be how to style a garment, how to create the perfect bagel or how to apply new skills
Branded elements and templates
Your followers are expecting a certain level of curation nowadays. Create branded, professional, sharable and visually appealing content with the following tools:
Adobe Spark or Canva
Creating quality content without a graphic design background is possible with online tools like Adobe Spark and Canva. Both design tools offer access to fully customisable templates in a drag and drop format that is simple to use and brand.
Adobe Photoshop
If you have money to invest in a professional design tool, Adobe Photoshop is the industry choice. There are thousands of free Instagram Stories templates online (such as these packs from Hootsuite) that can be customised in Photoshop to create beautiful, on-brand content. Save these templates for later to save time and money, and to keep your content consistent.
Creative Market
If you’re looking for professionally designed templates and graphics, consider buying them from Creative Market. This is a marketplace where professional graphic designers, illustrators and photographers sell their work for commercial use.
Get people engaged
Engagement is one of the best ways to measure marketing success. Beautiful, relatable content will get you noticed but it won’t increase engagement on its own. Invite people into your world with these tips:
Post consistently
You do not need to post all day to engage your audience. Plan a set schedule to post Stories and stick to it. Whether it is once a week or three times a week, make sure you post consistently so your audience knows when to look out for your updates.
Create a weekly series or how-to content
Create a weekly series of content that follows a set theme. Series could be ‘Meet-up Monday’ where you interview a different industry expert every week or ‘Workshop Wednesday’ where you share tips and tricks in a mini-workshop format. It could be as simple as ‘Taco Tuesday’ where you share recipes related to Mexican cuisine. Post a question at the end for feedback or encourage your audience to share their own creations on their feeds with a branded hashtag or send you a direct message.
Polls, questions and quizzes
Create a two-way communication channel with your audience with polls, questions and quizzes.
Us the interactive Polls stickers to show people that your brand is interested in their opinions and wants to engage with them. You can ask your audience anything and it can be as simple as what the team should have for lunch.
Ask your audience questions to understand what content they want to engage with. This means you are always creating content that is relatable and valuable to your followers. You can also post questions relating to your industry and share your response to these questions to show off how much you know.
Quiz your audience with the quiz sticker to encourage them to learn more about you or your business. You can ask things like ‘where are our factories based?’ or ‘how long have we been in business for?’.
Accessibility to the internet and social media via mobile phones has meant anyone with a smartphone can follow your brand journey. If you’re ready to take your Instagram Stories to the next level of engagement, reach out to us at Yellow Door. We love a good story and we understand the value good content can bring to any business, no matter its size.