The short answer is yes, Instagram stories is going to help you grow your business, only as long as you’re using them correctly. So in today’s blog, I want to show you how to leverage the power of Instagram stories. You’re going to learn how to use stories, to get people on your website and how to get more loyalty out of your current audience. So make sure that you’re sticking until the end, where I’m going to show you how to use stories to actually make sales, got to save the juicy part for last.
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How Do You Use Instagram Stories To Get More Engagement?
If your audience makes you feel like you’re talking to a wall, you are not alone because of the Instagram algorithm changes, engagement has gone down in recent years, but the good news is that you can use your stories to re-engage your audience, and then turn them into people who actually care about your brand. So you might be asking, do I really care about Instagram engagement? You know, that’s not actual sales, but yes, you still want to focus on getting your audience more engaged because the more people that care about your brand, the more that they feel like your brand is their friend. And that means they’re going to be more likely to buy from you in the future.
Show Your Face Or Show Any Face
Okay, so my first tip for you is to get a face on screen. It could be yours, it could be someone from your team, but if you have someone talking on camera, you’re going to notice more views, and you’re going to notice more people DM-ing you to chat. People want to see other people, not just graphics or products. I actually had this client who said she tried everything with stories. She was posting product promotions, quotes, like literally you name it. And then one day she posted this really funny story about how she came in from the rain and her fake eyelash was sitting on her face all day. And then she got a bunch of DMS from her community, just laughing with her. So if you can get on camera and be real with your audience, that’s great. But I do understand that that might not be on brand for everyone. So there are other ways to increase your engagement.
Don’t Be Afraid To Under Produce
Okay. So the feed is more for polished content, but stories are a place for unedited raw blogs. People actually expect the behind the scenes content on stories. So if your stories are too polished, you’re going to notice people hitting next on your stories. So it’s a funny story. I was launching a product, so I had made these really beautiful graphics. They were on brand, they were animated, they were informational. And I was like, okay, cool. People are going to love these stories. And I am not even kidding, literally everyone hit next. And then I posted a story of me just talking to the camera about why I was excited for these new products and the amount of people who watched shot up. So my advice would be to shoot in natural lighting, leave some room for some mistakes even, and then you’re off to the races.
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Use Engagement Stickers
Instagram has a feature called stickers. You might be aware of them already, but if you’re looking for engagement, stickers would be the way to go. So the stickers that I like for engagement are the questions, the poll, the slider, and the quiz. And these are going to give you that two way interaction that you’re looking for. So this morning I was looking at which brands are doing a good job of this, and we’re not really strangers sells this card game that’s meant to start meaningful conversations. So take a look at this story.
Are you over your ex? And then it says, if you clicked no swipe up and then it takes you to some content marketing. This is literally genius because first of all, that question is so engaging because it hits a nerve, right? And then they top it off with a blog post that’s going to help their audience get through it. So they’re engaging their audience with helpful, useful content. And they’re further enforcing their brand values. All at the same time, I think this is genius and I love it. And also don’t forget that you can use stickers to gain some super valuable insights about your audience and make business decisions based off of those responses. Some brands use polls to hear what products their audience would want to see next and then they can go confidently into production with these insights.
Play A Game
Don’t underestimate the power of just having a good time on social media. Frank Bod did a fill in the blanks game here, and you can do a voting game on whether people like certain products, you could do a quiz, the options are literally endless, and I think this is just a nice way for new customers to get to know you and for you to stay top of mind. Before I go onto the next tip, I’m going to guess that if you are watching this blog, you’re likely an entrepreneur and you might be looking for a platform to start your own online store. So if you want to start selling online, you’re going to want to sign up for Shopify. I’ve used other e-commerce platforms, and in my opinion nothing compares, inventory, shipping, marketing. All of it is just made really easy with Shopify.
From the very start we have been on Shopify, we built the website all by ourselves. Hi, that’s Gayatri and that’s Ankita, and our brand is called There! So if you do want to get started, I will drop a link in the description box for you. It’s going to be a free 14 day trial. That’s going to give you the time to actually create a store, brand it, add your products and just like, see if you like it. So I’ve used the 14 day trial before committing, and it was really great because I could try it out beforehand. So I will leave that link for you guys in the description box.
How Do You Use Instagram Stories To Get More Sales And Website Traffic?
Okay. Now for the juicy part, how can we use Instagram stories to actually make sales? So once you’ve engaged your audience, like we talked about, they’re going to know like, and trust your brand, and then it’s time to go in for the kill and make those sales with your stories.
Here’s how to do it. Hype up product drops. So Instagram has this really useful countdown timer. And you can add it to your story 24 hours before a product or a collection drops to get people excited. So you can see this clothing company called ragged priests, they’re doing it here.
Just make sure to layer the timer on top of a blog that gives like a little sneak peek of what you’re going to be dropping. And then I would recommend following up with a story that includes a call to action. So like a swipe up to shop, for example. But for that, you are going to need 10,000 followers for that swipe up feature. So if you don’t have that, no worries. You can just have a story that says, click link in bio to shop.
Flex Your Product Reviews.
You can screenshot your customer reviews and put them in your stories. This may help customers who were on the fence about making a purchase, finally, go ahead and make that purchase. Frank body, they do a really good job of this, and these might not be the most engaging types of stories, like likely you’re just going to get a lot of people clicking through. But if you already have customers in your funnel, this is going to help those people get them further down that funnel. Use UGC and shoppable stickers.
The perfect cocktail that ends up in sales is user generated content, mixed with a convenient way to make a purchase like a shoppable sticker. So if you’re not familiar, user generated, content is content that’s been posted by your fans, influencers and your community. So it’s really meant to look raw and realistic, like these over here. UGC is so powerful because customers can get a more of a realistic feel of what it would be like to own your product, rather than an idealized studio photo, like this one over here. So Jaded London does a really good job of this.
They have stories with various influencers in their clothing, and then they use shoppable stickers and they also tag the influencers. So for you to do this, you would have to have your products linked, but that’s really easy. Um, all you do is you just, you know, post a story like you normally would hit the sticker button and then click shopping, and then you choose your products and then you are good to go. Run a sale. Use Instagram stories to let your audience know that you’re having a sale, make sure that you’re hyping it up with a tight deadline. So like 24 hours or weekend sales, those are going to do really well. Free shipping is also perfect for Instagram stories.
Actually a study came out that free shipping is more effective than knocking your prices down. So this is really going to help you drive those sales, but make sure that you also have a clear call to action. So include like a shop now, maybe throwing some visuals of what you’re selling and if you want to amp up your engagement while you’re making sales, maybe make it funny and throw in some humor in there as well. The next part of the blog is always my favorite part. But before we hop into that, I just want to give you a quick reminder that you can use the link in the description box for that free 14 day trial, if you are wanting to start building your Shopify store.
Onto Comment Time
All right. Onto comment time. Okay. So I’m going to go through some of your comments in the comment section, and I’m going to answer a few of you. So Mark Manson says. Educative content, thank you for these kinds of blogs. I was just wondering though, how do you recommend someone interested in building his business on Instagram to improve their personality, to match what they promote? What they promote. So I think this is such a good question. I think there’s no right or wrong answer here, but in my opinion, I think it’s just important to be yourself.
My friend Column, he runs a clothing business called kid super. I think I might’ve talked about him before, but he just does such a good job of being himself. And I think that’s, what’s, you know, been such a big part of what’s made him successful. So column and his brand, they’re all about having fun. And his image on Instagram really reflects that. He’s got content of him like jumping on a bouncy castle, but then at the same time, he’s also in Paris fashion week. So I think that just goes to show that you know, him being true to his personality, even if it is childish, even if it is playful, it’s, what’s been a huge part of what’s made him so successful and it’s helped him be a part of something as serious as Paris fashion week.
So in that sense, it’s not so much about like tweaking your personality, but it’s more about what characteristics of your personality that you choose to pull out to better market your business. So hopefully that’s answered your question.
Now I think the tricky thing is with humans, you know, we’re complex creatures. We’re not just one thing. So sometimes it’s like hard to pick out a single trait and be like, yup, this is what my brand is going to be distilled into this like one thing, right? My brand is just going to be about one personality trait and then like stick to that. So I think that’s hard, but I think at the same time, it is important to focus on a key message and stick to it.
Having one clear message is going to be what differentiates you as a brand and what makes you successful. I think that’s a whole other topic of conversation, so if you do want an entire blog on how to position your brand and like, choose that brand personality, then definitely just let me know in the comments and I will make it for you guys. I feel like that was a little long-winded. So we’ll just leave it at that. For me, this was a really fun blog to film.