Instagram Stories is viewed by half of the social media giant’s 1.23 billion monthly active users, or about 4.57 billion individuals. One of them may be yours.
Following, we’ll talk about how to get the most out of Instagram Stories and how to create compelling material for your own stories. Instagram Stories’ major draw is its temporary nature, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make the most of the content you share inside that window of time or even make it last longer.
Consider the Vertical
The ideal ratio for Instagram Stories is 1080 by 1920. This is if you want to use the entire display area. Users still occasionally share landscape or square images on Stories, especially when doing things like importing photos from their galleries.
While it’s true that people are free to ignore the suggested aspect ratio, you shouldn’t. Instagram standardised on these proportions to ensure that your photos and videos will always look great regardless of the device being used to view them. If you choose to disregard it, you may find that your material is suddenly unavailable.
Being that Instagram Stories are meant to fill your full screen, Taco Bell (@tacobell) has released branded wallpapers to capitalise on the trend. All you have to do is take a screenshot to claim it as your own. As it was designed to perfectly fit the screen of every mobile device, there’s no need to adjust the size.
Besides the obvious technological advantages, uploading vertical content allows you to utilise the whole width of the screen, giving your audience a more engaging and immersive experience. Snapchat, an early adopter of the “story” format, found that vertical video advertising were nine times more effective than their horizontal counterparts.
Keep Your Brand Consistent
In order to stand out from the crowd and boost your brand’s visibility, it’s important to incorporate branding components into your Instagram Story, just like you would when posting to any other social media platform.
You want people to be able to recognise your work without knowing your name or seeing your logo.
Instagram Stories branding doesn’t need to be overt. Adding a few branded elements like colours and fonts should do the trick.
With the right combination of typefaces and colours, you can make your brand stand out and keep readers from clicking away.
Use the “add picture” sticker, which can be found to the right of the doodle symbol in Instagram Stories, to fine-tune your colour scheme. After that, you should post an image that incorporates your brand’s colours. The final step is to select your colour using the eye dropper or colour picker.
Don’t Stop Being Engaging
When it comes to Instagram, the new Interactive stickers aren’t simply a gimmick. These come in helpful when gauging and interacting with an audience.
When creating new products or pieces of content, interactive stickers are a fantastic starting point. What’s more, they can improve the effectiveness of your advertisements.
Use Appropriate Stickers
You shouldn’t discount the rest of Instagram’s sticker library just because interactive stickers are more popular.
Direct Message Me Sticker –
Use the Direct Message (DM) sticker on Instagram Stories to boost your DM conversations. When your followers tap the DM Me sticker, a chat window will appear so they may get in touch with you.
The more you get your followers to send you a direct message (DM), the more human your brand will seem, and the more personal connections you’ll be able to create with each of your clients. Consider how a simple Instagram Story may evolve into a lively exchange of ideas and opinions.
Indicator Stickers for Certain Locations –
More than merely letting your followers know where you are, location stickers have several advantages. When someone taps on the sticker, they’ll be sent to a page that aggregates all public Instagram Stories that have used the same location sticker. With this, Instagram users who aren’t already following you will be able to find your profile.
If you want people to be able to easily find your actual business or event, a location sticker is a great idea.
Mention Stickers-
If you’re collaborating with influencers or other companies, using mention stickers is crucial so that they may repost your story and make it visible to their audience.
When sharing user-generated content (UGC), don’t forget to utilise the Mention Stickers!
Sticker with a Trending Hashtag
Hashtags are just as useful on Instagram Stories as they are on your regular feed. Like the location sticker, clicking on the hashtag will take the user to a website where they can see all material tagged with that particular hashtag.
Music Sticker –
The music sticker is a fun and easy way to add some flair to your Instagram Story, and it also helps you get more interactions.
Feature the Most Vital Aspects
There’s no rule that says Instagram Stories have to vanish after a day. Create a highlight on a certain campaign or issue if you want related content to show right under your bio.
Using Story Highlights, your audience may go back through your archived Stories and see what they may have missed. The highlights may easily be moved around so that the most recent and important items are always at the top.
You presumably post a wide variety of Instagram Story material every day, and Highlights will help you keep track of it all.
The Email List Is Vitally Important
Although many of your consumers may be on Instagram, that is not the case. As much as 73% of millennials say email is their preferred method of professional communication. This is another evidence that some people still prefer email’s more traditional methods of communication. Yet they shouldn’t be denied access to crucial information because of it.
Directly uploading to an email from Instagram is easy, however Instagram Stories cannot be reposted in their entirety due to their unique size and 24-hour duration.
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