5 Tips to Leverage Instagram Stories for Your Business

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If you don’t use Instagram Stories for your marketing efforts, then you’re missing out on tons of opportunities. 

While IG stories are primarily meant for sharing fun and fleeting content, there are ways to use the Instagram feature to help promote your content and brand and drive engagement

Plus, using IG Stories is generally free (besides running Instagram Story ads) if you know the right avenues to explore and tactics to use.  

If you’re still on the fence about this, then read on to learn five effective ways to leverage Instagram Stories for your business. 

1. Hear from your audience with the questions sticker

If you’re tired of the same old surveys and feedback forms, your customers probably are too. 

It doesn’t mean you should throw those out, but you can make collecting feedback and comments from your audience more engaging and fun through the questions sticker on Instagram Stories. 

For instance, you can use the questions sticker to ask followers for feedback on your newly launched product. It’s an interactive way to gather feedback and get unique answers to your brand-related questions. 

Besides getting feedback, you can also include the most popular questions to ask on an Instagram Story to interact and engage with your audiences better. 

Asking audiences about their favorite characters from a popular tv show, for example, can be a great conversation starter, encouraging engagement while helping you connect with your followers.   

You can also use IG tools to auto-post your Instagram stories. 

Vista Social provides modern, sophisticated SMM features that let you schedule publishing your social media content across platforms easily.

You can also schedule your posts in bulk, add them to a queue, and use the Smart publishing feature to let the platform search for and publish content for you. 

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Image source: vistasocial.com

Vista Social’s other key features include reviews management, listening, analytics, and reporting tools. It also has an inbox to centralize managing your messages across social media networks.   

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Image source: vistasocial.com

Use reliable SMM platforms to simplify and streamline creating and publishing your IG stories and other content, including managing your other tasks efficiently for higher engagement.  

2. Promote with product stickers

While you can easily promote your products through images and videos on your Instagram feed, take your efforts a step further by using product stickers in your IG stories. 

The stickers let you integrate products into your IG Stories content easily, providing your audiences a faster way to shop for your products. 

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Image source: business.instagram.com

Add one product sticker to your Instagram story and customize the text color accordingly. 

Shoppers viewing your story can tap the product sticker and be taken directly to the specific product’s details page. It’s the same page that appears when IG users tap on a shoppable post on your feed. 

The page displays additional product images, details, similar items, and a link to your website where shoppers can complete the purchase. 

Besides promoting products on IG Stories, share sneak peeks into your product development process to educate and interest your audiences.

Gather insights and details from your robust user story software and translate that into easy-to-consume Instagram Stories to help engage your audiences.   

3. Share timely announcements and news

Draw your audiences’ attention to your discounts, giveaways, sales, new blog posts, events, new products using IG Stories. 

You can generate excitement using captivating videos or photos overlaid with text announcements, emojis, more stickers, and a funny GIF. 

Add compelling Calls-to-Action (CTAs) to direct your audience to the next steps and include links that take them to your landing and product pages or wherever you want them to go. 

Also, include relevant hashtags using the hashtag sticker to get your IG Story to more users’ feeds. It can help expand your reach and increase your engagement and conversion opportunities. 

It’s always good to have a content development approach to streamline your content marketing efforts—from planning to publishing.    

If you’re pressed for time and want to churn out Instagram Stories quickly, use IG Story templates.

For instance, Canva provides customizable IG story templates and easy-to-use tools to help you design your Stories without starting from scratch. 

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Image source: canva.com

You can personalize the template’s layout and design accordingly. Add photos, videos, and audio clips from your library. 

You can also choose from Canva’s library of images, icons, and other graphics, a color scheme, font styles, use animation, etc.     

Use templates and user-friendly design tools to create compelling IG stories to promote your events and support other marketing initiatives. 

4. Entertain and engage with quizzes and poll stickers

When used strategically, polls and quizzes can do wonders for your engagement and lead generation efforts. 

Use IG Story poll stickers to encourage audiences to participate in fun activities, such as asking which variation of your product they prefer. 

Doing so makes it easier and more fun to interact with your audience while getting important feedback and information about their preferences and interests.

You can ask simple Yes or No questions, and IG users can respond by tapping their choice. You’ll see the results in real-time. 

Throw in some quizzes with the quiz stickers on IG stories. You can post a multiple-choice question that users can answer by tapping their choice.

A Story quiz is a fun way to entice audiences into interacting with your brand, and it gives them a chance to show off their knowledge.  

Draw insights from powerful customer engagement platforms. Use the gathered and analyzed data to understand your customer’s pain points, sentiments, etc. 

Leverage the data and insights to create relevant, timely, and interesting IG Story polls and quizzes that your audience can’t help but participate in.  

5. Run Instagram Story ads

One of the best ways to get your Instagram Stories in front of your audiences is to run ads. 

You can create your branded IG stories via Facebook Ads Manager. 

To configure your IG Story video ads, select your campaign objective, include the required information, and set up how you want to display your ads. 

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Image source: facebook.com

Remember to create high-quality video ads. Leverage affordable, free apps, including tools you already have—allowing you to shoot, edit, and speed up videos with your iPhone and other devices on hand. 

While running ads requires a bit of an investment, the benefits can outweigh the costs when you get steady traffic, engagement, and successful lead generation. 

Amplify your marketing efforts with IG Stories

Go beyond run-of-the-mill Instagram marketing strategies.

Make the most of IG Stories to promote and market your brand, products, services, and other IG marketing initiatives to drive engagement, generate leads, and boost your conversions and sales opportunities.  

If you want to integrate your Instagram marketing even more with your website, check out this article next:

The 6 Best WordPress Instagram Plugins

Jimmy Rodela
Jimmy Rodela
Jimmy Rodela is a seasoned freelance writer and content marketer with over 8 years of experience, with work appearing on sites such as Yahoo, Fool.com, Business.com, SEMRush, and SearchEnginePeople. He specializes in digital marketing, small business strategy, marketing automation, and content development.