There’s no dispute that Snapchat is the progenitor of the Story feature. However, since Snapchat debuted the widely-used tool back in 2013, this brand of content has been making its rounds and appearing in all shapes and sizes on various social media platforms.
The most notable of these alternatives exists on Instagram in the form of Instagram Stories. Despite the similar name and premise, Instagram Stories has recently exceeded all activity on Snapchat, reaching over 250 million daily users in total. Instagram’s success over Snapchat can be attributed to a number of reasons, including more business-oriented features and the potential for much larger audiences in general.
Although Snapchat has very much retained its place as the premier casual communication social media app, Instagram Stories hold a lot of potential for successful marketing and increasing brand visibility. In the interest of fully capitalizing on the power of Instagram Stories, here are 6 tips for getting the most of the tool’s many built-in features.
1. Adding a Story.
Before you can create fresh, innovative content to drive up traffic and increase your brand’s total followers, you must first learn how to post Stories in their most basic form. Only from there can you tinker with editing features to create a more enticing experience for your followers.
The two existing methods for posting Instagram Stories are clicking on your profile icon or selecting the camera icon in the top left corner of your main feed. Once you’ve selected either of these options, you can record a short video, take a photo, or upload your own media from your camera roll to be edited and outfitted for consumers and followers to view.
2. Editing your media.
After selecting the photo or video you want to post to your Story, choose from several editing options to make your media more appealing to broader audiences. Just as offered in Snapchat, Instagram provides a multitude of easy-to-access filters for your Story.
To apply a new filter to your media, simply swipe to the sides until you’ve found one suitable for your Story, and that’s it. Although simply changing the color scheme of your media may not seem like that big of a deal, the right filters will make certain features and colors more apparent and make your Stories more memorable in general.
3. Using stickers and geotags.
As an alternative to the simplicity of filters, Instagram Stories also offers stickers and geotags to round out photo and video. Unlike the rigid geofilters native to Snapchat, Instagram’s stickers are completely mobile and resizeable.
Adding stickers is as easy as dragging one into place on the photo or pinning one to a certain point in the video. In addition, geotags also provide helpful context to Stories created for the purpose of social media marketing.
Geotags have all the same properties as normal stickers, making the Instagram sticker experience exceedingly customizeable when compared to other platforms with similar Story features. As a small note, special hashtag stickers can also be created by using a “hashtag” button in the stickers section.
4. Adding text and drawings.
The text and drawing tools included in Instagram Stories contain standard features like resizing and color selection. In addition, for both the text and pen tools, there are style selections to change the font displayed on your Story.
As a bonus feature, the color and resize tools can be used independently for each line of text. Text images on your Story can contain words of different sizes and colors, leading to a greatly increased overall number of possibilities. With the expansive editing tools for text and drawing available in Instagram Stories, marketing campaigns can take on more shapes and forms than before.
5. Implementing face filters.
Perhaps one of Snapchat’s most popular or discussion-sparking features is its face filters. These special filters, which are applied to a user’s face, have now made their way over to Instagram Stories.
Whether or not one platform includes better face filters than the other is up for debate. However, using these filters in Instagram Stories is a surefire way to establish a more personal connection with followers, because they can see faces behind a brand and also have used the same filters themselves. Utilizing face filters in Instagram Stories will undoubtedly spark more traffic among potential followers on the social platform.
6. Using links to increase traffic.
A final (and lesser-known) tip is the ability to add hyperlinks to Stories. Restricted to verified accounts only, this feature allows users to directly link followers from their Stories to other content, thus establishing a connection between their different types of content.To implement this feature, simply select the paperclip icon in the top right corner after adding a photo or video.
Paste the desired URL, and then post your Story to drive followers to a more influential piece of content, official page, or whatever your marketing campaign entails. Text saying “swipe up” will appear on your Story, allowing users to direct themselves to the pasted URL. After implementing these 6 basic tips, you can begin to get the most out of Instagram Stories’ marketing benefits.