Did you know that 58% of Instagram users say they become interested in a brand or product after seeing it featured in an Instagram Story? This means you can increase your brand awareness, followers, and customers all by using Instagram Stories regularly. 

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about Instagram Stories:

• An active user base: Instagram reports there are more than 500 million daily users for Stories.
• Stories effortless creation: While Instagram posts require the perfect lighting, angles, and hashtags, a good Story just requires a quick idea or an interesting moment and some creativity.
• A testing ground for ideas: Instagram Stories aren’t as exposed as regular Instagram posts, making them great for testing ideas. If it’s received well (positive replies and people watch your entire Story without dropping off), you can consider re-posting it as a permanent Instagram post or adapting the idea for another channel.
• A myriad of features: There are various Instagram tools for drawing, placing Instagram stickers, adding augmented reality filters, and more.
• The opportunity to drive traffic: Add links to your Stories, advertise your products with shopping on Instagram. This makes product discovery and reaching new audiences easier than before.
• Another way to get discovered: You can hashtag and geotag Stories for the chance to appease the Instagram algorithm and amplify your reach.

But we’ve still only scratched the surface. Here are some ways you can integrate Instagram Stories as a marketing channel for your business.

Instagram stickers

Whenever you share a photo or video to your Story, you now have the option to add Stories stickers to encourage different types of engagement (look for the smiley face in the top right of your screen). 

Link stickers

IG Stories used to require that a user hit 10,000 followers before gaining access to the “swipe up” feature to add links to their Stories. However, the Instagram app recently changed this to a link sticker that anyone can use—even personal accounts.

This makes it easy to link to a blog post, product page, or any other page on your website that you want to mention in your Stories.

Poll stickers

Ask your audience for their opinion! This is an especially great hack for gathering customer preferences if you’re working on a new product line and want to know what your audience would prefer.

Post Stories using the poll sticker on top of two different product options—or use it to have fun with your audience as a part of your social media marketing strategy.

Question stickers

Use your Instagram Stories to talk directly to your audience. Overlay the question sticker onto a photo or video to let your audience ask you any burning questions they might have.

You can then place their questions onto a new Story while you record yourself answering or write out answers that you place on top of a different photo or video. Bonus points if the photo or video corresponds with the question they asked.

Mention stickers

Want to mention a user or another brand? While you can do so with the type feature, there’s also a mention sticker perfect for this.

You can also use hashtag stickers or location stickers in your Instagram marketing—they have a similar look in your Stories.

Music stickers

Want to add background music to a photo or video? You can easily do so with a music sticker. Simply tap the “Music” option in the sticker library then select or search for the song you want to add.

Countdown stickers

Count down to a product launch, event, Instagram Live video, or other exciting news with a countdown sticker. This type of content will ramp up anticipation, and it even lets your audience set a reminder on Instagram for when the countdown ends.

GIF stickers

GIFs are another fun way to spice up your Instagram Stories. Tap on the GIF option in the sticker library to explore all of the various options, or search for something that is relevant to what you’re posting.

Shop our very own Boss Girls Society animated summer sticker gifs here.

Shoppable stickers

If you’ve already set up your Instagram shop, you can link to products from your Stories. This is a great way to make it even easier for your customers to make a purchase. If they see something they like in your Story, they can immediately tap the product link and buy.

Emoji slider stickers

This last option’s biggest benefit is just to have some form of interactivity within your Stories. You’re able to customize which emoji you want on the slider, giving you free reign into how you want to incorporate it.

You can use the emoji slider to ask how much someone loves a product you’ve featured, or simply place it on a Story to give it some more spice, like we see in the example below.

Geotags

Geotags will help you get discovered in location-level Stories (e.g., New York City or a popular restaurant in your neighborhood). Regularly tagging your location in your Story posts when it’s relevant can put you in front of people who are checking in on that particular spot.

Hashtags

While they’re typically used for discoverability on social media, hashtags are more likely to take viewers away from your Stores and to others’ posts.

Instagram hashtags in Stories are best used only if you own them—if you’re running a contest or you’re getting customers to submit photos of themselves using your product under a branded hashtag. This way, if the hashtag is used in a Story, it’ll at least take people to a collection of posts related to your brand.

If you want to increase your reach by using various hashtags in your Story, we recommend making them really tiny and hiding them in the corner in a color that camouflages into the background- that way viewers can’t see or tap on them, but you still reap the benefit of more views from non-followers searching those hashtags!

Analyze results with Instagram Analytics

With a personal account, it can be hard to tell how your Stories are performing. You don’t have many signals to work with except for views (you can see who has viewed your Story by swiping up on it) and replies (when a viewer messages you through your Story).

With a business account, access a wide range of signals for a more meaningful feedback loop from your Stories.

View metrics like impressions and reach, but also actions taken on your Stories, such as how many people tapped through, replied or bounced away.

Use these insights to figure out where you’re getting the most engagement and where you’re losing attention. If your Stories are too long or too short, you can tweak your content to make it better over time.