Instagram Stories: How To Use IG Stories To Grow Your Brand

Imagine if you had only 24 hours to get something, and after that, it disappears forever. If you miss it, you miss it—you have no way of knowing how important it could’ve been. Could it have been life-changing?
Maybe, maybe not.
That’s what Instagram users feel like regularly with Instagram Stories. Stories operate on this human emotion of fear of missing out (FOMO).
And it works, too. The excellent feature leans into the curious nature of humans, leading to an incredible view rate of the Stories.
But because an Instagram Story is easy to upload and quick to get destroyed, it’s easy to ignore its value in your marketing strategy. A carefully curated Instagram strategy with stories can help you increase customer engagement and sales, and develop a human connection with your audience.
Here’s everything you need to know about them.
What are Instagram Stories?
Instagram Stories are self-disappearing media pieces that you can post on your Instagram profile for 24 hours. After that, the Story disappears and you need to add them to Instagram “Story Highlights” for them to be visible after 24 hours of posting. You can post a photo or video content directly from your camera roll, or even a text block over an image.
When you post an Instagram Story, your audience can see a colorful ring around your profile picture, indicating the presence of the story post.
What it means for businesses: Instagram Stories are strategic shares that can humanize your brand on the Instagram app and keep you on top of your audience’s mind. They’re also the perfect way to share events and information that aren’t important enough to get a place on your feed.
What’s more, Instagram Stories are an interactive feature that allows your audience to communicate with you. They can reply via a direct message to your Insta Story, like, or even react on stickers (discussed later in the article).
Why are Instagram Stories important?
Apart from the fact that 500 million users use Instagram Stories every day, there are other business reasons to include Stories in your content strategy:
1. Humanize your brand: Research suggests that consumers prefer to buy from brands that have similar human characteristics to them. This is only possible when you create your own story around your brand and find opportunities to present yourself in front of the audience. Instagram Stories give you endless possibilities to do that.
2. Test out content before posting: An Instagram Story is a great way to understand the type of content your audience likes and dislikes. Before spending the time creating feed posts, you can create a simpler version to test it out in your Instagram Story to understand how your audience reacts. A lot of times, the audience’s reaction might surprise you.
3. Gauge audience sentiment before product development: If you want to launch a new product or service but aren’t sure about the audience demand, Instagram Stories would be an excellent way to estimate that. You can put up your ideas and ask your prospects directly about their interest. You save time by not creating products that aren’t in demand.
For example, Grace Beverly, a social media creator and entrepreneur, successfully launched a stationary product based on audience feedback via Instagram Stories. She started with understanding if there’s a requirement for the product in the first place.
From there, with small mock-ups, she carried out polls and quizzes to understand the audience demand. The demand was much more than the anticipation, helping them ramp up the production instead of going out-of-stock.
4. Develop a deeper connection with the audience: One of the reasons why brands struggle with creating customer loyalty is the absence of a unique connection. The competition is fierce today, and customers can shift to new brands based on prices or offers – unless you have a strong connection with them. With Insta Stories, you get to interact with them regularly, show the humans behind the brand, and more. While this is a long-term strategy, it impacts the purchase decision when it’s time.
5. Keep the algorithm happy: While ranking on Instagram might seem like a mystery, the platform has tried its best to simplify it. The Instagram app ranks Instagram Stories and Feed posts based on a user’s interaction history, engagement history, and overall closeness with your brand.
The more your audience interacts with you, the higher you’ll be ranked on their feeds. This is because interactions signal the algorithm about the audience’s interest in your brand. When you post Stories frequently, you give your audience the chance to engage with you, leading to higher rankings.
This makes creating an Instagram Story not an option, but a necessity if you want the app to keep the reach of your Instagram account intact.
Instagram Stories strategies: What to post on Instagram Stories?
While your Stories don’t have to be as strategic as your Feed posts, you still need to put some thought behind the new story uploads. They are meant to share everyday casual moments via photo or video content. But what do you exactly post on Instagram Stories as a brand?
Here are some content ideas you can use:
1. Behind-the-scene content
Numerous research suggests that consumers want to associate and see the humans behind a product. A leading social psychologist, Adam Waytz, says human interaction has “almost magical powers”.
So, one of the most impactful Stories content to post is casual behind-the-scene work. The process of product development, small details like receiving samples, or showing a celebration in your workplace are all good pieces of content. Don’t be afraid to share the difficult parts of your business, too.
For example, look at how Catbird takes the audience through the process of the creation of products via Stories:
2. Create engagement-driving posts
The platform gives you a lot of in-app tools and Instagram Story features to create Stories and engage more with your audience. Stickers like polls, quizzes, reactions, questions, and countdowns, are easy to use and can be used multiple times. Here’s a brief rundown of each:
a. Poll sticker
A Poll sticker usually asks yes and no questions or gives a choice between two options. You can use this poll sticker icon to play a game, ask for opinions, and more.
b. Quiz sticker
Quizzes are used when you want to understand your audience’s choice from multiple options. You can play a game with this too.
c. Reactions
Reactions are a quick way to understand the level of excitement or interest in a specific topic. The audience can use the sliding motion to select the level.
d. Questions
Question stickers are a great way to get answers to a specific question that you have. Use this sticker to get direct feedback on your content or product, answer FAQs, and more. The replies will come as a direct message to you and you can reply to the responses too.
e. Countdowns
Countdown stickers allow the users to set a reminder when the countdown ends. This notifies your audience and helps them from forgetting an important sale or announcement.
3. Story-exclusive content
You need to keep your Instagram Stories somewhat exclusive. While Stories highlights are great, there should be a special reward for your audience who regularly view Instagram Stories by your brand.
For example, you can conduct a secret giveaway or an exclusive discount for your viewers. That way, they’ll feel like a part of an exclusive community being rewarded for keeping up with your business account.
You can also do Story-exclusive questions and answers without adding them to the highlights and give sneak peeks on upcoming products.
4. Show your products in action
Instagram Stories are mostly followed by your most-primed audience. They are interested in your brand and would like to see more.
So, showcase your products or services in action on your Stories. For example, if you have a tool for home renovations, show the process of the transformation.
Or, if you offer a service, show some steps of the process. For example, If you offer cleaning services, you can share a few clips from the process, the before and after, and more.
5. Share user generated content
If you’ve asked your followers to share pictures of your products, it might be a lot of content to share as in feed content. This is where Stories come in.
Share the UGC content on your Stories with credit to the original poster and save them on your Highlights. This helps in two ways:
- The Stories will often be reshared by the follower, giving your brand more exposure.
- When you share your follower’s content, it makes them feel special, developing a stronger connection.
6. Virtual shopping tour
Online stores’ biggest hurdle is creating the same brick-and-mortar shopping experience where people could window shop, and touch the products. With Stories, you can meet that, too.
A weekend shopping experience will not only keep your audience engaged but also bring in new sales. Share pictures of your products with a simple description, price, and the link to buy. The slideshow-like format of Stories will help the buyers easily see the products. What’s more, they can also reply to you to ask questions before purchase, if any.
Instagram has a dedicated Shopping sticker feature to help you with this, along with Instagram shops.
7. Reshare other’s content
Whenever an account tags you in Instagram posts or Stories, make sure you reshare the content. This tells your prospects how others are liking your product, serving as an indirect testimonial.
You can also share complementary content from other accounts that might help your audience.
Examples of brands using Instagram Stories
Here are five brands that are making the most of Insta Stories to inspire you:
1. Hedley & Bennett
Hedley & Bennett is a DTC kitchen gear brand using Stories to keep its audience updated on stocks, discounts, and products in action. It breaks the myth of only lifestyle brands being able to create engaging content. No matter what your niche is, you can still put out Stories.
2. Fabletics
Fabletics is a DTC activewear brand taking advantage of Stories to share UGC posts and Story-exclusive content like a VIP secret sale:
Such story-exclusive content is one of the best ways to keep your audience’s attention and keep them hooked to your Stories, with the anticipation of viewing such exclusive content.
3. Rifle Paper Co.
Rifle Paper Co. is a stationery and lifestyle brand that creates Stories in the same aesthetic and style as the rest of its feed.
Whether it be a post regarding a sale or a new launch, the brand pays special attention to the colors and the graphics. If your brand is also design-first, this page could be a great inspiration.
4. POPFLEX
POPFLEX is an influencer-founded brand that serves as proof of the impact of influencers on brands. This is an example of how to keep your IG Stories harmonious, especially when during an influencer marketing campaign.
For example, notice how the brand’s Instagram profile reshares the founder’s Stories, and vice versa.
5. Starbucks
Bigger corporate brands have the budget to hire top-notch social media teams and it reflects in their content. This is why bigger accounts are great to take inspiration from and to find ideas to incorporate into your strategy.
Starbucks is one such brand that uses Stories to humanize its brand by sharing quirky quotes with products, occasionally doing polls, and more:
Instagram Story tips and tricks
Now that you have a strategy and inspiration, here are some additional tips to help you ace Instagram Stories:
1. Don’t make Stories too long
Photos shared on Stories are seen for 7 seconds, and videos have a time limit of 60 seconds. This means the platform wants you to share quick moments that users don’t have to pay careful attention to.
So, make sure you’re not putting up longer captions or videos. You can divide the Stories into different segments if you want to share more.
2. Include stickers
Stickers are in app features of Instagram, helping you engage with your audience in a lot of different ways.
Here are some popular stickers that’ll help you with reach even if you’re just starting:
a. Hashtag sticker
Just as you add hashtags to your Feed posts to get more reach and get in front of relevant audiences, you can do the same with Stories. It’s an excellent feature to get more potential followers. That’s because hashtag pages have a dedicated spot for Stories, featuring all the content with the hashtags.
So, if you’re posting content regularly, your chances of getting a new audience increase.
Tip: If you want to add multiple hashtags but worry it might clutter the content, put a sticker over them. This way, while they would be hidden, they’ll still be helping with your reach.
b. Location sticker
Similar to hashtag pages, location pages also have a separate spot for Stories. If you want to reach people in a certain location, you can use these stickers.
c. Mention
When collaborating with an influencer or a content creator, the Mention sticker comes in handy.
d. Link sticker
One of the best features for brands is a Link sticker, which lets you place a link to your story, while also letting you edit how it appears. Here’s an example:
3. Maintain a cohesive brand aesthetic
Your brand’s Instagram aesthetic isn’t only important on your feed but should be carried over to your Stories as well.
When a follower views your Stories, they should know it’s yours without having to see your name in the corner of their screen.
Luckily, there are a ton of different ways to brand your Instagram Stories within the app, including different fonts, brush options, and stickers. Consistently using these features will add personality to your Stories and help you build a uniform brand aesthetic.
There’s also a lot of flexibility within these features themselves.
For example, you can customize the color of their text or brush strokes by selecting a new color from the bottom of the screen. Just hold your finger down on any of the color options to pull up a larger spectrum of colors to pick from:
You can also use the eyedropper tool on the left of your color palette to select a color directly from your story. This will help you keep your story elements branded and cohesive.
Creating templates for your Instagram Stories is another great way to help you quickly put together a cohesive story that aligns with your brand. Your followers are much more likely to convert into brand advocates when they know they can expect consistent, high-quality Stories from your account.
4. Hype up your feed posts
If you’re facing a challenge of reach with your Feed posts, Stories can help you get past that.
Share your latest posts on your Stories, but cover them with a sticker. This makes the audience curious, taking them to the post. It also signals the algorithm that people are interested in your post, eventually getting you more reach and engagement.
Important: Don’t forget to cover the feed post preview with a sticker to make your audience click on the posts.
5. Turn on the sharing feature
Stories have an option of sharing. Make sure you turn it on from your Story settings. When Stories are shared, it gives the same benefit as any other branded content shared. It gives you exposure and increases.
6. Use Instagram Story analytics
A lot of people don’t give enough importance to Stories to analyze the data. But that’s a recipe for disaster, especially when Instagram offers in-depth analytics for your Stories.
You can view the story analytics by swiping up your own story — from the number of story viewers to other important data.
The analytics help you understand what content the audience likes (and dislikes) and how engaged the audience is. You can leverage this data and extend it to your other content and tailor it to your audience’s preferences.
Tip: Use additional social media analytics tools to get all the data at the same place and get access to deeper insights.
7. Create a consistent schedule
The algorithm rewards a consistent schedule. This is because it gives your audience predictability and something to look forward to. You can’t post content one day and disappear for a week, especially on Stories.
Create a consistent schedule that suits you and follow it.
Use an Instagram scheduling tool to save yourself from overwhelm by posting content every day. Instagram doesn’t offer a built-in scheduler yet, but the external tools can make your posting life much easier.
8. Leverage storytelling
Instagram Stories, as the name suggests, was built to share everyday stories with people. As a brand, you can use storytelling to create a connection of your audience with your products. From telling stories about your employees to your products or everyday mundane moments, you have a lot of content at your fingertips.
The best way to ensure this is to plan your content in advance. Use a content calendar and devise a flow and connection.
The Stories also have a slideshow-like format. That will also be an advantage if you’re creating story-like content.
9. Include captions sticker on your Stories
Instagram gives you the option to auto-generate captions for your Stories. This makes your content more inclusive for people who might be hearing impaired. Not only that, research shows that people are more likely to complete watching a video if it includes the captions sticker.
A lot of people use the social media platform while in public. Having captions on your Stories makes sure they’re able to watch your content without skipping.
10. Cross-post content
If you have a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel, Stories can help you make them reach a new audience. Never assume that your followers across all channels are the same.
Stories will also help you gain initial traction on a piece of content, boosting it on the original platform. For example, if you’ve published a new blog post relevant to your audience, sharing it with them will not only help your reach but also provide valuable information to the story viewers.
11. Exclusive discounts
Running a sale? Don’t forget to share it on your Stories.
While newsletters do the same job of relaying information, IG Stories give you the opportunity to create a ‘story’ and theme around your Stories. Take for example Away, a DTC luggage brand, using Stories to share sale details that can be easily missed:
12. Update about restocks
Stock update is another information you can put out via Stories as they’re not permanent information a customer can refer back to. Here’s an example of Case-Mate, a mobile phone accessory brand using Stories to update about restocks:
13. Make use of Highlights
While Stories are only visible for 24 hours, you can save the important ones on your profile, called Highlights.
There are three key benefits of Story Highlights:
- Highlights are featured at the top of your profile, the first thing your profile visitors see. That’s a great opportunity to influence visitors to make them see important information.
- Your Story content is repurposed and not lost forever.
- You can categorize the highlights and arrange them in an organized manner.
Use IG Stories to level up your social media strategy
Instagram Stories, just like any other element of social media, can be tricky to figure out initially. But once you have a strategy in place, creating impactful content isn’t difficult.
Don’t forget to track the metrics and data, and edit your strategy based on what works. If your Stories have a high number of “skips”, dissect the reason and include more engaging elements. If one particular Story got a higher number of views, analyze it again and try to recreate it.
Like every strategy, treat IG Stories as a separate element instead of putting the ‘leftovers’ on it.
Next, read creative Instagram Story ideas here to create your first Story.