When Instagram launched its story feature in 2017, many thought it was just another way to compete with its top competitor, Snapchat. In 2018 Instagram added amazing new widgets to its story feature, such as polls, questions, and even music. Fast-forward to 2019, Instagram stories have become fun for personal use, but how can they help you grow your business?
Geotagging
The location feature on Insta-stories aren’t just for giving your followers a major case of FOMO. When you tag your location in a story, whether it be a physical retail location or a general geographic one, your story will most likely appear on that location or city’s story, garnering more views on your post. Depending on how captivating that particular post is, people viewing it will watch the rest of the story, so make sure you always geotag the first post when your 24 hours refreshes. If you don’t want people to see that you’ve geotagged a location, simply shrink it down to a microscopic size and hide it somewhere in the story. Writing text on top of it always helps.
Hashtagging
Similar to geotagging, hashtagging your story is a great way to reach an audience you might not have otherwise. For instance, if you have a shampoo business, you might want to pick up to 10 hashtags (the limit for hashtags in stories) that are related to hair. Even more so than geotagging, you want to hide the hashtags by making them the same color as your background. This way you’re appearing on the story for your relevant hashtag without anyone being the wiser.
Highlights
Introduced in 2018, highlights are an awesome way to publicly archive your stories. Whether your company just introduced a new product or recently hosted a trade show, keep the content accessible by creating highlights that are visible on your page. While you can add up to 100 stories on a highlight and can make as many highlights as you wish, it’s best to keep them under 20 stories and have around 4-6 highlights in total, as not to overwhelm your audience.
Shoppable Story Stickers
eCommerce via Insta-Stories is not a new thing; we’ve been swiping up to shop for a little while now. But what about the small businesses who do not yet meet the 10K follower “swipe up” threshold? Well now Instagram allows retailers to offer shopping access through their new shoppable stickers for Insta-Stories. The 4 different types of stickers are: a shopping bag icon, a sticker with the product name in rainbow or grey, as well as translucent text.
Now that you know these tips and tricks, try them out for yourself or drop a line to our social media team, and we will show you the way!
