If you’re a marketer looking to improve your personal branding strategy, then Instagram is one of the best social media marketing networks to advertise on. Your goal should be to use Instagram Stories in a way that improves engagement and sales. Here’s everything you need to know.

What Are Instagram Stories?

This platform has more than one way to promote your business. However, their Story feature is an effective method to focus on.

The Story feature allows users to share photo and video slideshows with their followers and fans. Originally, this post type was deleted automatically 24 hours later. There is now a feature allowing you to save a Story for later use.

A viewer must be already connected with your company in order to view your Story. This is because they don’t show up on the main feed or on a user’s profile grid.

How to Use Instagram’s Story Marketing Feature

The first step to a successful Story strategy is understanding your audience:

• Who are they?
• What is their economic and social status?
• How old are they?

You need to be clear on your goals.

• Do you want to drive more sales?
• Are you trying to raise more awareness?
• Do you need to expand your audience?

From there, understand that truthfulness and spontaneity are why Stories exist. It’s more about getting creative and less about worrying how slick your presentation looks.

Type of Content to Use for This Marketing Strategy

Product-Based: Offer one or several of your offers between Story slides.

Cultural/Social: You might sell experiences more than tangible goods. In this case, connect your company’s purpose to the content. A travel blog might show users valuable destinations via a collage.

User Generated: Get your fans involved. Invite them to publish their own Story or send in pictures you can use on their behalf.

Other Ideas for Content: There’s no limit to what you can feature inside a Story. Be creative and pay attention to your audience’s needs and wants. A Q&A is a great way to get creative, for example.

Ideas for Driving More Engagement

• Mentions: Get an influencer to mention your brand. This helps you gain more exposure to an entirely new audience.
• Polls: Insert a poll into one for your slides. Get people to respond directly. Polls are an excellent way to attain more interaction between you and your audience.
• Geotags: This is one of those social media networks that provide stickers to use inside your promotions. Use the geotag location sticker to drive interaction with local followers.
• Highlights: This feature allows you to archive a Story on your profile. Use a past Story, or collection of them, strategically on your profile page.

Using IG for Direct Advertising

Instagram is one of those social media networks that is perfect for your marketing needs. Not only will you increase brand awareness, gain more followers and drive sales, but you’ll also be able to advertise directly to your followers. An example of this is an option to advertise between the Stories that other users post. This method expands your reach beyond your own fan base and allows you to reach fans of every other person using the Story feature on their IG account. This is where you should invest time and money on well-designed ads and focus on analytics like clicks, engagement and sales.

Use the Instagram Story feature as a major piece of your marketing strategy. It will help you become a top influencer, improve your personal branding results and drive more sales.