Posted by Instagram Stories are a great way to interact with your audience on Instagram. The content is usually unedited, raw, and candid.
We’ve seen a significant decline in engagement on the feed posts. But, the engagement rate for Reels and Instagram stories has stayed high.
This makes it clear that Instagram Stories should be a part of your content calendar.
Let’s look at the different types of stories you can publish on your Instagram business account?
1. Talk about your products individually
Create stories explaining each of your products individually.
It should include tiny details of your product, the reason you introduced it, the problems it solves, etc.
Post a clear image of the product with a description using the different fonts, colors, emojis, and GIFs available on Instagram. This will make it a fun and informative way of talking about your products.
2. Share your journey
Take your audience through your journey of how your business came into existence. The ups and downs, your favorite part of the whole process, the hardships, and everything in between.
If you have a story behind your small business you can document it on IG story and save them as a highlight. Anyone who visits your profile will be able to view it and connect with your purpose and business better.
3. Quotes and Inspirational posts
Not all of your content has to be about the products you sell.
You can share quotes and stories that offer inspiration.
Also, nothing is better than a motivational quote in your follower’s feed while they scroll through the early hours.
Sharing positive and relatable quotes are a great way to interact with your audience. This not only passes on the positivity but also leaves someone who goes through it refreshed.
You can use Adobe Spark or Canva to create these stories.
4. The tools you use
As a small business, you may use multiple tools on an everyday basis.
You can share a story, tag each of these tools you use to educate your users, and help someone who may be able to learn and get inspired. Or, just pick one tool a month and share detailed stories about how you use it. Maybe also add the benefits of using the tool and how it makes your work process efficient.
To create text format stories, you can use Instagram’s create mode within Instagram stories.
Mix it up with the different GIFs, emojis, polls, and a question tag to make it fun and interactive.
5. Highlight your customers
If someone has purchased something from your small business, always highlight them, reshare stories you’re tagged in and appreciate them for choosing your business over many others.
This goes to show how much you value them.
6. Shoutout
As a business, you already know how important it is to be mentioned or promoted by someone on their social handles. It helps in increasing your content’s reach and your brand’s exposure.
Since you are also a buyer from multiple businesses/ vendors, it’s always great to share your experience or tag a business you’ve purchased from.
These shout-outs are then shared on the story of the tagged business/ vendor and you never know you may be loved back in the form of a return shout-out.
7. Play with your published content
Every once in a while or when you run out of content to publish on your stories, you can scroll through your feed and look back at all the posts or Reels.
Re-share the ones that didn’t get the right exposure and also some of them that did really well.
You can also re-purpose already posted content by creating little snippets of previously published blogs, add in only the pointers for each of your blog posts, and then link the whole piece of content at the end of it.
8. Share Reviews/ Testimonials
The reviews and testimonials that your customers leave for you are of great value. For a potential user, it gives a sense of confidence to invest in a product or service.
These testimonials and reviews are first-hand information from users based on their experiences.
So, your audience is likely to trust a user’s experience than you promoting your product or service.
9. Q&A
Asking your audience questions is a great way to know them better and create stronger bonds.
You can pick a few questions related to your business, ask them what they’d like to see next, what they feel about your products, or anything that would help you, your customers, and your business as a whole.
You can use the Question tag that is available under Instagram stories, add your question and wait for all the responses to populate. And, when you’re ready, you can reply to each one of these individually and share them in your story.
10. Mix it up!
Just because you’re a business, it does not mean you have to post only serious content around it.
Mix it up, you can share stories about a day at work, something you failed at, a new thing to learned or maybe a meme that your audience would relate to, or just something funny.
Bonus Ideas
- Behind the Scenes – This could be short clips of taking your audience through a process or something they do not usually see on the insides of the business or on the gram.
- Employee takeover – Have employees take over the business page and do a fun quiz, or just simply share how a day at work looks like for them.
- Polls – Poll your users, ask them what they’d choose between two products, or a color fabric, or something completely unrelated like – “Would you pick Burger or Pizza? “
- Swipe up links to your store – Share recent discounts, sales, or a link to your site as a swipe up link in your stories.
- Sneak Peeks – Share a sneak peek of an upcoming product or something that you’re working on to keep your users inquisitive and glued to your gram.
- Count downs – You can use the Count down sticker for launch day, or your business anniversary, or maybe a Big Sale day!
- Host a contest – Who doesn’t like freebies? Every once in a while, collaborate with other businesses or host contests individually as a brand to help your audience engage with your account and also win something in return for the efforts they put in.
FREEBIES
Lastly, here’s a quick template with stories ideas for a whole month.
You can download it here –[Instagram story ideas template – 30 days]
If you’re a small business you can also read through my earlier published posts that could help you –
- Small businesses: How to create Instagram stories and schedule them like a pro!
- 11 Instagram Reels ideas for Small Businesses
- 9 basic social media tips for small businesses
- 16 Instagram features and hacks small businesses should know of!
That’s all folks!
With Crowdfire, you can find curated content, schedule your posts, engage with your audience, deep-dive into analytics and create custom reports. it for free.