Instagram stories let you share images and videos which remain visible for 24 hours then disappear. Besides being fun and creative, Instagram stories help in building brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, increasing engagement and making sales.

As Facebook/Instagram places more and more importance on community and prioritizes things like Stories that promote community building, it is important to adopt these same priorities in your marketing strategy if you want to continue to drive high ranking content for your business.

Ready to get started? We will walk you through step by step process to Instagram Stories.

Create your first story

To open your stories, tap on the plus button on the top left side of your Instagram screen. You can also open it by swiping it left when you are in your feed. Another way is by swiping right when you are on the main screen.

Once you are on the stories feature, take a picture by tapping the camera icon or a video by pressing the camera icon for a while. You can also start a live video by adding media from your gallery. You can do this by opening the stories camera and selecting live.

Another way to create an Instagram story is by using the boomerang feature which allows you to create a short video which plays backward and forwards. You simply select the “boomerang mode” which is located under the “stories camera record” button.  

Adding hashtags to Instagram stories

Hashtags are a great way of helping your prospects and customers find your content. Once you create a photo or video using any of the above-described methods, tap on the “Aa” icon on the top right corner of your screen. The cursor appears at the center of the screen, but you can adjust its location, size, and color. To create a hashtag, tap on the “#” symbol then write a word or a sentence without leaving any space, then tap on “return”.

Note that although you can create up to a maximum of 30 hashtags, you should keep them to a very minimal number. Trends have shown that post interactions drop after the first five hashtags.

Adding location to Instagram Stories

Adding a location to your Instagram stories increases visibility, engagement and reach. Location helps your customers know where to find you or your products and services. To add a location to your Instagram story, look for a “folded smiley” at the top of the screen. Once you tap on it, it brings out many stickers including the location sticker. Tap on it then select where your video or image was taken from.

Adding a poll to your Instagram Stories

Polls are very useful to business marketers as they allow them to engage their customers while at the same time collecting very valuable quantitative data. They are in the form of interactive stickers which seek answers from viewers using binary questions.

After creating a photo or video, click on the “folded smiley” icon, then select “poll”. On the field that says,” Ask a question…” type in your question.

Conclusion

Instagram stories have made it easy for people to share their brand content, showcase products, and services as well as news and everyday happenings. Once you are done creating your story, you only need to tap “Send to” to share your story with the world.