Instagram Stories; Use Them or Lose Them (Part Two!)

With so much information to share about Instagram stories, we couldn't put all of the information in just one blog. We had to split them up! More information is always good, especially now since we all have a little more time to sit and read. Let's keep learning about Instagram! 

Hello Summerville! As our quaint little town continues to get quieter, and we all start to settle into our homes, we wanted to continue our blog about the importance of Instagram stories, and how they can be beneficial to you and your company. Remember, as many of us are starting to work from home or remotely (some for the very first time!) it's easy to get overwhelmed with everything. Take this information as your daily dose of education, and see what joy it can bring to your social media campaigns! These tips are to help your followers increase, keep your engagement up and active, and to reach your audiences like you never have before. This is a wonderful time for that! We are all on our phones and computers more than ever before, why not do a little good with all this time? Sit back and relax. Have that second cup of coffee you've been craving, you've earned it. Let's get our minds off of everything and talk about Instagram! 

Don't Repeat Yourself 
Using the same business techniques over and over again can get a little old for both you and your followers. Why not shake up what you're doing in your marketing? Using stories or videos in your stories can be a fun opportunity for you and your team to create and work together. It can help build a fun and closer working relationship together, let an employee out of their shell or let them shine in ways you might not know they could. Think about it, this is a form of advertisement. This new type of advertisement can help keep the attention of your audience in this ever-changing world. You already have so much to work with that you don't have to spend a ton of time or effort to build a social media platform from the ground up like many companies did when they first started using Facebook or Instagram. You are just learning a new tool inside the application that is fun, exciting, and unique. There is a little extra fun in Instagram Stories than what a picture-perfect profile can offer. While your feed may be portfolio perfect, you can add fun stickers, emojis, text, drawings, music, and more to your stories and videos. While this additive might not be as professional or have the look for your feed, it has the fun and real quality people want to see! 

Hashtags Me Not
Hashtags have been a controversial topic for social media for some time now. How many should you use? How many are too many? Am I using them correctly or am I going to get in trouble? Are they drawing in the attention I want? Hashtags were created and are used to bring followers of certain topics together and for that group of people to see each other's pictures. But, as hashtags have become more popular, there are some new downfalls. If you use too many, post them in the comment section of your profile post, or use a very popular hashtag, you and your company could see some harsh repercussions. Your account could be frozen for over a week and you wouldn't be able to post, comment or follow anyone back. Your posts might not be seen or could get buried in the shuffle by the app itself. Your posts could even get removed. As of now, Instagram stories are neutral ground. Along with all the fun additives you can put on top of any posts in your stories, you can add hashtags and tag others and your post won't be pushed for doing so. Doing this can bring even more attention to your account, and invite more of your dream demographic you're trying to reach to follow and see what you're all about. Also, if your account does get frozen and you're unable to post to your feed, you are still able to post on Instagram stories with no issue. This will keep you in touch with your followers and their algorithms. 

Thoughts For The Road
Are you still not convinced about Instagram Stories? I think we may have a few other things to add to finally convince you! 

• Think about it in terms of numbers. Over 200 million people view Instagram stories every day. This tops their competitor, Snapchat, of how many views per day these posts are getting seen. 
• You can add a link to every post on your Instagram stories and a call to action for your follows to swipe up on the post to visit whatever website you reference in each particular story. This action is so much easier than asking them to try and copy and paste a website into their browser that was posted into the body of your post. This call to action where they can just swipe up is instant gratification and will easily draw more people into following through to look at the website attached to your posts. You do need to have 10k followers to unlock this particular action, but the work leading up to getting 10k followers is worth getting to achieve this action. 
• You don't have to worry about posting your Instagram stories at any particular time. Posting times can become very stressful in any social media manager's day. You have to make sure you are posting at the perfect time so you can keep up with your algorithms and making sure as many people as possible are seeing the posts you worked so hard on. The stories you post are available for 24 hours. As long as your optimal timing hits within 24 hours of your posting, you don't have anything to worry about. You can just post it, and it will be seen by your followers when they are online at the optimal time, and you don't even have to worry about it. This action will still bring you all the benefits we've been discussing in this blog, no matter when you post it! 
• You can flesh out your brand in brand new ways!
• Instagram stories can be a blank canvas for you and your company. It gives you a safe space to try out new marketing ideas and to see if something works or it doesn't without hurting what you have found to work in your normal posting schedule in your profile. 

We hope that this blog has shed a wonderful light on Instagram, Instagram Stories, and the wonderful tools that this exciting and useful app can bring you and your company. This is a great time to start brainstorming, playing with the app, and seeing what specialized things you can make and create for your company. That is the great thing about these apps - you have so much freedom to make it your own. So go out and create! Stay safe Summerville, we are here rooting for you and all of our small business friends! 

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