Instagram Stories are challenging, and not because people are unfamiliar with the format, but because many small businesses can’t get started. Others think that it is not necessary to use it yet, but it may be the best decision to take it into account to add it to your social media strategy. 

Instagram Stories are an excellent opportunity to communicate with your audience. A key part of knowing how to use them is to carry out a preliminary investigation into the statistics of the social network, to know how the interaction with your followers is. Contrary to what is thought, it is not necessary to wait for a large number of followers to use the Instagram stories as part of your content strategy, because sometimes people and brands have thousands of followers but little interaction. In this way we talk about a topic more usual than anything else.

Remember this: followers are human beings and they receive a lot of content every day, but react to little. They only connect with those who will get hooked. You do not believe me? You may never have liked cooking, but a good speaker can introduce others to the narrative in an easy and fun way, to a topic that you may not have frequented. Before thinking about the type of content you would like to use in your stories, you should develop an Instagram stories strategy beyond your social media strategy. According to data from the same Instagram platform: more than 500 million accounts use Instagram Stories daily.

Content that works on Instagram stories

 This famous social network was created to connect with the audience through images, in this way it can be used to create leads and strong relationships between the company-consumer. People connect with emotions and the Instagram story format is a good opportunity to take advantage of it. 

The content that works the most in Instagram stories are:

• ✓Video recorded one behind the other (carousel),
• ✓Surveys and questions made with the stickers and with a background,
• ✓Lives or live.

All allow you to stand out visually, remember that if it does not look attractive it is possible that people will not click to connect with you. But not only is it about having a nice feed or a nice image, you should also use content strategies.In the case of lives, when you start the application, it places you in the first places of the stories and those who interact the most with you receive a notification . You will only come out of the rest as a priority. 

The images must be handled with the correct size and must speak together with the captions of the same theme, be related to the narrative. For example, associate an image with the questions you ask your community. The burst of images must maintain a narrative line so as not to lose the user’s attention. Try to tell stories where you can speak every 15 seconds (how long each Instagram story is). In this way, yesterday more organized and they will follow the narrative thread better. 

Instagram stories for your company 

Did you know that 90% of Instagram accounts follow a company? Yes, and many companies have Instagram as one of their favorite social networks because of the number of leads they can generate. So that’s another good reason to start using them. The best thing is that there is also a prior coordination and above all things have something to tell. 

You can make Instagram stories a dynamic for your business or company, also to get new product ideas. You can also use it to empathize with your followers and show the value of your content. The biggest Instagram interaction happens with your stories, don’t forget. So get the most out of it for your company:

✓ Take surveys, 

✓Tell a story,

✓Use an engaging narrative,

✓ Make your designs with the full measure of stories,

✓Use the music tool to make it more interactive,

✓In the case of being a company profile, you can make 15-second stories in other apps and add the music,

✓Share Post wherever you want your followers to interact with you,

✓Use it to recommend products and offers.

Common mistakes in creating stories for Instagram 

✓Not planning the contents, it is something that happens frequently. Instagram stories that only use them to convey nonsense are not useful for businesses. Make sure you have a goal with each story.

✓Using excess text in a story that by nature lasts 15 seconds and the user can normally pass. 

✓ Upload them in disorder, it is important that you make sure that your message is understood, for this make sure that one story goes after the other. 

✓Use excess filter and bad image, as a bad video may not be as effective to attract the user’s attention.

✓Use videos in the wrong format, Instagram stories measure 1080x1920px, if you don’t take advantage of the entire screen, your video may not catch the user’s attention. 

However, social networks are constantly updated and add new formats daily so you can constantly learn and unlearn. Not even the best strategist in the world can talk about exact formulas without having failed in the first attempts. Regardless of the size of your company, don’t be afraid to create content for all formats and thus offer a complete experience on your networks to different users. 

Additional tips to make stories on Instagram if you are an ecommerce:

✓Answer questions that the buyer may have, create content with frequently asked questions that could help your followers at specific times. You can handle it in different formats and do it with different themes for each frequently asked question.

✓ Fall in love or get excited about your content, make sure your stories create the right emotion in your community. People often react to those you connect with, for example: a good idea is to use insight.

✓ Make it inevitable to react to you, this in references that some people tend to label Instagram communities as lazy, when in reality they may not have the habit of reacting to you. Then you must adapt an ideal content. 

✓Don’t be intrusive, be rather revealing. Nobody likes to be persecuted, nor direct sales techniques, in fact people flee from all kinds of content that encourages sales, so it is best to stick to the Inbound methodology to generate content and Instagram stories .

✓Look for narrative and formats that complement the story, it will not only be enough to place a nice text or upload a video that you took at a company event, you must use attractive designs or a good narrative to finish doing the job well. 

✓ Work with good Insights to scale your investment. 

And remember that you only have five seconds to capture the user’s attention, create a good strategy for your stories and do not waste it. Once you start in the world of stories on Instagram, I know you don’t want to stop.