Instagram stories are one of the highest engaged pieces of content on the Instagram app. According to data, over 500 million people use Instagram stories on a daily basis.

If your brand is not posting Instagram stories on a regular basis, I'm here to tell you that it's time to pick up the phone and get to posting.

In this blog post, I'm going to walk you through everything you need to know about Instagram stories (and how they might fit into an instagram influencer marketing strategy). From what they are to creating Instagram stories that get your followers closer to purchase, and even some helpful hacks, by the time you're done reading this, you're going to have an Instagram story strategy that will propel your brand to the top of the feed.

An Instagram story is an Instagram app feature where users can post content that has a 24-hour lifecycle. Instagram stories vary in content from photo to video, both of which are shared to an account’s follower list and disappear after 24 hours from the time it is posted. Think of Instagram stories like a piece of micro-content—it might be similar to other organic content you share on your Instagram feed, but often is off the cuff and quick, making it consumable for followers who want to see snippets of content at a rapid pace.

Instagram stories differ from Instagram posts in that they only last for a 24-hour period and then disappear unless they are saved to your Instagram stories highlight. In that case, your Instagram story will be archived into a collection of stories in your Instagram app that can be displayed on your account underneath your follower count, above the organic feed. 

In that vein, Instagram stories are used to tease out pieces of content that compel your audience and capture their attention with the hopes of creating engagement or driving users further to your Instagram account and or website. 

Instagram stories are simple and can be made in a matter of seconds. All you have to do is find the piece of content you want to share, load it into stories, add any stickers, captions, or edits you’d like, and share it to your feed. I’m going to talk about this more below. For now, all you need to know is that Instagram stories are a great way for you to share pieces of micro-content with your audience and stay at the top of their follower feed. 

As the Instagram algorithm becomes harder to penetrate with organic content, stories are a great way for brands and creators to consistently touch base with their followers and maintain steady engagement with the people who are true fans of their content. 

How can brands use Instagram stories?

This is a question I get asked by brands all the time. The answer is simple: Instagram stories share content that entertains, educates, or inspires a brand’s followers. In my experience, brands that win using stories have a combination of a carefully crafted Instagram stories strategy that taps into followers’ interest and keeps them engaged between organic posts. 

If you want to see what this looks like in real-time, go to your Instagram app right now and pick one of your favorite brands that you follow. Chances are they have a story live at this moment. Look at what they’ve posted as an Instagram story, then refer back to their organic feed to see how it fits the brand message they put out into the world.

In most cases, you’ll see this brand use stories as a means to create hype around a new product, showcase user-generated content around their products, or ask questions/pose ideas to their followers to which they will respond. 

One of the most underrated features of Instagram stories is the analytics that come with them. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve worked with a brand that posts stories but never checks the analytics behind them.

In the case of Instagram stories, each one has data associated with it which you can see by tapping the informational tab under each story. In there, you’ll see a concise grouping of link clicks, profile visits, impressions, and follows. You’ll also see a navigation tab that shows you how many people clicked back, forward, and through to your next story, giving you an idea of how long they watched and if they took action based on your post.

In my experience working with brands, I’ve always encouraged them to use this data to inform how they go about posting organic content on Instagram as well as using their best-performing stories as Instagram story ads. What are Instagram Stories Ads? I’m glad you asked. This is paid content that appears like any other Instagram story, the only difference is that it’s an advertisement driving users to a product or service. 

With these ads, you can take the best performing Instagram stories, save them to your highlight reel, and pull from them at any time to create an advertisement via Instagram story. 

This gives you the ability to test ad concepts before you put money behind them by uploading content as a story, collecting information, and then repurposing that same story as an advertisement. Just to give you a juicy tidbit of information on Instagram story ads, brands have reported that they spend $0.06 per click compared to $ 0.30-0.60 per click on Facebook feed ads.

A great way to think about Instagram stories as a whole is to consider them the testing grounds for both organic and paid content that you want to invest in. Using them as such will save you time and money in your marketing efforts, which every CMO wants to hear from their social media strategy team. 

Before I share the hacks that will put your Instagram stories in front of millions, let’s walk through the basics of posting Instagram stories. 

Step 1. Choose the piece of content you want to share.

‍I tell brands to make sure that the content is vertically shot and lo-fi meaning lower production quality. This is not me giving you permission to put up pixelated images and videos that look like they came off a Motorola Razor in 2007, please don’t do that. This suggestion comes from experience working with brands and discovering that Instagram users prefer images and videos that feel organic to the feed, not overproduced. Save the studio shots for commercials and ads and stick to content shot on the phone when it comes to creating content for Instagram stories.

Step 2. From the Instagram homepage, select your profile icon in the top right corner of the screen.

From here you’ll be prompted to select the image or video you want to use for this story or create one in real time using your camera.

Step 3. Craft a caption.

Once you’ve loaded your Instagram story content, it’s time to create a caption by tapping the text featured marked by Aa. Here you can choose from a variety of fonts and colors and I recommend using the same colors you’ve established for your brand. When it comes to captions, keep it short and sweet, with the goal of enticing your audience to engage with your story.

Step 4. Pick your Instagram story features.

Stickers are a great way to amplify your content with additional graphics, music, questions/quizzes, polls, effects, and more. This is one area that I tell all brands to explore more as Instagram stories stickers can prove to be a major catalyst for engagement on Instagram stories. I’m going to talk more about these below so keep reading.

Step 5. Review and post.

Before you go sharing these Instagram stories with the world, do one final run-through to ensure your image or video is set, captions are spelled correctly, and stickers are in place. Once you’ve done a final check, it’s time to hit share and watch the views rack up. 

Helpful tips for creating compelling Instagram stories

Use stickers to create Instagram stories.

Stickers allow you to add creative elements to your Instagram story. Stickers range from gifs to music, animations to #hashtags, and even location, temperature, and time, all of which you can choose from using the simple search function. Stickers give you the ability to enhance your content and separate yourself from other brands that stick to the basic Instagram story functions. In that vein, stickers also make your Instagram story dynamic helping it stand out when followers click on it. There are thousands of stickers to choose from, so my recommendation is to test out everything and find what resonates with your audience

Consistently post Instagram stories.

This one is obvious, but I tell brands this every time we collaborate: stay consistent. The way to win on any social media platform is to post daily. For Instagram stories, it’s recommended to post somewhere between 5-7 stories daily. While this might seem like a lot, doing this will keep your Instagram stories at the front of the feed and show your followers that you want to engage with them.

Engage your audience with questions, quizzes, and polls.

Speaking of engagement, Instagram stories are the best way to touch your audience on a regular basis. There are 4 distinct engagement stickers that I tell brands to use: mentions, questions, quizzes, and polls. All of these stickers allow you to bring your audience into the fold and get their opinions, thoughts, and responses. The more you do this, the higher your engagement will be across Instagram. 

Use Instagram Stories Link & Shop to drive users to your website and content.

Before 2021, you needed to have over 10k followers to drive followers back to your website and products. Now you can add the Instagram story link or Instagram Shop to any Instagram story and take users directly from the feed to your website. This seamless transition makes it easier for followers to convert into customers, and helps move them further down your marketing funnel.

Take your best-performing Instagram stories and run Instagram stories ads.

I mentioned Instagram story ads once but I’m going to reinforce the impact they can have on your conversions. Every Instagram story you post can be saved into an archive that displays as Story Highlights. From these story highlights you can choose any piece of content and turn it into an Instagram stories ad that displays just like a regular story, but drives users to a product or service. This is the perfect testing ground to establish what compels your audience to click and what doesn’t, arming you with more data to make informed decisions about your next social media marketing strategy.