How to optimize your Instagram stories?

Don't use Instagram stories? (Spoiler: You're wrong!) Do you use Instagram stories, but results are slow in coming? In either case, we've got some advice for you.

While it may be tempting to save time by using the same content for your stories that you publish on your regular Instagram feed, be aware that the two features respond to different strategies.

Tips for optimizing your Instagram stories

Get creative by adding stickers or GIFs

• Instagram offers all kinds of features that let you get creative when publishing your stories, like GIFs or emojis. But make no mistake: they're not there just to look pretty.

• There are different stickers : location stickers, mention stickers, hashtags, polls, GIFs, questions, purchases... There are lots of them, and knowing when and how to use them wisely will help you increase your engagement.

Stay consistent with your aesthetic

• Experiment (graphics, videos...), but as far as possible, stay consistent with your graphic charter. This advice also applies to all your publications on social networks. 
• Staying consistent with your identity improves brand recognition. Tip: keep one color palette or font style for each of your publications.
• Be recognizable at first glance. People need to be able to look at your stories and know that it's your brand that posted them.

Engage your community by asking questions or launching a survey

• We all want to increase engagement. Instagram Stories present many ways for your brand to interact with your audience, such as asking questions, conducting polls...
• Interacting with your community makes it easy to see what your audience thinks about a particular topic, and helps you connect with them. Valuable information that can help you improve not only your digital marketing strategy, but your brand as a whole.
• Many people like to share their thoughts, opinions and points of view on various subjects. This method shows your community that their opinion counts for your brand. 

Use stories consistently to top news feeds

• If you want to be visible and stay at the top of the News Feed, you need to post stories regularly. This is because the Stories feed sorts by "freshness". So posting regularly helps to increase your visibility.
• The more you appear in Stories, the better your chances of generating traffic. Just keep in mind that quality is as important as quantity! Don't publish just to publish. Make sure your content is quality. Your subscribers are precious, and you don't want to disappoint them. 

Save important stories in your top stories

• Instagram Stories only have a lifespan of 24 hours. If you want people to see (and interact with) them for a longer period, you can do so by adding them to your Featured Stories. Featured stories are accessible until you decide to delete them.
• To improve the overall look of your Instagram profile page and draw more attention to your Featured Stories, you can change their appearance to match your brand theme (colors, images, tags). A customization that will facilitate navigation and make them easily accessible.

Prepare your content in advance

• As with other social networks, planning your content in advance can help you better develop and manage your strategy. It gives you more freedom to design your next story, to improve reach and engagement.
• What's more, planning Stories in advance can help you ensure brand consistency from one Story to the next.

Hide the hashtags you don't want people to see with a sticker

• Hashtags can increase your visibility, but adding too many could blur the visual aspect of your story. The solution: hide them behind a sticker. What's more, this will give your story a better chance of appearing in hashtag searches.
• Tip: don't make your hashtags too small. Although we can't say for sure, there are rumors that when hashtags are too small, IG has trouble reading them correctly.

Use location stickers to increase brand awareness

Adding location stickers to your Insta story can increase the chances of it appearing every time a user taps on a similar location. This is particularly useful when you're organizing events. The process is the same as for a classic post.

Broadcast an Instagram Story ad

Another way to increase your visibility and promote your brand is to run an Instagram Story ad. It's quite simple to do. Just make sure you define your target audience carefully. The IG ad can run for as long as you like. Improving your organic traffic is always a good thing, but sometimes it's worth paying to increase your visibility. Social network advertising isn't just an "extra". Sometimes it's a necessity.

Live to interact with your community

Another way to connect with your followers is to use Instagram Live. Please note: before you open the Instagram app and start broadcasting, it's a good idea to take note of a few important points.

• Determine your main objective before going online
• Promote, promote, promote
• Set up your live video
• Make the necessary preparations

Share user-generated content (UGC)

• Sharing user-generated content is a great way to promote your brand. It can help increase your audience's engagement rate by 28%, and studies show that customers trust them more than ads from companies.
• Sharing user-generated content on your Instagram Story can help increase visibility, but also establish a connection with your audience. People love to be recognized, and what better way to do that than to show them you've seen their content?
• A quick reminder: whenever you publish user-generated content, always credit the source. In Instagram Stories, you can do this by keeping the content creator's profile photo on the image you upload to your Story and adding a mention sticker with their Instagram username. A short note of appreciation is also welcome.

Analyze, analyze, analyze

• We can't stress this enough: you need to analyze your statistics. Instagram story information lets you know your reach, see how many views you got for each one, how people interacted...
• These metrics provide quantitative data that can help you understand what your audience wants, what kind of content they're interacting with, when they're active on the platform, how your strategies are working, how you can improve, and much more. 

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