Instagram Stories: Why we should be using them more
The addition of Instagram Stories has helped to ensure that the average user spends 28 minutes a day on the channel, which begs the question – are we using Stories enough?
Some quick stats to take notice of. As of January this year, Instagram had over 500 million daily active Stories users. This figure has grown 400% since the feature launched in 2016. All-in-all, it’s a very powerful tool to grow awareness and engage daily with your audience.
Story Stickers
Firstly, which features work best on Stories? From GIFs and the emoji slider to geo-tagging location and polls, stickers can become overwhelming if not understood. Used properly they are a great way to make a story more dynamic and achieve a variety of marketing goals.
But how does each sticker rank in terms of effectiveness?
- The trusty hashtag can grow engagement by up to 12%, allowing users to search for similar, relevant content.
- @mentioning athletes and key figures is the second-best way to grow engagement.
- Get geo-tagging! Doing this can grow engagement by 79%. It’s particularly effective when driving local fan interaction and noise around events.
Good practice with using stickers and call to actions (IAAF).
Adverting in Instagram Stories
Ad spending on Instagram is 23% higher than on Facebook and 120 million users have engaged with brands after seeing an Instagram Ad story. This means it is not to be taken lightly; if you want to target and grow a young audience, then Instagram is the place to spend your money. Everything is run through Facebook’s Ad Manager meaning you can get very specific with who you want to target. Fifteen seconds of advertising space isn’t much, so we recommend a video promotion – grab the users’ attention!
Don’t forget your call to action asking them to ‘swipe-up’ to shop or see more content. Around 20% of users follow a link to engage directly with a brand’s website, so it’s a vital tool in driving people down your digital funnel to owned platforms.
Good practice of fitness brands using video and call to actions in their story ads.
Instagram Story Highlights
Those tiny icons that sit at the top of your Instagram page are more powerful than you realise. They’re often the first thing a visitor to your channel will click on, so view them as the ‘movie trailer’ for your page. What is the best content you want to show off? The highlights feature is a way to save your best Instagram Stories so they can be watched when the 24 hours runs out, meaning your time, effort and best Stories aren’t wasted. (If you don’t have this option, then make sure archiving is switched on!)
Ensure the cover icon is clear and relatable so the viewer knows exactly what to expect by watching that highlight. The first story should always be the opening page of the book, guiding you into the rest of the stories that follow. Finally, make sure you include calls to action in your saved Stories. The link will never expire, meaning this is an invaluable way to continually drive traffic to your channels all year round.
Good practice of separating stories into highlights (PUMA Football).
To conclude, if you aren’t using Instagram Stories frequently, then you’re missing out on quick wins in terms of growing engagement and reach. Make sure you aren’t forgetting the trusty hashtag sticker, put thought into the content of your highlights and if you’re going to do paid, do it on the ’gram!
Instagram Stories are an area we manage for a range of rights holders, athletes and brands throughout the sporting world. If you have any further questions, or are interested in the services Fifty Digital and Fifty Insight offer, then just say hello@fifty.digital.
