Inspirations for Instagram Story Practice
Instagram story is a new feature for Instagram users, but it’s a familiar one to Snapchat users. It’s basically the same as the 24-hour life span story on Snapchat and the high resemblance is the reason why Facebook was accused of stealing Snapchat's ideas. Users can compile a story with multiple videos and photos taken within 24 hours to share with their followers. After 24 hours, the story will disappear. This new feature brings businesses and brands on Instagram some other options to engage with their followers.
Live and Timely Content
This is something that marketers can be very creative with. It can be a special event opening live video, a fashion label new arrival screen, a voucher for limited time or even a real-time event. One of the successful examples is LOFT, a women fashion brand. It turned an Instagram Story in to a real-time event by hosting a fun style challenge for two best friends and shared it as a Story. It was a fun way to amplify followers’ engagement as well as potential brand exposure by inviting followers to tag their best friends on their last post.
Behind The Scene
Behind the scene is always a popular business social media content choice for a business or a brand to show its personality and secrets people are curious about. It can be a day in the office, a field trip, or product production scenes. One of Disney Instagram stories was a peak of drawing Cinderella in a studio with a “see more” link to direct its viewers to its video on Youtube.
Q & A Sessions
Instagram Story can also be used as little Q & A sessions for a brand to answer its followers’ questions and provide answers or tips, for example, Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur using Instagram Story to share his hustle life and have a Q&A session about how he deals with things in his life as his takeover on Instagram Stories.
Takeovers
Takeovers can be tricky as a trusting challenge for a business or a brand. Yet, if businesses want to utilize social media influencers’ influence on their followers, it’s a great way to engage influencers. Many practices have been taken on Snapchat, Pinterest and blogs that brands allow influencers to take over their social media accounts for a time period to generate or co-create contents.
Instagram Story has so much potential for businesses to engage their followers and potential followers. Creativity is the key when being unconventional is the convention. These are simply some inspirations for your Instagram Story.
