Instagram Stories

The concept of Instagram Stories is very simple. You can upload either a photo or a video, which will then be visible for 24 hours. Stories is the place where you can be more personal in your account and easily, as a company, show more behind the company’s facade to create a better relationship with customers and followers. As we often emphasize in relation to social media, it is important to create a relationship with your target group, and this is exactly what Stories can help to strengthen. Instagram Stories help increase your visibility and create interaction on the platform, but we’ll return to that later in the post.

You can also easily read data and performance on your stories and thus get an insight into what they provide for your business. You can also access this data after 24 hours.

How does Stories vary from regular posts?

Apart from how long the content is available, the story differs the most in relation to the type of content that is posted. Stories is the obvious place where you can become more personal with your followers and show them more behind the company; development processes, days in the office, shoots and much more. The Instagram feed is often very polished, where a clean style and an aesthetic expression is maintained, which suits the brand – this does not necessarily have to play as strongly on a Story, and it can therefore be more relaxed and informally, which we often see works really well. As the story is more relaxed, it also means that companies are more active in this format, as it does not require the same work and planning to post on Instagram Story. This way, it will also be easier to be ‘top of mind’ with your followers, as they will see your brand and content more often. The more often you post the more visible you will also become. Keep in mind, however, that your content must also be relevant for your followers to see and follow – a good balance is therefore important.

It is also an obvious place where you can get input from your followers and thus create the interaction that we mentioned earlier. You can to a large extent use Instagram’s functions in your Stories to get input to your brand from your customers. Among other things, we have seen many who inquire about, for example, requests for new colors of their products through the sticker ‘Questions. This provides your followers the opportunity to write their wishes for the particular product – in consequence this creates both an insight into your market, but also interaction on your profile, which is a plus for the algorithm.

You can also tease for new launches and involve your followers in this process. For example the feature ‘Quiz’ in your Story, so your followers can help guess, among other things, the color of new launches or which product that will be launched. Only the imagination sets limits. In relation to launches, competitions or lives, the sticker ‘Countdown’ can also be a good way to engage with and include your followers on.

The Story format makes it easy for you to involve both your followers and customers, and at the same time create more interaction on your profile – which is both a plus for the company.

How do I see answers to my questions, polls and more from my Stories?

While your Story is active, you can simply go into the Story and ‘swipe’ up. This way, the answers become visible to you and you can either choose to respond to the follower’s response in your own Story or respond directly to the person in a private message. Once the 24 hours have passed, you can still access your answers. Go to your profile and press under ‘Insights’. Below you can choose to see your finished Stories. Tap the desired Story and again just swipe up to see the answers.

Highlight Instagram Stories

Although the Story format is active for only 24 hours, you can create highlights on your profile where you can save your Stories. In such a manner it’s possible to access your stories afterwards. You can make different highlights, which for example can be a highlight for each collection, shoots and much more. For instance, you can also create a highlight that is beneficial to your business by gathering answers to frequently asked questions. For starters, you can do a survey on your stories with the sticker ‘Questions’, where everyone can inquire into the company. Then share your answers to the individual questions on your story – possibly one answer per Story and then save these answers to highlights as Q&A. In such a way, these answers will always be available to your followers on your Instagram page, and when new followers are added, they can also see the previous answers.

The ‘Swipe up’ feature on Instagram

On Stories, some profiles have the ability to swipe up to a website, which for instance can be a product. However, your profile must have a minimum of 10.000 followers before this feature is available, so if you haven’t been able to find this feature, then this might be the particular reason.

Can you see who has seen your Instagram Story?

To conclude this post, we will answer a question we often encounter: Can you see who has seen your Instagram story? And the answer is: yes – you can certainly during the 24 hours. As long as your story is active, you can tap into your story and see who has seen it beneath.

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