While Newsfeed still creates buzz, Stories are the in-thing.
People no longer interact only with their newsfeed anymore especially on Instagram, many users of these social media platforms are now actively engaging with Stories.
Though stories became initially became prominent with Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook quickly imbibed the culture of Stories.
You would agree that it is almost impossible to go Instagram without seeing those circles on top of your page.
The best part is, stories are a great way to engage your audience and today, we will be talking about how you can do that.
Why Stories?
Stories are a fun way of representing your brand and they give you a lot of options to play with.
Facebook has constantly tried to update and introduce new features and functions in Stories both on Facebook and Instagram to make it more interesting and engaging.
This is not surprising though; people are engaging with stories. Over 500 million users on Instagram watch Instagram Stories monthly.
If you are worried that your followers will not watch your stories, that’s not true. Your followers will not only watch it, but they will also also actively engage with it.
You just need to make sure that whatever you post is something that will resonate with your audience.
How to engage your audience with your stories?
Now to the main gist of the day. It’s possible to engage your audience with your stories and get them engaging back.
How?
1. Play around with the features in Stories
Like I said earlier, platforms with stories keep on introducing new features in Stories to make it more interesting and engaging.
There are a lot of things you can do with Instagram stories:
- Ask questions
- Take a poll
- Quiz your audience
- Make use of un filters, etc.
The idea of stories is to create an experience in a fun way. If you can use all the features, functions and filters creatively, you will be able to create fun posts every day.
2. Let your social media stories tell a story
There is a reason why it is called stories.
You should post content that tell a story, a story that makes your audience the hero, a story that resonate with their interests and beliefs, or a story that speaks about your brand.
All these help your audience get to know you, feel like a part of your brand, and build trust and loyalty for your brand.
Your stories do not have to be elaborate. What matters is there should be a good flow between your pictures or videos. Each of them should relate to the previous post or the next one.
3. Keep your social media stories short
It is important that you keep your stories short.
Seeing a long string of beads outline your stories circle, can make a person disinterested in your stories. People want something they can easily digest in the shortest time possible.
Also, people get easily disinterested when they keep tapping right and your story seems to be never-ending. It gets worse if you posted about an experience that doesn’t strike them as interesting.
Even if your stories have to be long, make sure you are taking your audience on a story-telling journey that is fun. And try not to make any series longer than 10 stories at a time.
When your stories are short and interesting, people will be willing to not only watch, but comment and share their one cent about your story. They can even go ahead to share your story on their story.
4. Post fun content
This is not like your normal posts. Stories are to show the fun part of your brand.
Let them get to see the not-so-serious part of you. You can create stories about your day, maybe your lunch hour break or even outings outside of work.
Stories should be filled with spontaneous content. Even if you are going to edit, make it minimal. Stories give your audience the opportunity to get to know the real you.
As a brand, you can take a picture of your product in a fun way, host parties, and events and put the major highlights up, start a challenge that surrounds your brand message, etc.
These things make your audience willing to a part of whatever it is you are posting about.
5. Go behind the scenes
This is one of the ways to make your followers feel like they are a part of your brand.
Let them have a peek at your life or your business through stories. Picture things at work that you think they will be interested in watching and post it.
If you create a product, you could show them a bit of the production process. If it is services you offer, give them a view of your team working.
This kind of content resonates with people more than the perfected images people post on social media. They might seem ordinary but trust me, your audience will be interested, and you can get them talking.
6. Run promotions on stories
This is one strategy that has worked for social media platforms to increase sales. Why not also try it for your Stories?
Sharing promotions on Stories should go beyond just giving a discount off the normal price of your products. Discounts are great but you should find creative ways to persuade your customers to buy the product.
For example, if you sell shoes, not only will you give a discount, you ask them to take a picture of them wearing the shoe on their story, and they will be featured on your story.
This idea of this is to give people another reason to buy apart from the reduction in price.
7. Create How-to content
Every brand helps to fulfill a want or need.
Creating how-to content around your audience needs is a sure way of getting engagement. This will trigger them to ask questions, and before you know it, you guys are interacting.
You can create tutorials about how they can solve a need with home remedies, create something, or share advice on your product or service.
They key to doing this perfectly is getting the right content. To get your content right, ask yourself: what are my audience into? What would they love to see?
In conclusion,
Social media stories are a great way to engage your followers. If you have not been taking advantage of it, then you should right away.
Just make sure it is content your audience will be interested, and your stories are fun, and in time, you will get your audience interacting with you like crazy.
If you have any questions, leave a comment and I will answer as soon as I can.
