Instagram Stories are a fun way to engage & grow your followers and share content that doesn’t take hours to create. However, it can be used to share recent unedited photos and videos, which can quickly become boring for your audience. You also need to stand up and get a little creative.
This includes not only creating beautiful Instagram Stories, but also making the content itself fun, fresh, and interactive. Here are some creative Instagram story ideas to inspire you.
Introducing People to Your Team
Because Instagram Stories are open, they give you a great opportunity to get closer and more personal. This means putting the spotlight on the people (or social media team) behind the company. This applies not only to companies but also to content creators and entrepreneurs.
Use Instagram Stories to showcase new team members or share employee stories. You could even start a series of employee takeovers where each employee shares “their day in the life” posts throughout the day. This helps you humanize your brand and build a closer relationship with your audience.
Customers in the Spotlight
Instagram Stories are designed to help you connect with your audience and there’s no better way to engage with them than by putting them in the spotlight. Use Stories to share rave reviews, comments, posts, and stories from your customers. You can also use before and after photos and testimonials in your story. This type of user-generated content not only makes existing customers feel valued but also adds social proof to earn the trust of potential customers. For example, Drunk Elephant uses Stories to share customer photos with their products. Tag your customers in each post and share the purchase link so your followers can get the same product.
Count Down to an Important Event
When you have an important event, such as a product launch, Instagram Live session, or sale, use countdown stickers to build anticipation. Followers can click the timer to set reminders and get notified when the event goes live. This is great for getting your audience excited about upcoming events while encouraging more participation. For example, Fenty Beauty shared a countdown timer to the launch of its new Fenty Icon lipstick line.
Promote Offers & Discounts
For brands and entrepreneurs, Instagram Stories is the perfect place to share promotions and discounts. You may have already done this, but you can get more creative by adding fun stickers to make your offers stand out. Animated stickers stand out and spotlight your discounts.
Ghibli Premium Shop accounts regularly share stories with fun stickers that highlight sales. You can also add a timer sticker that counts down until the sale ends. This is great for adding urgency to your story and getting more people to redeem your offer before it ends.
Put Themed Spotlight Stories
Creating stories that focus on events that matter to your followers is a great way to strengthen your connection with them. Use Instagram Stories to spotlight people, businesses, and products associated with month-long celebrations like Black History Month, Mental Health Awareness Month, and Pride Month.
During Black History Month, Apartment Therapy used Instagram Stories to create a spotlight series for Black-owned small businesses. In this series, a black woman like Megan of @everythineantiques shares stories and tells people a little bit about their business.
Put Creative Polls
Voting is a great way to keep your followers engaged as you have the option to vote between two options. Get creative with your polls and use them to better understand your audience.
If you’re running out of ideas for content, conduct a poll and ask your audience to vote for their type of favorite content. For example, ask them to vote for what they want to see more from you. You can also get people to vote if they like the new types of content you’re experimenting with.
Surveys are also a great way to understand consumer demand. What does your audience need help with? What are they looking for? Do you have unmet needs? How popular are certain products compared to others? Conduct regular surveys on your stories to find out what your customers want. Amorino Gelato used surveys to get people to vote on different sweets to help gauge their customers’ desires.
Mention Your Friends / People in Your Stories & Posts
When another account mentions your account, it adds credibility and acts as social proof. Show your followers that other people talk about you and recognize you. In some cases, it shows people to stand up for you and helps build trust. So, if a customer, influencer, or business mentions you, be sure to share it in your story. The Onitsuka Tiger page shared a story where an influencer account mentioned Onitsuka Tiger and thanked them for their Lunar New Year gifts.
Share a Buying Guide
Even if you use Stories to promote your products, get a little more creative by offering helpful buying advice instead. This works to gently encourage your followers to purchase your product without being too pushy. Suggest what to buy if you’re interested, instead of specifically telling them to buy it.
It’s a great way to motivate shoppers who already want to buy something but don’t know what to get.
Ask Questions to People
Instagram Stories have many features to encourage audience engagement. You can use question stickers to collect questions from your fans and answer them for everyone to see. This is a great way to answer frequently asked questions and educate your audience through fun interactive elements.
Get Feedback Using Emoji Sliders
Whether you are liberating a brand-new product or showcasing your work, getting remarks out from your fans is a must. This permits you to gauge how fascinated they may be by your product, how excited they may be for a brand-new release, or whether they prefer your work. Plus, it is a manner to get them worried about your enterprise or innovative process, permitting you to construct a more potent reference to them.
Ask For Song Recommendations
Not the entirety must be associated with your logo or products. Sometimes, you may simply create Stories to percentage your lifestyles or ask easy questions. This is an awesome manner for organizations to humanize their logo and for content material creators to connect to their target market. For example, display your fans you feel their critiques via way of means of soliciting for track hints the usage of the Questions sticker.
You ought to take this a step-in addition via way of means of deciding on a positive topic and setting those hints right into a playlist. For example, an activewear logo ought to ask their fans to percentage their preferred songs to pay attention to at the same time as walking. They can then percentage those hints as a walking playlist of their Story highlights.
Answering Questions Using Video
While you may solve the questions in a textual content format, you may preserve it even greater enticing via way of means of the usage of videos. Collect the questions first after which file a video of you answering the questions. This is ideal for tapping into the visible nature of the platform and preserving your target market visually stimulated.
Share Posts/Videos of Other Accounts
To add real value to your audience, your story must go beyond your content. If you have useful or insightful content that your followers can benefit from, share it through your story. This also helps build connections with content creators.
Introduce Fun Quizzes
Who doesn’t like quizzes? Another great way to drive engagement is to share fun quizzes for your followers to play through your stories. Use quiz stickers to ask your followers fun facts about your brand, product, or industry.
Share Insights of your Products
People like transparency. Instagram Stories are also a great place to be more transparent with your followers by showing them how your products are made. You can also work with content creators to show how they create their content such as the process of getting inspired, taking pictures, and editing images.
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