Instagram stories are a great, authentic way to connect to your audience. They tell us the “behind the scenes” real story, that everyone craves. Even though real life isn’t always pretty, putting a little “bling” on it, to make it more eye-catching and appealing doesn’t hurt. If you’re using Instagram to promote your business, touching up your Instagram stories to match the overall visual identity of your business will make it pop among numerous other Stories on Instagram. So, how can you do that? Here are some rules to follow.
Use the text
Once you took the photo or the video you’d like to share with your audience, simply tap anywhere on the photo and add some relevant text to it. The app itself has several different fonts you can choose from, but you can also add additional fonts, through different Instagram-related apps. Design the text in a way it will blend with the picture you’re sharing and your brand. If your brand has a specific color palette, use the drop tool and choose the same colors for your text. You can choose different background colors and effects to really make your text noticeable.
Make use of stickers
There are multiple types of stickers you can include in your Story, from location and poll stickers to emojis and GIFs. Apart from making your Story look cool, using stickers can really engage your audience through stickers such as poll sticker, or the recently added quiz sticker. This way you can ask your audiences’ opinion on, let’s say, your last post or check their knowledge about special features your company offers. You can use the location sticker so you can share your current location, especially if you’re doing some kind of promotion, so your followers know where to find you.
Apart from these very useful features Instagram stickers offer, there’s also the fun part – emoji stickers (thumbs up emoji), seasonal stickers, GIFs. These are always great to engage with your followers in a fun way, making a joke and simply making your content fun and relatable.
Prepare your posts in advance
Sure, Stories were introduced with the idea that you’ll share what’s happening at the moment, depicting the “real life happenings”, that vanish after 24h. But, as we all know, Stories can be used for so much more. Most brands nowadays prepare their Stories, so they match the aesthetics of the brand. This way, your Stories will always be recognized by your followers, when they’re navigating through Instagram.
There are several things to take into account when doing this. Firstly, think of the Stories dimensions when you’re preparing them. So, when designing your Story, keep an aspect ratio of 9:16, with 1080 by 1920 dimensions. Any further details are mainly up to you and to the style of your brand. Most of these “prepared” Stories are done with graphic design tools, from the simpler ones, such as Canva to others that offer numerous designing options, such as Photoshop. Websites such as Sleeklens offer numerous advice on how to take the best photos and how to edit them in Lightroom and Photoshop. Learning how to take great photos and how to edit them with the right tools will take your Instagram Stories to a professional level, making sure they’ll captivate the attention of your followers.
Use Stories to share a link
A great feature in Stories is the “swipe-up” option. How can you use it? Let’s say you’ve written a new blog post, and would like to show it to your followers. You could make two short Instagram stories where you could share what the blog post is about – it could either be a short video or a snapshot of the blog. In the third story, you can simply add the swipe-up button, so everyone who’s interested can simply swipe-up and be directed to your blog post. This can also be great if you’d like to direct your followers to a promotion your company is having, or if you’d like to give a shout-out to a brand you collaborate with.
If you still don’t have the swipe-up option (you either have to be verified or have more than 10,000 followers for that), you can “replace” the swipe-up option by sharing your most recent Instagram post in the story, where you direct your followers to your blog post. Also, you can mention other brands by tagging them in your stories, or putting hashtags, that will promote them.
