You’re missing out if you haven’t used Instagram Stories for your business promotions. IG Stories are excellent audience engagement boosters since you can use them to promote your brand, products, and offers in engaging ways. 

You can leverage the live streaming feature in social media apps and share Instagram Stories announcing your product launch. It allows you to provide memorable, interactive experiences to your followers. 

If you’re still on the fence about using Instagram Stories to promote your business, continue reading to learn five creative and effective tactics. 

1. Run polls to showcase product variations

Running Instagram Story polls can boost your audience engagement by encouraging audience interactions. Use IG Story Stickers to ask simple, relevant, interesting, and fun questions about your brand or business.

Ask Yes or No questions or run a This or That poll. 

For instance, clothing retailer Aerie runs IG Story polls showing photos of two different outfits and styles from their product lines.

People can vote on which style they prefer by clicking their choice on the poll sticker. 

Image source: instagram.com

The poll can serve two purposes: Engaging audiences with a simple, interactive activity and promoting the brand’s products.  Use this same approach to showcase your products and service variations while interacting and connecting with your potential customers. Include viral IG hashtags in your Story polls to make your posts searchable, increasing their visibility and reach. 

Also, use modern social media marketing platforms, such as Vista Social. 

The platform’s post scheduling, queuing, and bulk publishing allow you to auto-publish single (or multiple) posts on peak dates and times seamlessly. 

Reliable tools help you cut down manual work, giving back time you can spend on other critical tasks, such as developing content writing best practices. 

2. Host Q&As

There’s more to business promotions than aggressively showcasing your brand to your Instagram followers. 

Let your audiences know your brand better instead through meaningful and engaging interactions.  An excellent approach is to run Question and Answer (Q&A) sessions in your IG Stories. 

Hosting Q&As can also help establish your brand’s authority and credibility, fostering trust with potential customers and encouraging conversions. 

Use the Instagram Story Questions sticker to invite your audiences to ask about brand-related topics or anything they want to know. 

For example, if you provide Software-as-a-Service such as top-tier payroll software for small businesses, host Q&As to answer common questions about your platform’s features.  

Then, share your responses in the following ways.

• Instagram Live. Hop on IG live to respond to your followers’ queries in real-time. It’s a great way to forge connections with your audiences. 

It can show your brand’s human side and tell audiences that your business cares about what they want to know.

Announce your IG live Q&As schedule, encourage your followers to join you, and ask more questions for optimum interactions and engagement. 

• Post your responses in FAQ style. Share your answers to your audience’s questions in your IG Stories as Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). 

You can screenshot the commonly asked queries and create a Story image, video clip, infographic, or other visual content with your answers. 

Beauty brand Glossier uses this approach with its Skincare Qs Stories. The Stories include questions that ask people about their pressing skincare questions. 

Image source: instagram.com. 

Ask Me Anything and Q&A sessions are some of the Instagram posts and Story ideas to enrich your Instagram account and support your brand promotions. 

3. Get customer feedback and data

If you want to promote your brand on Instagram effectively, you need to know the best strategies, content, messaging, etc., that will likely evoke responses from your audience. 

One of the best ways to do that is to get customer feedback and data from your potential customers. 

Use Instagram Stories to gather feedback from your IG audiences. 

It’s a great way to get people to interact with your brand while capturing essential data. 

You’ll gather information to get ideas for future products, tailor content based on your target audience’s interests, and improve your products and services. 

Use the IG Story Questions or Quiz stickers, including other interactive elements, to make the experience fun and engaging for your audience.  

For instance, you can ask what features your customers want to see in your robust design project management software

Ben & Jerry’s nails this approach by sharing a fun, interactive IG Story quiz to help users find other similar flavors to Half Baked that might be right for them. 

Image source: instagram.com. 

The IG Story is market research, product promotion, and optimizing audience engagement efforts all rolled into one strategy. 

Analyze your IG Stories designed for gathering customer feedback and data by developing a solid content tracking strategy

It can help you assess your content’s performance and determine if they are working (or not) for your business promotions. 

4. Share positive customer experiences

Promoting your business on Instagram doesn’t mean doing all the talking or promotions.  

Share social proof and establish trust with your prospects by posting customer testimonials, reviews, and User-Generated Content (UGC) in your Instagram Stories. 

For instance, share photos or videos of customers using your products in your Stories. 

Clothing retailer Pull & Bear leverage this approach with its Community IG Stories. 

The Stories contain photos of customers wearing the brand’s products.

Image source: instagram.com. 

Nurture trust with your prospects while promoting your products and brand with UGCs, reviews, and similar content in your Stories.  

5. Offer tips and mini tutorials

Don’t limit sharing helpful content to your Instagram feed. 

Leverage Instagram Stories to share mini-tutorials and quick tips for your Instagram audiences. 

For example, post a series of images or short video clips in your IG Stories that show how your customers can buy SEO articles on your website. 

Make your visual content visually pleasing and interactive to capture your audience’s attention and help you convey your message for higher engagement. 

ILIA Beauty’s Instagram Stories showing a makeup tutorial for a summer look using the brand’s products is a classic example. 

 Image source: instagram.com. 

Make the most of your Instagram Stories by sharing relevant content with your audiences. 

Include simple tips and tutorials that provide value to your followers while helping you promote your brand. 

Level up for business promotions with IG Stories

There are countless ways to use Instagram Stories for your business. 

Take inspiration from the examples and tips in this guide and see which strategies work best for you. 

Use reliable tools and build on tried and tested tactics. 

Put your creative spin on existing strategies to create Instagram Stories that drive engagement, brand awareness, conversions, and sales. 

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