When you tap your way through Instagram Stories, do you ever wonder what type of content gets the most attention? Knowing your brand’s audience and how to interact with them is critical in answering this question when it comes to your own content. By learning what your audience enjoys and reacts to, you arm yourself with the tools to form a relationship that is engaging and potentially long-lasting.
Interactive Instagram Stories:
Creating content your audience can interact with will help you increase your engagement and impressions. With the right interactive content, your audience will be drawn to your page not only for news about your products or services but for entertaining and shareable content.
Examples:
- Inspiring quotes
- Inspire your audience by creating quote cards or re-sharing popular ones. The more a quote resonates with your audience, the more likely they are to save it or share it with a friend
- Games
- Create quick, fun games people can fill out such as bingo or a word search. These are easily shareable and create a fun opportunity for you to gain more visibility
- Like a game, you can create a fun template that people can screenshot and share on their own Stories. People love posting fun facts about themselves — create a template that gives you the opportunity to share factoids about your brand and allows your followers to post their own personal version
- Giveaway
- Another way to increase your brand’s following is by hosting mini 24-hour giveaways in your Story. Your audience will have access to an exclusive followers-only perk that will encourage them to check in with your brand’s page on an ongoing basis for more. If you have the swipe up feature, you can create a landing page where people can sign up via email to increase your database at the same time. If you do not have a swipe up feature, you can encourage followers to comment on your last post with a friend’s name and a secret emoji. By hosting giveaways consistently, you create a reason for your followers to increase the amount of time they spend on your page and to refer their friends and family to your business
- Get Personal: Share insights about your company to showcase what goes on behind the scenes (within reason).
- Audiences love a humanized brand they can relate to and connect with. Behind the scenes footage of something being made, company outings, employee celebrations, philanthropy and relatable or outstanding founder stories are just some examples of subjects you can create content about
- Take advantage of Instagram’s features.
- Polls: Create polls so you can gather information about what your audience likes.
- Ask about their favorite products by putting two products side by side asking which they prefer
- Ask a Yes or No question that is product or trend related
- Quiz: Challenge your audience to see how much they know about your brand, help them choose the best product for them or share a trending topic.
- Posting trivia related to your brand gives your audience an interactive way to learn more about you and your product or service
- With a fun quiz, you can help your customers determine which products or services are right for them and encourage them to make a purchase
- Ask me a question: This Instagram feature lets your audience ask questions about your brand and allows you to decide which of your answers you’d like to share in your Story.
- You can pose an “Ask us anything” kind of question to see what your followers are interested in learning about your brand
- Alternatively, if you want to learn more about your audience’s preferences you can pose a question that they enter the answers to, granting you easy insights into what makes your followers tick
- Countdown: Get your audience excited about a new launch with the countdown feature.
- Instagram Live: Interact in real time with your followers by going live.
- Instagram Live gives you an opportunity to get feedback from your followers and interact with them directly. You can host a Q&A, virtual group workout, cooking show-style recipe creation, invite an Influencer takeover and so much more
- Polls: Create polls so you can gather information about what your audience likes.
Put these Instagram tools to use for your brand, and you will gain invaluable new insights about your followers and customers. With that new knowledge, you’ll be able to increase your brand awareness and tap into a more personal relationship with the people who are most interested in buying and advocating for your product, service, ethos and more.
Happy ‘gramming!
-Amanda Daucher
