Instagram Stories Provide Social Media Benefits In Real Time With Correct Use

By Karen Anthony

The Instagram platform, if used correctly to share photos and videos for a product, can provide all the benefits of social media marketing in real-time. this holds true for any type of business but is more effective for those businesses that deals with art, fashion, beauty product, and travel.

However, as mentioned earlier, you will need to use this platform correctly, with all its features and tools that it comes with. 

• Instagram as it is, has a large number of followers, 111 million to be exact, according to recent research reports. That means, there is an exceptionally large number of audiences waiting out there to be tapped.
• This platform is especially designed to be used on mobile devices which means that you will be able to reach out to your target audience anytime. 

This means that Instagram has a huge potential and at the same time it can assure a higher reach and engagement from your users.

Use Instagram Stories enough

If you want to increase the traffic to your site by directing your social media followers, then Instagram can be just the channel you are looking for. However, you will need to use the Instagram Stories feature enough to ensure that, which sadly most of the business owners fail to do.

If you build on your Instagram Stories, you will gain a lot of followers for Instagram. This is ideally one of the most effective ways to really engage your users as well as get a lot of new followers. 

How to use Instagram Stories

You really do not have to be an expert to use Instagram Stories in the right way. This is because you do not necessarily have to shoot a live video for that matter, and even if you have to, it need not be as good as a video shot by a pro.

• You can use still images as well and get equal effects.
• You can also create text pages to tell a story and 
• You may also use proper tags to make it more relevant to the right channels. 

However, you must remember at this point that it should not be all about the sale. In fact, the users may not get the feeling that you are pushing them too much to make a sale. Make it entertaining, engaging and even funny to make the users smile.

In fact, most of the businesses and marketers use the Instagram Stories feature as the most effective way to demonstrate the personality of their brand. You too should do likewise if you want this popular social media platform to be as productive as it is to your competitors and other businesses.

The best approach is to add special elements in your Instagram stories such as:

• Fun videos
• Visual contents of high quality and 
• Videos of interviews as well.

Make sure that you show love to your users and ambassadors. It is also important to make sure that the content you create is exceptionally good and will make the people happy and interested enough to actually want to watch it, if not keep coming back for more. It is only then you will have a successful marketing campaign. 

Build a relationship

Your brand can do much better benefit by using Instagram Stories from the hyper-engaged social media community of Instagrammers all over the world if you build a relationship with them. This may not be as simple as it may sound and if you do not know how exactly you can do this, then instead of scratching your head to figure out the right ways, you will be better off if you defer to a creative agency for that matter to do the heavy lifting for you.

However, if you wish to go ahead solo, then be informed that the best way to build a relationship with the followers is by creating trust in them. This is the same way you build any relationship. 

Creating trust among users

Creating trust is very important as pointed out by a survey report by SurveyMonkey last year that 68% of the US adults admit that trust in a brand plays a significant role to influence their decision on whether or not they will make a purchase from that specific brand. There are ideally two ways in which you can foster trust in your target audience. 

• First, let them in and allow them to see the real human parts of your brand. This will present your brand with a unique personality. Make sure that you are transparent and honest in using the images or videos and nothing is staged. It is better to share your raw and authentic self with them. This will build a connection and in turn, this connection will create trust. 
• Secondly, give them first without expecting anything in return. This means you should focus first on what you can give to them before they ask for anything or you ask anything from them. Building trust is much easier when you do three things, give, give and give more if you know the pun.  

Once you are sure that you are doing or done the above correctly, a better idea is to gauge how correctly you have done it and the quantum of it as well. The best way to find this out is to ask yourself a question: whether or not you are creating value and whether or not your users will pay for what you are giving to them. 

If you find that the answer is affirmative, rest assured that your Instagram and social media marketing effort is moving in the right direction.

Summing it up

The key takeaway of the matter is that you should ensure that the ratio of your product promotion to value-driven content is ideally 1:4. This means for every four pieces of valuable and entertaining content there is one post that is for promoting your product or service.

This is what will ensure that you gain the benefits of Instagram Stories when it comes to your social followers. 

Author bio: Karen is a Business Tech Analyst. She is very responsible for her job. She helps marketers to achieve better results.