Instagram Stories: Tips and Tricks for Influencers

Instagram stories are a great way to engage with your followers and attract new people to your feed. Many Instagram influencers use their stories to shoot short videos and share photos, using fun filters, text and emojis. These stories allow them to capture their personality and share aspects of their life to engage and entertain their followers. But how do they do it? Well, in this blog post I’ll be giving you the best tips and tricks to best utilise Instagram stories and stand out from the crowd.

1. Tell a story

Use Instagram stories to, well, tell a story. This is different to your Instagram feed - these short videos or photos should capture real and genuine moments in your life that your followers can engage with and appreciate. You can also keep these stories in the “Highlights” section of your profile, allowing new followers to look at them upon viewing your page.

2. Be natural

There are so many up-and-coming influencers and brands who try to attract and engage Instagram users by releasing highly produced and polished stories. While these look great and should definitely be shared, they may seem less authentic to your viewers. Instead, figure out how you can incorporate that high-quality content into your feed and share more honest, transparent content via your stories. Although it may seem imperfect, it’s real - and people trust real.

3. A day in the life

A great way of implementing the previous two suggestions is by using both photos and videos to create Instagram stories throughout the day. You can record various parts of your day, such as your activities and spending time with friends or family. This allows your followers to get a glimpse into your life and become more engaged in your content.

4. How-to’s and tutorials

Followers love to find out more about what influencers do to make themselves look, act or feel the way they do. A great way to build and engage your following is by posting how-to or tutorial videos on your Instagram story demonstrating various things that align to your image. For example, if you are a fashion influencer, you may want to post a video about how to best style a pair of jeans. For a fitness influencer, they may want to share tutorials on their workout routines or nutrition habits.

5. Q&As

Another great way of engaging with your followers is though Q&As. Instagram has implemented a really cool feature for stories where you can add a question input on your post. This means that followers who view it can enter a question, which is sent to you directly. The questions can then be posted back on your story with your answer. This is a great way to interact and recognise your followers, as by answering their questions and engaging with them they will have more interest in you and continue to keep up with your content. This also leads into the next tip:

6. Recognise your followers

Recognising your followers through your Instagram stories can be very rewarding to influencers. People love to be recognised by people they admire, and in doing so it also allows you to be more connected to your fans. This may be as simple as making an appreciation post about reaching a certain amount of followers. You could also share, or re-share, positive things that have been posted about you. This will not only boost your engagement with your current fan-base, but will also serve as a self-promotion technique to demonstrate your success with your followers!

7. Use a call to action

As an influencer, you want people to engage with your content, to like it, share it and comment on it. Using call to actions on your Stories are a great way to increase follower engagement with your profile. One way of doing this is by sharing a new post via your Story, allowing your followers who may not have seen your post to view it and engage.

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Talk soon,

Digital Demi