4 Ways to Promote Your Instagram Stories

How do you get more people to see your Instagram Stories? What strategy and tools to use to promote your Stories?

With these 4 simple transparent tactics you can boost your Instagram Stories and get more followers and viewers.

In this article you will discover five ways to promote your Instagram Stories and get more people to see your content.

But don’t forget, when you create stories on Instagram, execution is the most important part of it.

1.  Post it on your Instagram Feed

Instagram became the place where you can upload a photo, a video, send a message privately and easily create content that lasts only 24 hours. With over 60% of all users logging in every day, Instagram is the second most engaged network in the world after Facebook.

You can shoot a photo and upload it on Instagram or create a visual using design tools like Adobe Photoshop, Bannersnack, Adobe Spark or Stencil. Today it doesn’t matter if you use designed visuals on Instagram or photos, it matters only on what it communicate to the audience.

After 5 months from releasing it, more than 150 million users are using Instagram Stories and they are ready to monetize it with Instagram Ads and also bringing insights that will bring business accounts with analytics on the impressions, replies, exist of their Instagram stories and reach.

How you can promote an upcoming story on Instagram?

1. You can publish a photo on your news feed while you are getting ready for the Instagram Story.
2. You can also give your community a short video about what will you be talking about in Instagram Stories
3. Create engagement while you ask them in caption weather there are any other topics they want to hear about in the certain story

But many marketers struggle with this new feature: from creating compelling content that engages with audiences, to getting the best conversion and promoting this new type of content.

The official account of Instagram promoted their stories about the freshly new launched “The Fast and Furious 8” movie on their Instagram feed.

So they published a photo with the entire crew and invited their followers with a short description to watch the stories “Watch our Instagram story to hang out with the movie’s cast and see what the scene was like in Times Square.”

It’s well known that you can’t have more viewers on your Instagram Stories then you have followers on your Instagram account. So since Instagram changed its algorithm to show the content in the user’s feed, it’s not an easy strategy to get in front of the user, but it’s not impossible neither.

This means that you need not only to create content but also to connect and engage with the users.

If you want to make the user know about your Instagram Stories, I trully recommend you to create a photo or video that is telling them about your new stories that you will be rolling out in the future.

And if you are in inspiration gap, here are 25 magazines to check out on Instagram and get your enthusiasm back again.

Announce the story with a photo or video on your Instagram Feed.

2. Mention other users

In November 10, Instagram added a new feature to Instagram Stories and since then you can tag someone who could be interested in it.

How do you tag a person in a Instagram Story?

1. Create your Instagram Story
2. Type “@” followed by the username and select the user you’d like to mention.
3. If the username is underlined in your story, that means that the user will see that you mentioned him. And when someone taps the underlined mentioned user, they will see a pop-up that takes them to that profile.

This is a great opportunity for you as a marketer to show the brands community the team behind it. So, you can tag the person who is responsible with the social media presence, or you can take a selfie with the designer who is creating all the beautiful graphs for your business.

In this case, the brands followers will meet the team and get closer to the brand.

For example, Shopify launched their second office and their used Instagram Stories to let their community know about the party and the atmosphere at the launch. Also their created a video with Satish Kanwar, Product at Shopify being thankful for the ones who looked at their instagram stories. They tagged Satish and now the Shopify fans can interact directly with him.

When you mention users, they can see a notification about that in direct chat so your engagement chances will get bigger with that user.

3. Send them direct messages

Another simple trick you could use if you want people to see your Instagram Stories is to share them directly with that user.

Here’s a walkthrough that shows you how to create Groups and send Direct Messages to Groups in Instagram

You can easily create a new group in Instagram direct by sending a message (text/photo/video) to 2 or more users.

• Then hit Sent
• Also you can tap the camera icon so you can take a new one
• Tap the “New Message” button at the bottom
• Tap the icon in the top-right corner of your Feed
• Select 2 or more users you’d like to sent to, then tap Next.
• Here you can write your message or tap the image icon to upload a photo/video from your library
• After you create a group you can add a name for it. Just write the name at the space labeled Group Name and your are done

And that that you know how to create a New Group on Instagram let’s see how can you send Instagram Stories with Direct Messages?

1. Just take the Instagram stories
2. Then tap the right icon with the arrow on it. This will take you to a menu where you’ll see the ones who are following you.
3. From there you can select the user that you’ve recently talked to and and also add the story to “Your Story” section.

Also, you can send these Instagram Stories to groups or to users separately.

Knowing your community is important. That’s why DM is a great way for you to engage with users. Send them info about products you think they might like, reminders about promotions and special discount codes for special followers (the one who engage with your brand the most).

Create different types of groups based on your followers, customers and how strong is your relationship is with them.

Some of them can be your influencers, some of them can be your true fans and some of them are just regular followers who are interested in your brand.

4. Repurpose your story on social media

What about cross promotion from your Instagram Stories to your other social media channels? I found it interesting and a great way to collect more leads and followers to your Instagram Stories.

How to save your Instagram Stories so you can repurpose it on social media?

1. First of all, make sure that you have selected the option to automatically save your photos and videos to your phone when you add them to your story.

If you do this, every time you create a photo or a video, it will be automatically saved in your phone. Then you can easily share it on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Linkedin.

2. But if you don’t do this, have no fear. You can still save the photo or video after you took it even before uploading it on “Your Story” by hitting the left “Save” icon. Or after you upload it, you can tap the 3 points in the right corner and save the photo or video to your gallery.

3. More of that, if you want to create a collage with your Instagram Stories and repurpose it on other social media channels, just hit the the right icon and the entire story will be saved in video format.

When you repurpose your Instagram Stories on different social media channels make sure that you tell your community to follow you on Instagram so they can see all of your Instagram Stories.

Tip: When you save your Instagram Stories make sure that you have a strategic way to share them with your community.

CONCLUSION

Even if only 36% of marketers are on Instagram it doesn’t mean that you should ignore it. Instagram is evolving and it’s giving marketers and brands the great opportunity of connecting easily with the customer.

And if you don’t know what to publish on your Instagram Stories, you can check this comprehensive guide for marketer to daily publishing, or you can easily ask your audience what they’re interested in and use their feedback to make your stories appealing for them.

Now back to you, let me know in the comments section below what you think about these strategies and what other tactics did you use to promote your Instagram Stories?