10 Killer Instagram Story Hacks for Your Business

Instagram stories host over 500 million active users daily. Hence, offer a great opportunity to grow your presence and market your brand.

Stories sit in the top-left corner of your feed layout. You can click on the camera icon or simply swipe left to post your content.

One thing you should know that IG stories last for only 24 hours.

That said, let’s get started with the 10 killer Instagram story hacks.

Post at the right time

Unlike regular posts, stories expire after 24 hours. Hence, to ensure your followers see them, you need to post when your followers are active on the platform.

Here’s how you can find out the best time to post stories:

• Use your Instagram analytics to find when your audience is most active.
• Then, schedule your posts accordingly.

The question sticker 

This sticker is an engagement magnet. You can use it to let your followers ask you questions. It’s really fun and helps maintain transparency. 

If your followers have doubts about your products or anything they want to know about you, they can ask freely. 

Pro-tip: Use stories to post the answers and tag the person who asked that question. That way, you have the chance to earn a mention in that person’s story.

Product stickers and links

Product stickers let you tag specific products in stories. This’s a great way to help your audience shop easily on the platform. 

You can also add links to your stories to direct followers to your landing page or blog. But this only works when you’ve at least 10k followers. If you don’t, then you can always add the link in your bio.

Polls and Quizzes

You can find the poll sticker in the stickers catalogue and use it to create questions then let your followers choose between two options. 

The questions could be related to your products, services, or niche jargon.

You can get as creative as you can while creating the polls.

Now, what about quizzes?

There’s a quiz sticker that lets you ask questions and provides four options to the audience to make a choice. 

You can attract huge engagement by quizzing your followers about your brand’s history, product hacks or personal hobbies to find out how well your followers know you. Furthermore, use hashtag generator tools like Task Ant. Read how Task Ant works to figure out the cool features.

Locations and Hashtags

The location sticker helps you target stories at a specific group of audience. 

Create a photo or video story and choose the location sticker. A search bar will greet you to find your location. That’s it, now people from that targeted group can find you easily. 

Now, let’s look at the hashtag sticker.

Hashtags are huge when finding the relevant audience for your content and expanding your reach. Instagram has a hashtag sticker for you to use in your stories. Simply tap on it from the stickers menu and mention your keyword. 

The countdown sticker

This sticker is great for your launch events. Select it from the stickers panel then name your event and set an end date or time. You can also customise the colour of the sticker as per your brand. Here’re some ways to use it:

• Reveal new products.
• Announce giveaway winners.
• Countdown discount offer periods.

The emoji slider

This sticker offers an intuitive approach to answer the posted questions.

You can ask anything and select an emoji, then, people can drag it left or right to show how they feel. 

Behind the scenes

People love when brands upload behind the scene posts. It gives them a sneak peek of how brands operate at the backend. It could be anything starting from you working at your desk or snaking while editing a video. 

Story Ads

Story ads appear same as regular posts. They fill in the full-screen and show up between different stories. You can use them to promote your products and create brand awareness.

UGC and Testimonials

What is UGC?

It’s the content created by the users of your products. People love to see other people using brand products and trust them when they recommend it. 

Instagram stories are a great place to showcase all the positive feedback and UGC’s you’ve got. 

You can also post testimonials from time to time to let your followers know about the quality of your products/services.

Conclusion

There you go, 10 killer Instagram stories hacks to boost audience engagement.

Instagram stories have many features in its arsenal and the only thing stopping you from using them to drive your goals is your creativity. Also, you can use Task Ant (Best Hashtag generator tool for engagement boost) to find and research trending and popular instagram hashtags for you. Using the right, relevant and popular hashtags in your posts proved to be a really good way of attracting organic followers.