When was the last time you interacted with your audience through Instagram stories?
If you’ve decided to dedicate more time to developing your content marketing skills in 2022, it’s probably about time you click that little blue plus sign next to your profile picture and take a deeper dive into Instagram stories! They are essential to interacting with and engaging your audience on social media.
To get you started, here are 5 easy ways to engage your audience through your Instagram stories:
Ask A Question
The simplest and most common way to engage your audience with your Instagram stories is by asking questions.
“Poll, questions, and quiz stickers are probably one of the easiest things you can do to your Instagram story to connect with your viewers. Letting your viewers engage with your story in a way that is as simple as asking them a question or clicking an option on a poll creates a way for your viewers to connect with you when they might not necessarily feel like filling out a whole story template and sharing it.” – Like A Voss
You can use Instagram stories to ask a question or take a poll. It’s a great way to get a deeper look into follower demographics and what content your audiences are responding to. The most coveted metric on Instagram is engagement and with its newer features, polls are an awesome way to get your numbers up!
Add Yours Feature!
Another great way to engage your audience is to use the “Add Yours” sticker. The “Add Yours” sticker is basically a feature where you write a prompt, such as “show me your pet” or “show me a childhood photo” and other people can click on your prompt and respond to it with their own photos to match the prompt.
Not only is it a great way to engage your audience through participation, but it also helps bring new people to your story, especially if your prompt gets shared a lot. It’s sort of like a chain reaction.
“Due to the Add Yours sticker’s interactive nature, it lends itself to viral chains of content on Stories, making it a huge opportunity for driving engagement on the platform.” – Make Use Of
Care About @ Mentions
When someone tags you in something or @ mentions you on an Instagram story, share it to your own story! It helps viewers feel a sense of connection to you as well as it tells them that you notice when they engage with you. They are encouraged to engage with you more because they are more sure you’ll see it and care about it.
Not only that, but if you share other content, people are more likely to share yours in return.
“Every social media manager who understands the power of the modern marketing techniques, the Instagram mention feature is a godsend.” – Social Insider
Promote Your Own Content
This one should be done sparingly, but when used correctly, Instagram stories are a great place to let your audience know about upcoming projects and events. You can even share your latest feed post directly to your stories with a simple click to prompt your audience to show you some more love and engagement.
Instagram stories are also a great way to connect your followers to other aspects of your business, such as your website. It’s even easier to do that now with a direct link option as a sticker in your stories! Story links used to be reserved for only accounts with a certain number of followers, but now anyone can use them!
Use Story Highlights
Utilising story highlights is a great way to get more engagement on your stories since they are available for more than 24hrs. Your story highlights can be more curated and have a theme or focus that is more likely to attract interested followers. When users click through to your profile and see that you have lots of highlights, they are more likely to trust your brand.
If you can get your fans to engage with your Instagram stories regularly, they are more likely to interact with your other content and click through to your website! When your followers take action and engage with your stories, you are a larger part of the conversation online, you diversify your content and become more visible!
Do you use your Instagram stories to engage with your audience? What’s your favourite way to do that?
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This blog post was originally published in January 2019 and has been edited to improve accuracy and readability.
