Over the last few years Snapchat has spread like a virus. The service that lets you send images that disappear after a while and make “stories” that disappear after 24 hours was incredibly populair among young people. Instagram followed shortly with Instagram stories, a copy of the Snapchat-service.
Despite these facts, Snapchat is used more like a chat-app than for sending images and Instagram-stories is through the roof. What’s making Instagram stories so successful and how should you use them in your (influencer) marketing strategy?
Instagram stories
Instagram is known for being app that lets users edit and share photos with your friends and followers. You still can, but the focus has shifted towards Instagram stories. This relatively young service is growing explosively and is becoming a more important section of the app. Moreover, Instagram stories are being used more and more for influencer marketing campaigns – specifically for campaigns that are targeting millennials.Why are these stories working so good, and more important, what do you need to know to start using them?
More impact
You can find the stories above your feed and you can only see them for 24 hours. It may seem strange, but they have more impact than Instagram-posts that you can view until the end of times. How that’s possible? We’ll discuss several reasons.
No distraction
When you are viewing your Instagram post you’re distracted by the number of likes, comments, the buttons around the screen or the idea that you are watching a scrollable part of a larger feed. For Instagram stories, this is not the case.
As soon as you click on a story you’ll go into full screen mode and watch the story. Imagine how rare that is in the world of social media channels. On YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, every channel has an incredible number of distractions. When you view an Instagram story it’s the fullscreen post, and that’s all.
Ongoing
When the user is interested and clicks the first story in his or her feed, you might as well take a seat. Stories are automatically ongoing, and before you know you’re down 10 stories. That way, many people get to see your story – even when they did not explicitly choose to do so. As long as the user has attention for what they’re doing, they’ll be watching stories. That could include the story of your brand or your influencer.
Transience
An important psychological theme in the 21st century: FOMO. The transience of platforms like Snapchat and Instagram stories included. The story of your influencer or the Instagram-account of your brand can only be seen 24 hours. Imagine not watching all your stories today. No way.
Instagram stories engagement
Okay, you can reach a lot of people with stories so we’ve got reach covered. What about engagement? You can’t place public comments below a story that other users can read and the interaction between user and followers is private. Does that cover engagement?
Yes! That’s why you so many influencers use stories. When followers interact with a story, you can truly communicate with them. By doing so, you connect to your influencers with personal contact. Additionally, you can use polls in Instagram stories. All viewers get to vote and can follow the results in realtime. Check out this article from Vice to find out in what kind of crazy situations that can get you.
Don’t forget about the location of your story: by tagging it into your story, other user who do not follow you can view your story. They are interested to see what is going on in their location. Works good for hotspots, festivals or other events!
Conclusion
So that’s it: Instagram stories are important to take into account. Both for your influencer marketing strategy and your social media strategy in general. Using Join you can find relevant influencers and easily brief them on making stories. By using our tool you can easily spread many stories from micro-influencers. They can then add to – you guessed it – the storytelling of your brand. No pun intended. The logo and story of your brand are explicitly seen by users and the content you have influencer produce will spread like a wildfire.
