You can use the Instagram Story Highlight tool to highlight and test your best products. You can use this platform right away to draw attention to something new and intriguing in your company.
Remember that businesses account for one-third of all stories seen, with one out of every five resulting in a direct message.
What exactly does this mean?
It may lead to new opportunities for you, such as endorsements and partnerships. If you’re looking to enter a market with a product or service, you’ll want other companies to see what you’re offering. Instagram Story Highlights can help you with this.
How to Maximize Instagram Highlights on a Brand Account
Let’s go over each step in order to get the Instagram Story Highlights banner on your page and begin using the feature.
- Turn on the Auto-Archiving feature.
Using the archiving tool, you can save stories. To accomplish this, enable the auto-archiving feature. This will keep all of your stories even after the 24-hour period has expired.
- Make Instagram Story Highlights
To view your old Instagram stories, swipe left on your profile. There should be an archived section at the top of the page. Open it to view all of the stories you’ve saved to your profile.
- Decide on an Instagram Story Highlights Cover and Icon.
Now that you’ve created an Instagram Story Highlight, it’s time to get creative with a title and cover photo. You should take your time with this. Like everything else in digital marketing, you want to capture the attention of everyone who visits your page.
How to Maximize Instagram Story Highlights for Your Business
You could simply include all of your Instagram Stories in an Instagram Story Highlight, but this will not be appealing to your followers and will not encourage participation. This feature will be far more effective if you have a large number of highlights that feature the various types of Instagram Stories that you publish. These eight pointers will help you create the most engaging highlights to humanise your company and broaden your reach.
- Make your products noticeable.
Developing an Instagram Story Highlight is one of the most effective ways to market your brand and communicate with customers is to highlight your products or services. According to Instagram, 75% of users take action after seeing advertisements on the network, such as visiting a website or making a purchase. Whether or not active Instagram users have previously interacted with your company, if they’re scrolling through your profile and come across a highlight dedicated to “Products,” they’re more likely to click through the material in your highlight rather than scrolling through your entire profile.
Your highlight will be a faster and more efficient way for buyers to learn more about your products, and you will be able to direct them to your website, sign up for a newsletter, or, ideally, make a purchase via Instagram. You can display your items in a more creative and less direct or salesy manner by tagging them in your highlights with Instagram Stories stickers (interactive components that you can apply to engage with your followers).
- Publicize upcoming events
As we all know, social media is an excellent way to promote events and raise brand awareness, especially when consumers use it to search for information. Although we are no longer able to meet in large groups, and your company may no longer hold in-person events, you can still use the Stories feature to highlight previous events, promote upcoming ones, and help raise awareness about others. This gives your followers a better idea of what your company’s events are like and piques their interest in future ones!
If your company organises events, workshops, or training experiences (all of which can be virtual), dedicating an Instagram Story Highlight to event marketing is a clever, entertaining, and creative way to showcase more of your brand’s personality while raising brand awareness.
- Inform people about what you’ve been up to.
Keeping clients updated is always a top priority for businesses, and providing a behind-the-scenes look at what your company has been up to while #WorkingFromHome is a fantastic Instagram Story Highlight idea.
With stories like these, your followers — and customers — can imagine people from your company or new projects, both of which help to humanise your brand.
- In order to engage customers, use interactive polls
Using ad interactive polls on Instagram Stories allows you to engage and collaborate with your customers. By asking engaging, varied questions and inviting them to interact with your company, you can learn more about your audience and gain insight into their pain points.
More importantly, the results of Instagram Story polls can assist you in better refocusing your marketing and advertising efforts.
Including all of the ad polls you’ve posted on Instagram Stories in a highlight is a great way to show your followers and users that you value their opinions and feedback on your products or conversations.
- Respond to your followers’ questions
An Instagram Story Highlight with answers to frequently asked questions is another interactive feature you can use to capture your followers’ attention.
A good place to start is by asking and answering common questions about business hours, new products, features, and location. Consider what you’d want to know if you browsed through your company’s Q&A highlight and put yourself in the shoes of your customers.
- Highlight your customer testimonials
We’ve all heard how important it is to share customer reviews, so don’t forget to share your company’s reviews with your followers! Creating a highlight dedicated to reposting screenshots or testimonials of your customers’ experiences using your product, service, or brand and highlighting these on your Instagram account is a great way to share the stories of your happy customers. Customer testimonials are useful for emphasising the benefits of your products or services to customers.
- Share sales and discounts
One of the most effective ways to increase sales on Instagram and attract followers to engage with your content in some way is to offer discounts or giveaways.
Discounts and sales on your products raise brand awareness and have the potential to boost sales, generate leads, and drive traffic to your website.
Create an Instagram Story Highlight to share current sales, discounts, and promotions. Discounts or giveaways attract prospects, encourage them to interact with the content on your Story, and then persuade them to purchase your product or services.
- Start a series
You’ve now read a lot of advice on how to market your products and services, publicise upcoming events and highlight previous ones, and communicate current sales and discounts. Create a highlight dedicated to posting fun, relatable content as another innovative way to engage with your customers on Instagram Stories and gain extra exposure. This could be related to your company’s offering or mission, or it could be unrelated to your specific business or industry.
As we all know, social media is constantly evolving, and Instagram and the numerous features it offers are no exception. Experimenting with Instagram’s unique Story Highlight feature is a great place to start if you’re looking for new ways to grow your business! Please contact The Social Lions, our digital marketing agency, for more information.
