Read this post to find out more about Instagram stories and why they are so popular with the younger audiences you company needs to survive.
Launched in October 2010, Instagram has been around for a relatively long time in terms of social media and is more popular than ever amongst users aged between 18-24. On the contrary, Snapchat has been experiencing little to no growth in users since mid 2016. Both apps have been around more a similar amount of time, however in 2016, Instagram added the option for users to create and share stories with their followers.
What is a story?
Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat – they all have them but what exactly are they and how can they help marketers sell a product or service? Stories are temporary images or videos that last for 24 hours on a users profile. On many sites influencer and brand stories often get mixed with the user’s friends stories. This means there is less chance of a user not seeing the post or skipping – however the user has to either be following the brand or the post has to be sponsored to appear.
Perks of an Instagram story
Unlike Snapchat stories, Instagram users are able to interact with their followers by creating polls, tagging others and using #hashtags. When a user adds a hashtag or tags someone in their story, it automatically adds a feature which Snapchat lacks; discoverability. This is a key feature, especially for a marketer, it means audiences can click either the hashtag or user’s handle and see their profile or a feed of other posts that use the same tags.
Users also have more control over how the story looks on Instagram which means users can edit, use filters and add text/gifs to their stories before uploading them. Older pictures from the user’s personal gallery can be uploaded – meaning a marketing campaign could be created and approved before the user uploads the video or picture to their story for their potentially large audience to view.
Why should you choose Instagram?
Instagram not only has the option to add stories but offers so much more than Snapchat, it allows brands and influencers to promote themselves in more creative ways. Instagram also has a lot more active monthly users than Snapchat which means their is a potentially wider audience that a product/service could get advertised to. Here are 3 features that make Instagram a great platform to be advertising on, read more here at Sendible.com
Links
Links to websites can also be added within stories which can take the audience straight from the advert to the website, this can create a larger click through rate as it is so easy for audiences to use and navigate. As mentioned earlier, hashtags can also link through to feeds that use the same tags, allowing audiences to see other posts from people, not just brands.
Geofilters and location tags
You can create brand awareness without even creating a story. Geofilters and location tags allow users to essentially ‘check in’ to your companies location when they are nearby, giving your company ‘free’ publicity. Although Snapchat has this option, Instagram allows the audience to click on the location tag and view a feed of other peoples stories with the same location tag as well as posts from people’s public feeds. This again reinforces the fact Instagram is more brand friendly and allows brands to be discovered easier.
Live Mode
This is a feature snapchat has yet to adopt and is pretty much exclusive to Instagram and Facebook stories. When a user goes live it also notifies followers, encouraging them to watch. Live stories can create a lot of brand to follower engagement, however the number of people watching has to be relatively high in order to be successful.
Overall, Instagram seems to be rapidly growing and becoming more and more user friendly – will this continue or will users soon flock to another platform?
Megan's Digital Marketing Blog 