More than 15 million businesses now use Instagram worldwide and over half of those businesses are creating Stories every month.
Stories are an incredible way to connect with your audience in fresh and authentic ways. Who knows, maybe they’ll even become the new News Feed.
But creating attractive Instagram Stories can be challenging and time-consuming.
We’d love to help with that! So let’s get started.
Instagram Stories: 10 ways your business can use Stories
There are so many different ways to use Instagram Stories.
Stories are to:
- Discuss our latest blog posts
- Take our community behind the scenes
- Share social media stats and data
- And much more
To help you get the most out of Instagram Stories, we’ve created 10 easy-to-edit Instagram Stories templates that you can use to right away.
How to use these Instagram Stories templates:
- Click on the ‘Use this template’ button under your chosen template
- You’ll then be taken to Adobe Spark to edit the template (you’ll need to create a free account to do this)
- Once logged in, edit the template as you wish: change the background, caption style, etc.
- Download the finished graphic and you’re ready to post to your Story
1. Storytelling
One common use case for Instagram Stories is to show behind-the-scenes content. For example:
- Restaurants show how their dishes are prepared
- Musicians show how their music is recorded in their studio
- Sports teams share training sessions with fans
- Fashion experts demonstrate how to put together the perfect outfit
- SaaS platforms could provide an inside look at their company hack-day
This template could be used to introduce a story to your audience — like an opening title.
2. How-to tutorials
This is our favorite way of using Instagram Stories — to educate. We’ve used Instagram Stories to share how to curate content, set benchmarks, and much more.
If you want to share some tips or teach your followers how to do something (such as how to use your product), you could try using this template.
For example, we often get questions about the perfect size for Instagram Stories(1080px X 1920px) or how to advertise on Facebook. We’ll take these questions and turn them into short Stories tutorials.
3. Blog post promotion
Blog post promotion is another thing we often do with Instagram stories.
Instead of simply asking people to visit our blog, we like to highlight the key points via Stories. Repurposing content across channels is a great way to ensure it reaches as much of your audience as possible.
If you write how-to guides or create how-to videos, you can adapt the how-to tutorial template above to promote your content.
4. Lists and countdowns
I learned this strategy from Airbnb. I’ve seen them share lists of the best places to live, workspaces in Airbnb homes, and more.
You might be interested in sharing:
- Various ways to use your product
- Surprising stats and facts about your industry
- User-generated content
You can also try fun and entertaining lists such as “top books for marketers” or “top things we learned in social media this month.” People love a good list!
5. Limited time offers and promotions
As Instagram Story lasts for only 24 hours, making it a great way to promote time limited sales. This is a strategy often used by online clothing retailers.
For example, Black Sheep Cycling launched their new limited edition cycling kit through Instagram Stories and sold them out in 30 minutes.
You could use this template to share your offers with your followers.
6. Giveaways and discount coupons
To entice followers to watch their Instagram stories, brands sometimes host exclusive giveaways or give out discount coupons in their Instagram stories.
Again, this is great for online retailers who drive sales through social media promotions. You could use a unique discount code specifically for your Instagram stories to track how much sales your Instagram stories generate.
7. Data, research, and statistics
Do you know any interesting (or surprising) statistics about your industry that your followers might be interested in?
Mentioning a cool stat can be a great way to get the attention of your followers before you share something important (such as an announcement or a blog post).
8. Quotes and inspiration
Several social media influencers such as Gary Vaynerchuk often share motivational quotes on their Instagram Stories.
It doesn’t only have to be a motivational quote. You could share a quote from your most recent blog post or a quote from your CEO — if it’s relevant to your followers, it’s often work sharing.
9. Introduction for an Instagram takeover
An Instagram Stories takeover has a nice advantage over a traditional Instagram post takeover, in that your guest can post as many stories as they like without filling up your nicely-curated gallery.
Before you let your guest post on your account, you might want to promote the takeover or introduce the guest, and that’s where this template will come in handy.
You could also use this template if you want to host a question and answer session with your followers through Instagram Stories. Let your followers know what the session is about and invite them to DM you questions.
10. Announcements, news, and updates
We have shared several fun announcements using Instagram stories: the launch of our podcast, the launch of our online social media strategy class, our celebrations for Social Media Day, and more.
You could use this template to build up the anticipation for your announcements and then to reveal the surprise through a subsequent story.
What’s your favorite Instagram Stories tip?
Using templates can be a great, easy way to create amazing Instagram stories in minutes. I’m grateful to the team at Adobe Spark for creating these wonderful Instagram Stories templates we have shared with you in this post.
