Instagram Stories Engage Beyond the Feed

It’s hard to believe that Instagram Stories first hit the social scene in 2016. Since then, their popularity has grown, quickly overtaking rival Snapchat. B2B brands – especially in the aviation and travel industries – can engage with more than 500 million active daily users.

A key component to Instagram Stories is the visual asset. It takes up more mobile real estate than any other public social platform by spanning the whole of your audiences’ smartphone screens.

Here are a few ways you can engage your audience in a truly captivating way.

Make Your Case Visually

Case studies are a powerful tool for B2B brands to prove how their products and services solve customer challenges. Reimagine the heavy text of your latest case study, project brief or whitepaper with their corresponding visuals.

We transformed our work for clients like Airbus, Wichita’s Eisenhower Airport and JetHQ into tap-worthy Instagram Story case studies, featured prominently across our account’s Highlights.

We’ve seen significant reach and engagement with these types of Stories as well as new followers. See for yourself at @gretemangroup on Instagram.

Show Off

While we encourage you to limit your more salesy messaging on Instagram Stories, we certainly want you to show off your work.

Products and Services. Instagram is an ideal platform to showcase a beautiful aircraft, making Stories the perfect way for JetHQ to feature the latest jet available for sale.

Culture. Instagram audiences value when you highlight the human element in your company. Show a team testing and refining your product. Celebrate a milestone through video. Packing up and heading to a show? Perfect.

Make It Move and Speak

Motion catches the eye and sound creates stickiness for your content. Add these elements elegantly and cater to all of your audiences’ preferences.

If you use a slideshow of stills images in your video, make sure they can tell the story without sound.

Music isn’t required, especially if a person is talking to the camera. But most voice-over and visual-only storytelling needs a tune. Voiceover video works well across all channels. Just ensure you add captions for users who have sound off as well as to make it accessible to everyone.

Stickers offer another way to add stock movement and music to your Instagram Story. Polls and quizzes are a great way to get feedback, and location stickers provide a way to increase reach when you’re at a tradeshow.

Learn how to add stickers to your Instagram Story strategy.

Analyze, Optimize and Tell More Stories

Instagram Stories last for 24 hours. Refer back to your account and take note of your insights, which you can retrieve from the platform up to 14 days after posting. Take note of your engagement metrics, such as comments, messages and views, in a spreadsheet. Analyze trends over time. Optimize your storytelling strategy to activate the most engaged users.

And never stop telling Stories.