6 Instagram Story Ideas to Get Your Next Post Published

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You’ve probably fallen into the Instagram Stories rabbit hole and been lost in the endless scrolling. Stories allow you to share content quickly, engage with users and make them feel important. It’s as beneficial for users as for businesses. Instagram Stories posts are reported to have two to three times the engagement of regular content.

You will need to be creative to grab the attention of the huge audience of Stories. Because Stories are so easy to use, you have to grab their attention quickly. It’s easy to lose people.

Story Highlights are located at the topmost of each profile. They allow you to turn temporary Stories into permanent content. Here are some amazing uses that we have found that you can use in your next Story.

Help your audience find the right products

Instagram is a great platform for discovery. One in two people use it to find new brands and products. Stories allows you to guide your followers through the sales funnel by showing them products that meet their needs. They will then be able to go to your website with a plan and add the relevant product to cart.

Here are some examples of brands that do this:

• Plantmade:Plantmade shared some of the results that customers can expect from using their hair oils

• Loft: Loft’s Style Assist series focuses on having people, from employees to influencers share their style for different occasions.

• Hers: Read the Story Highlight about how each product affects skin.

Get your followers involved

Your Stories can help you show authenticity and connect with your audience. You don’t need to show the product making process, but you can also showcase the business behind it. Different employees can be showcased in various contexts, such as doing their job, answering frequently asked questions, or even just showing what they do at home.

Here are some examples of brands that do this:

• Djerf Avenue: We caught the Story and the employees of Djerf Avenue shared their happiness.

• Youth Marketing: YMC’s #YMCrew’ Stories shine a spotlight upon different employees to show who they are and what their interests are outside of work.

• Mejuri: Mejuri employees share their “Staff Styling” stories about how they get ready for work in the morning.

Build anticipation for a launch

Stories can be a great way for creating anticipation if you are in the middle of creating or launching a product or service or just publishing a blog article.

Adding stickers to your Story can be a great way of engaging your audience and building anticipation.

This is an example of a brand doing it:

• Good Molecules: Good Molecules shared a series Stories to explain the product and who would benefit from it, ahead of the launch of X, their new product.

Tutorials and how tos

It is important to provide value to your followers if you want them to continue coming back to your Stories. Your audience should be able to find something useful in their daily lives and work, while still integrating your brand’s values.

To make it more fun, you can also add competition elements to your sharing tutorials. Encourage viewers to post their thoughts on your product and tag them for a reward.

Here are some examples of brands that do this:

• Caraway: Caraway uses Story Highlights to keep a guide for how to store your kitchen items (specifically the ones that you might buy from them) permanently pinned to their profile.

• Fur: This Story reflects the views of grooming brand Fur, and encourages viewers to reuse empty containers.

Share social proof

Nothing is more effective than seeing people talking about your product. Your IG Stories can be used to highlight posts by customers or content creators who mention your brand. You can easily highlight posts that mention your brand by keeping an eye on the tags. Remix by Buffer can be used to capture tweets that mention your brand, and then share them on Instagram.

Here are some examples of brands that do this:

• Arami Essentials: Arami is a skincare brand that capitalizes on the excitement of its customers to use their products and share the results. They repost mentions from their audience in a dedicated highlight.

• Kai Collective: This fashion brand shares messages and tweets about their brand on their page as Testimonials.

Highlight important dates

It’s a great way of strengthening your relationship with your followers by creating Stories that focus on important events. Instagram Stories can be used to highlight people, businesses, or products that are centered around month-long events like Black History Month and Mental Health Awareness Month.

A calendar with relevant dates for your brand is a good idea. You can also choose something more fun, such as National Pancake Day. Drafts in Buffer will help you plan ahead.

Here are some examples of brands that do this:

• Apartment Therapy: Apartment Therapy created a Small Business Spotlight series using Instagram Stories for Arab American, Middle Eastern and North African (AA+MENA), Heritage Month. Dounia, a small-business owner from @folks_and_tales, shares her story and takes viewers through a day of her small business life.

You can try different things to see what sticks

It is highly probable that brands and stories we share overnight. Social media management is fun when you experiment. You should test different ideas to see what works. Stories allows you to experiment with different formats and brands.

We’d love to have you do our homework. Are there any stories you would like to see? To let us know, send us a DM!