10 Ways You Can Use Instagram Stories To Grow Your Business In 2022

• April 12, 2022
• sb2b
• no comments

“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” – Jeff Bezos.

Social media is powerful. That’s a fact. It can help you grow your business in a number of ways and so, help you become a successful business owner or marketer. However, to make it happen, you need to possess knowledge about which platforms to use for marketing purposes and how to use them to receive the highest ROI.

Now, although Facebook is number one platform that people use for marketing and advertising, more and more people start investing in Instagram. Why?

Well, because Instagram grows in popularity while Facebook slowly becomes outdated (teens are abandoning it in favor of Instagram: read this). Thus, nowadays, it makes more sense to use Instagram to build your business rather than other social media platforms. The question is: how?

How can you use Instagram to grow your business in 2022? Here’s the answer: by taking advantage of Instagram Stories. Want to know more? Scroll the page down a little bit, please.

Instagram Stories

As you may already know, Instagram Stories is a feature, which allows users to post photos as well as images full of fun stickers and text, which disappear after 24 hours.

Now, here’s a vital question: why should you care about, create, and use Instagram Stories for marketing purposes rather than focus entirely on making new Instagram posts? Well, because:

● Instagram Stories has 400 million daily active users.
● They are fun and engaging for everyone.
● Although they vanish quickly, they can give you marvellous results.

Ready to learn how to grow your business with Instagram Stories in 2022? Let’s begin, then!

Collect customer feedback

Collecting feedback from your customers is crucial to the development of your business. After all, how can you know if your customers are happy about your products and services, if anything needs to be improved, or what your customers’ needs and tastes are?

If you don’t collect customer feedback, then all you have left is guessing. Thus, it’s vital to ask your customers for their opinions about your business once for a while.

And, guess what? With Instagram Stories, collecting customer feedback can be easier than ever for you, and extremely engaging and fun for your audience. All you need to do is to create a Story and use an interactive poll sticker.

Here are a few examples:

Build your email list

Did you know that Instagram Stories can improve your email marketing strategy? That’s true! With the Stories feature you can get more email subscribers and so, grow your email list. How? Well, once you reach 10k or more followers, Instagram will allow you to add links to your Stories. Thus, you’ll be able to put there a link to your sign up page.

Now, there’s something you need to remember. All links in Instagram Stories are invisible, that is, hidden under the “See More” option:

So, to make sure your customers figure out you added a link to your Story, add a call to action as well, such as “Swipe up to sign up.”

Increase your discoverability

Instagram Stories can also help you get more local exposure for your brand. Thanks to the location stickers, you can inform your audience where you are at a particular moment, where your parties or charity meetings will take place, or… where your store is located. Thus, they are especially useful for businesses with brick and mortar stores. With the help of location stickers you can easily drive more foot traffic to your store.

Here are several examples of how brands use location stickers in their Stories:

Follow in their footsteps.

Strengthen customer-brand relationship

If you want to build your business, you need to convert your one-time customers into loyal customers. After all, the more people become loyal to your brand, the more you’ll earn. Now, to make sure your customers keep on purchasing products in your store or using your services, you need to build a closer relationship with them. Instagram Stories can help you with that.

Here are a few ideas for Instagram Stories content which will strengthen the relationship with your customers:

● Create and share easy tutorials as well as DIY (i.e. “do it yourself”) videos.
● Interact with your audience by asking intriguing questions.
● Apologize and thank your followers.
● Share UGC (i.e. “user-generated content”) and thus, show your customers that you care about their content and appreciate it:

Drive traffic to your blog

“Content is king,” right? After all, creating and publishing an engaging blog post on your blog every now and then can give marvellous results, such as: boost your SEO, improve your sales, or help you better connect with your audience. Right. But, you won’t achieve any of that if nobody knows about your new blog’s content. Remember, traffic won’t drive itself to your blog. Thus, promoting your new blog posts is a must.

Now, the best way to drive more traffic to your blog is to share your new content on such social media platforms as Instagram. All you need to do is to create a Story, in which you inform your audience about your wonderful new blog post, and add a link to it. That’s it! The news will spread like wildfire.

Here are a few examples of such Stories:

Increase your sales

Is there a better way to boost your sales than by sharing pictures and videos of your new products on social media platforms and encouraging people to visit your online store? I guess not, right?

However, there’s a teeny-tiny problem with this strategy. In general, people hate being bombarded with dozens of ads every day that inform about new products, discounts, or special offers, and desperately encourage you to “Shop Now!” Thus, the more of such ads you create and post, the more likely it is that people will start unfollowing you. What’s the solution? Instagram Stories, of course!

Instagram Stories is a marvellous place to inform your audience what’s new in your store. Why? Well, because millions of people watch Stories every day (so, you have a huge audience) and they disappear after 24 hours (so, your followers won’t feel overwhelmed with marketing messages).

Build your audience

Let’s be honest, your business exists thanks to your customers. The more customers you have, the more successful you are, and the faster your business develops. Now, the first question is: how can you get more customers? Well, you need to build your online audience, because more followers means more future customers.

Here’s the second question: how can you build your audience? Answer: one of the best ways to reach thousands of people is by creating intriguing Instagram Stories with the right hashtags. Remember, to grow your following, use those hashtags, which are popular, connected to your brand, and trendy at a particular time:

Boost brand awareness

Brand awareness is the extent to which your customers are able to recognize your brand. Now, the more people are familiar with your brand, the better. Eventually, your brand may be replaced by a generic term (such as Jeep, Pampers, or Tupperware) and you’ll become a millionaire. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?

To achieve that goal, however, you need to focus more on promoting your brand. Although you can do it in a number of ways and through many channels, one of the easiest is to create relevant Instagram Stories. Simply, share other people’s Stories and content, in which you were mentioned, and promote your webinars, meetings, podcasts, events, or interviews. You can also add your logo at the end of each and every new Story you create.

Here are a few examples:

Enhance brand loyalty

To get more profit out of your business, you need to be able to not only get new customers each month, but also, as I have already mentioned, turn your one-time customers into loyal customers. After all, the real success happens when a person chooses to purchase from your store not once, but several times, and so, prefers your products and services over your competitors’.

Now, it’s not easy to turn your one-time customers into loyal customers. But, it’s achievable. All you need to do is to start enhancing loyalty towards your brand by, for instance, sharing more insight into your business and including “behind-the-scenes” aspects of your business.

Check how you can do it via Instagram Stories:

Humanize your brand

Let me tell you this: people hate dealing with corporations (or worse, robots). They want to deal with a human being. Someone likes them. Thus, your customers’ perception of you, your business, and your products and services will improve if you show them that there’s a human behind your brand and not a huge corporation.

So, use your Instagram Stories to show your personality and style and share interesting content, such as fun videos, causes you support, or news of charity events. Engage more with your audience. Check how others do it:

Ready to start using Instagram Stories for marketing purposes?

There are many ways you can use Instagram Stories to grow your business in 2022. So, scroll the page up and down again, re-read the tips, and follow those that your find most useful and helpful. You can also check some of the best Instagram story ads here.

Also, if you found this article interesting and think it can help your friends, share it! If you have any other ideas on how to use Instagram Stories for business growth, tell us about them on social media. We’d love to know what you think.