Boy, oh, boy. When I first scheduled this topic over 2 months ago, I knew exactly what I was going to talk about. However, with IG’s most recent changes to their stories function, it’s thrown me off a little! Over the past week, I’ve been busily researching the most up-do-date information for you all. Please bear in mind that the material I provide for you today could easily change tomorrow. This simply serves as a good reminder to ALWAYS be doing your research, no matter how well you think you know social media!

As you may already know, IG stories can be incredibly entertaining, especially with their Snapchat-esque filters that have the ability to turn you into a cute rabbit or even give you a full face of makeup (best feature ever for this biz-mumma over here!). If we put the novelty aside, stories absolutely need to be a part of your social media strategy. Why? Because they allow your audience to get to know you and your business on a more personal and authentic level. They’re also great for growing your engagement, building brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, and even making sales! Seriously though, if you aren’t showing up on Stories at all, you may be missing out on reaching your target audience altogether. If you’re someone who is currently not using this built-in feature, you need to start doing so STAT!

Here’s a few ways to best utilise IG stories:

• Show your audience the BTS of your biz, such as what you’re currently working on, going to a networking event, your office layout, or what you’re eating for lunch, etc.
• Use the location and hashtag stickers to increase your discoverability.
• Use the ‘swipe up’ function to direction traffic to an outbound link (currently only available for business accounts with 10K+ followers).
• Tag other businesses to activate their ability to re-share your content to their own stories. Tagging businesses also makes them feel valued and strengthens your relationships in the long-run.
• Foster engagement, collect feedback and receive ideas for your business with the poll, question, and quiz stickers.
• Use the reaction slider as a fun way to gauge your audience’s interests, likes, dislikes, etc.
• Use the countdown sticker to place hype around an upcoming event, launch or sale.
• Share GIFs to add some fun and show off your brand’s personality.
• Go live baby! Once posted, live video replays will disappear after 24 hours.

If all else fails and you truly are too scared to show your face in its raw form, try choosing from IG’s large range of filters. I personally like turning myself into a doggo. Using filters calm my nerves and provides me with the opportunity to portray a message without allowing self-doubt to crawl in.

Now, IG highlights are less than a year old, but they’ve already made a huge impact for businesses. This feature lets you combine multiple IG stories into long-term content that your audience can discover at their leisurely convenience. How cool is that?! Better yet, highlights can be sorted into on-brand and easy to find categories. For example, current highlights on @paragoncollectiveau include my services, words/quotes, about/BTS, free resources, and reviews. The pretty icons were created using online graphic design tool, Canva (www.canva.com).

Similar to my tips above, here’s some more specific and creative ways to best utilise IG highlights:

• Set up a highlight for a specific event or occasion.
• Create a unique highlight for each of your products or services.
• Add a news or update highlight to share valuable information in your industry.
• Collect topics of interest that your target audience enjoys, such as motivational quotes, daily themes, etc.
• Create highlights specifically for tips or tutorials to establish your credibility and build trust in your brand.
• Share BTS or personal stories in a highlight to humanise your brand.

So that’s it from me! I highly encourage you to use IG Stories and highlights for your business. With millions of people on the platform daily, it’s a no-brainer to include these features in your social media strategy. Let me know if you have any questions by getting in touch.