How to work with stories in 2021
Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2025 6:10 am
Using social media to engage your audience and increase sales is nothing new for most people and companies. However, not everyone is aware of the features and opportunities that these communication channels have to offer. With this in mind, today we are going to talk about how to work with Instagram stories.
According to research by We Are Social and Hootsuite, Instagram is the 4th most used social network in Brazil, with 95 million users, behind only Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube. In other words, this shows that the social network in question is a great platform to increase the visibility of your brand and generate more conversions.
See this article:
how Instagram Stories came about;
How to work with stories and how does it work?
How did Instagram Stories come about?
Before discussing how to work with stories, it is important to contextualize the history of Instagram. The social network was launched in 2010, initially only available to iOS users. Over time, it was also available for Android and the network became popular around the world, even being purchased by Facebook for US$ 1 billion.
Instagram has always had a very image-based feature, focused on indonesia whatsapp data publishing photos and short videos. However, it is now much more comprehensive and allows, in addition to images, live streams and the publishing of videos in the feed, on IGTV, Reels and Stories.
The IGTV feature allows users to post videos longer than one minute (60 seconds), which is the time limit for posts on the feed. Instagram Reels is a tool similar to TikTok, where people can create videos of up to 30 seconds, add snippets of music or other audio, apply cropping effects, captions, transitions, etc.
How to work with stories and how does it work?
The content published in Instagram stories is that which is only available for 24 hours on profiles (except when it is added to a Highlight, but we will talk more about that in a moment!). Each story lasts up to 15 seconds and people can use several formats such as:
questions;
surveys;
filters;
boomerang;
videos in sequence;
countdown;
GIFs;
between others.
With all these options and the number of people that social media reaches, not using it as a communication channel with your brand's audience is a waste. Here are some tips on how to use stories tools to bring more engagement to your profile and generate more conversions for your company.
Open the question box and use the polls
One of the main tips for working with stories is to use the question and poll functions. In the question box, you can ask your audience a question or ask for a suggestion. See some examples of how to apply these features.
Polls are very useful for getting to know your audience, answering questions and working on content marketing on your company's social media. But in addition to questions, this is a way to make the user interact and feel like they are in control: you can give them two options and ask them to decide between them.
Advertise in stories
If you have a company and want to sell more through social media, you need to know how to work with stories by creating campaigns and ads. To set up the ad creatives, you use the same Facebook manager. You can choose between three types of media:
carousel: with up to 3 images or 3 videos of 15 seconds each;
single image;
single video.
Stories ads offer the famous “swipe up” function. With it, you can add a link that takes the audience directly to the page you specify, for example: a link to the online store, a subscription form, a YouTube video, etc.
However, this tool is only available to those who have more than 10 thousand followers.
In these ads, never forget to include a CTA (call to action), indicating what action you want the follower to take when seeing the ad, such as:
buy now;
register;
install now (if the conversion is for the person to download an application, for example);
learn more;
get offer;
between others.
Make templates
Templates are opportunities to go viral quickly. Basically, you create an image to be published in stories where people use the same layout, but respond according to their own opinions and experiences.
The public can take a screenshot of the layout you created and share it on their own story, marking it with an x or emoji, gif, a word, etc., as a response to what the template proposes.
The more creative the template idea is (according to your area of expertise), the easier it will be for followers to identify with and replicate the content, thus spreading your brand image to other people.
An example of a template for a movie theater chain's page, for example, would be to create a layout with a list of several films shown at the location and challenge the audience to mark all the ones they have already seen.
According to research by We Are Social and Hootsuite, Instagram is the 4th most used social network in Brazil, with 95 million users, behind only Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube. In other words, this shows that the social network in question is a great platform to increase the visibility of your brand and generate more conversions.
See this article:
how Instagram Stories came about;
How to work with stories and how does it work?
How did Instagram Stories come about?
Before discussing how to work with stories, it is important to contextualize the history of Instagram. The social network was launched in 2010, initially only available to iOS users. Over time, it was also available for Android and the network became popular around the world, even being purchased by Facebook for US$ 1 billion.
Instagram has always had a very image-based feature, focused on indonesia whatsapp data publishing photos and short videos. However, it is now much more comprehensive and allows, in addition to images, live streams and the publishing of videos in the feed, on IGTV, Reels and Stories.
The IGTV feature allows users to post videos longer than one minute (60 seconds), which is the time limit for posts on the feed. Instagram Reels is a tool similar to TikTok, where people can create videos of up to 30 seconds, add snippets of music or other audio, apply cropping effects, captions, transitions, etc.
How to work with stories and how does it work?
The content published in Instagram stories is that which is only available for 24 hours on profiles (except when it is added to a Highlight, but we will talk more about that in a moment!). Each story lasts up to 15 seconds and people can use several formats such as:
questions;
surveys;
filters;
boomerang;
videos in sequence;
countdown;
GIFs;
between others.
With all these options and the number of people that social media reaches, not using it as a communication channel with your brand's audience is a waste. Here are some tips on how to use stories tools to bring more engagement to your profile and generate more conversions for your company.
Open the question box and use the polls
One of the main tips for working with stories is to use the question and poll functions. In the question box, you can ask your audience a question or ask for a suggestion. See some examples of how to apply these features.
Polls are very useful for getting to know your audience, answering questions and working on content marketing on your company's social media. But in addition to questions, this is a way to make the user interact and feel like they are in control: you can give them two options and ask them to decide between them.
Advertise in stories
If you have a company and want to sell more through social media, you need to know how to work with stories by creating campaigns and ads. To set up the ad creatives, you use the same Facebook manager. You can choose between three types of media:
carousel: with up to 3 images or 3 videos of 15 seconds each;
single image;
single video.
Stories ads offer the famous “swipe up” function. With it, you can add a link that takes the audience directly to the page you specify, for example: a link to the online store, a subscription form, a YouTube video, etc.
However, this tool is only available to those who have more than 10 thousand followers.
In these ads, never forget to include a CTA (call to action), indicating what action you want the follower to take when seeing the ad, such as:
buy now;
register;
install now (if the conversion is for the person to download an application, for example);
learn more;
get offer;
between others.
Make templates
Templates are opportunities to go viral quickly. Basically, you create an image to be published in stories where people use the same layout, but respond according to their own opinions and experiences.
The public can take a screenshot of the layout you created and share it on their own story, marking it with an x or emoji, gif, a word, etc., as a response to what the template proposes.
The more creative the template idea is (according to your area of expertise), the easier it will be for followers to identify with and replicate the content, thus spreading your brand image to other people.
An example of a template for a movie theater chain's page, for example, would be to create a layout with a list of several films shown at the location and challenge the audience to mark all the ones they have already seen.