Getting Started with Instagram Stories

Master the ‘gram for your brand

The way we’ve consumed content has shifted dramatically. Visual intelligence is on the rise. We’re bombarded with over 10,000 marketing messages and processing 100,000 words a day. When we encounter verbal information, three days later we’ll only remember 10% of it, but if we’re exposed to an image, we’ll remember 65% of it — perhaps because we process visual information 3X faster than a single word.

What does this mean? We’ve calibrated our brains to take processing shortcuts in the form of visuals.

We know telling stories can have a demonstrable impact on consumers and society, and visuals bring narratives to life in an increasingly image-consumptive culture. And marketers are taking notice. In a survey of 500 marketers, 56% of them used visuals 100% of the time in their content in 2018, and plan to double their content marketing investment in 2019.

As marketers, we have to consider not only the kind of stories we tell but also the variety of forms it could take. Now that we know visuals have the propensity to break through the content culture and create formidable impact, let’s consider how we can use video in Instagram Lives and Stories.

Why Instagram Stories vs. The Feed?

This is the ultimate way to game the algorithm. Videos, especially Lives + Stories, garner higher visibility in the feed without having to invest in ad dollars. This demo is obsessed with videos as a means of communication, education, and brand connection. Instagram’s CEO makes it clear when he says, “People want to actually share a lot more, but they don’t want it to hang on the gallery wall.” Stories are “life between the highlight reel.”

31% of IG users post a Story every month (up 21% from last year).
47% watch Stories weekly (up 32% from a year ago). 150MM users engage with Stories on a daily basis.
U.S. IG users spend 53 minutes/day on the platform, up 50% from last year.
62% of millennials are more loyal to brands that engage them in social messaging.

Get Started with Instagram Stories

Benefits of going using video on Instagram:

Your competitors (direct and adjacent) are doing it: Video, Lives, and Stories have become the standard for athletic apparel brands. For example, Lululemon is an incredible best practice example. They use Stories to launch new products (using the Swipe Up feature), lifestyle content, and inspirational content. They use IGTV to stream yoga classes.

Adidas and Adidas Women use IGTV and Stories for workout videos, new product features, sports replays, and features of their brand ambassadors.

Outdoor Voices uses Stories a lot to showcase influencer takeovers, their charity/give-back campaigns, as well as company announcements and promotions (i.e. job postings, features of OV employees), and showing their products in action, in real life.

Make your brand stand out: First, it makes your account stand out. Every time you go Live, your followers get a notification. Every time you use Stories and IGTV, Instagram recognizes that you are a consistent content creator on the platform and will surface your content to more of your fans and followers, thus increasing the possibility of engagements.

Build credibility: Demystify the tech behind your products, talk about the benefits of product features, awards, acknowledgments, and accolades, and your knowledge of the customer and why your product is the best option for them. Essentially, you’re visualizing your positioning and reason to believe.
Give content mileage: You can use your video content (Stories, Lives, IGTV) in other channels as well as in social advertising. For example, at the end of your Instagram live, you can save it to your story and by adding hashtags, and location stickers, you’ll make the post discoverable to new people who don’t follow you. You can also repurpose the content in newsletters and social media for folks who’ve missed it.
Build relationships: People develop relationships with people. The more your customers can put a face to your brand, the more quickly they’ll establish a connection and the quicker they’ll purchase from you.

How to Use Stories

Stories offer 15 seconds of video content while IGTV can broadcast up to ten minutes. For larger (or verified accounts), you can upload videos up to 60 minutes long. Check out the IG Stories FAQs and IGTV specs.

How to Post a Story:

Open the Instagram app.
Tap the camera icon in the top-left corner.
Select the format of your content at the bottom of the screen. You can create a TYPE, LIVE, NORMAL, BOOMERANG, SUPERZOOM, REWIND, HANDS-FREE, or STOP MOTION piece of content.
Tap the white circle at the bottom of the screen to take a picture. Press and hold the white circle to take a video

Note: Shoot vertically, so your content will take up as much room on the screen as possible.

How to Add a Location to Your Story: Most locations (read: cities) around the world have their own Stories, which are curated by Instagram from posts that contain location tags. Posts that get selected for a Location Story get more reach, visibility, and engagement:

Create a photo or video.
Tap the folded smiley icon at the top of the screen, which will bring up an assortment of stickers.
Tap the LOCATION sticker, then select exactly where the photo or video was taken.

How to Add a Sticker to Your Story: Stickers are images that you can pin to a photo or video. They add an extra dimension to your content, making it more interesting:

Create a photo or video.
Tap the folded smiley icon at the top of the screen to bring up the stickers menu.
Select a sticker, pinch it to make it smaller or bigger, then move it anywhere on the screen. When it’s ready, press the sticker until you see a PIN button appear in the bottom-right corner. Tap it.

How to Add/Question a Poll to Your Story: Polls are interactive stickers that allow viewers to answer binary questions. It’s a great tool for marketers who want to engage their audience while at once collecting valuable quantitative data. Questions serve as an AMA (ask me anything) where your fans can pose questions where you can then share responses as follow-up stories.

Create a photo or video.
Tap the folded smiley icon at the top of the screen.
Select POLL, which should be near the top, then type your question in the field that says, “Ask a question…” in gray. You can also change the text in the YES | NO field below. If you want to use the QUESTION feature, tap question.

Pro-Tip: Users who participate in your poll will see the results immediately after answering the question. As the administrator, you can swipe up on the post to see who voted and how.

How to Check Views on Your Story: You created a Story. Now let’s see how it’s performing:

Tap You along the top of the Home screen. This will bring up your Story.
Swipe up to see a list of users that have viewed each individual post in your Story.

Note: If there’s someone on the list whom you don’t want viewing your Stories anymore, tap the X to the right of that user’s name. This will hide future photos, videos, and live videos from that person.

Types of Content You Could Post on Stories

Behind-the-Scenes Content: Show the inner workings of your brand, from design concepts to manufacturing and factory floor and internal happenings, let your customer get to know the people behind the brand. Example: The NYT took its users behind the scenes at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Create Listicles: Related and relevant content that would give value to your audiences: For example, let’s say you’re a brand that produces running gear. Here are some examples of Stories to get you going: Swipe up to Learn Five Smart Ways To Keep Hydrated During Your Run, Off the Beaten Path Biking Trails in the Pacific Northwest, The Secret Behind Our Habits — 3 Learnings from Successful Athletes, etc. Listicles are here to stay because they’re short, digestible, and provide useful information. You can use a powerful visual with text overlay and a link to your story (you can use the Swipe Up feature if you have over 10K followers or invite them to click the link in profile. See below example from National Geographic.

Talk About the More Technical Aspects of Your Brand: Educate your customers about materials sourcing, break down the tech into a compelling story, or share insights on the design or manufacturing process. For example, Cuyana just shared a dedicated IG post and a series of Stories on their Substantial Silk fabric.

Host a Takeover to Support a New Product Launch/Event: From pop-up shops and potential retail partnerships to new product launches, invite influencers or real people to “test-drive” your product and serve as a spokesperson for a day. This is extremely popular with fans because it drives social proof and they can relate to someone who’s “just like me.”
Give Follower Shout-Outs: IG Stories, unlike the feed, is a more casual medium. People don’t expect your Stories to be perfectly edited and curated — they should be human and authentic — the ethos of your brand personality! You can use Stories to repost UGC from followers and shout-out to fans who’ve tagged you in photos or who’ve won giveaways. This aligns with centering our fans as part of our brand. See example from Starbucks:

Learn how to re-post other people’s content here.

Essential IG Tips

Tell a Story: Create an experience with a beginning, middle, end.
Be Real: Authentic content is honest, both in message and execution. It’s imperfect, real. People trust real.
Deliver Value: Give fans information, motivation, or entertainment. Value is telling your followers how to do something that makes life easier or better (i.e., information). Value is making your followers feel something (i.e., entertainment).
Get Creative: Use the plethora of features — stickers, gifs, polls, questions, etc., to add flavor to your posts.
Plan Ahead: Include Stories as part of your content calendar so the posts are deliberate and strategic. You will absolutely have ephemeral content, but don’t post random Stories for the sake of putting something up. Create what you would want to consume.
Promote Good Stories: You can use ad features to promote Stories that are powerful. I would use this specifically for product posts.
Use Live and Stories together when appropriate: If you go on Instagram Live while an existing story is up, it will boost you to the first circle on the Instagram news feed. It’s a quick way to get extra views out of your followers.
Use Polls: Polls are an excellent ad-hoc focus group. You can great qualitative data and feedback through polls.
Close with CTAs: Have no dead ends. Always invite your fan to take another action. Tell your customer what to do next — whether it’s share, comment, swipe up. See Northface example:

How to Create IG Highlights/Featured Stories + How to Create Cover Photos for IG Highlights/Featured Stories:

Last year, Instagram launched a means to aggregate past stories and categorize them on your feed so that they last longer than the 24-hour time cap! What a cool way to give your fans a chance to check out the important Stories they may have missed. With this ability to feature certain stories, came the challenge of keeping things cohesive and on brand, while also giving people a VIP look into your brand and business (without losing the visual component you work so hard on inside of your grid!)

Enter: the ability to create beautiful cover photos in order to keep things organized and visually on-brand! Not sure what to include? Think of your account as a magazine. What sort of features would you include? What categories would you cover? Ideas include featured products, behind the fabric, behind the scenes, tips, and motivational messages.

How to Create Highlights Cover Images

There are a few places you can nab pretty images to feature on your feed, whether you create them yourself using a program like Canva,, my biggest advice would just be to keep it super simple and include some sort of graphic, word, or icon that will fit well into the circular feature.

The best way to do this: think of the categories you want to include and then create a canvas the dimensions of an Instagram story: 1080 x 1920 px. All you need is a canvas that size and then some sort of an icon in the center of the image that will fit into the circular story feature icon.

Categorize Your Features

Add in any icons or words: Once you have the canvas created, add in any words or graphics that you’d like to appear for your featured story! You can keep it simple by using round icons with labels or words to use for the cover images You can keep things simple and one color or make it fun using your branding colors. See Lululemon as an example. They use a red background (brand color) with simple white icons:

Then, download your images or save them and then get them onto your phone whether you email them to yourself, add to your Google Drive so you can download them, airdrop, or get them from Dropbox. There are a number of ways to save these images onto your phone, but this is a crucial next step! Once you have them on your phone, you’re ready to post.

In order for them to be able to be selected as covers, they must show up in your stories for a full 24 hours.

Upload them to your stories by opening up Instagram, hit the “camera” icon in the upper left-hand corner to get to your stories (while in the newsfeed view) and then swipe up to access your photo library. Once they have been added to your stories, you can select to use them for your cover images — they must stay in your stories (you can just post, cover, then delete!)

Here are two heart-stopping video stats:

Videos will comprise 82% of all online traffic by 2022, according to a Cisco study.
Mobile video usage has increased by nearly 10 million daily viewing minutes in the past two years.

Video has become the lingua franca of the content age. Since consumers demand a seamless and integrated cross-platform information gathering and purchase experience, it’s key that marketers consider how video can be a core element to your story strategy online and via mobile. You could use video in every element of the customer journey and breathe life to your brand in a way that staged images can’t.