Does your brand have a presence on Instagram but you wish you had more engagement?

Stories are a great way to engage with your followers and in this post, we are going to dive into 18 Story ideas so that your brand gets more engagement than ever before.

After all, 500 million people use stories every day! With such huge user numbers, Instagram Stories are ripe for your strategy. Flip side of the coin, that’s a lot of Stories and that means there is a lot of competition. 

To rise above all of the other Stories on Instagram from your competitors, it’s key that you have a well thought out and solid Instagram Story strategy. The best piece of advice we can give you is to diversify what you post on Stories.

If you alternate between the 18 Story ideas in this post, your Instagram Stories will remain fresh and engaging, all while growing your following.

Exclusive Promotions

Let your audience know they made a good choice by following you. Give your channel a sense of exclusivity and post promotions like flash sales, discount codes, Instagram-only sales, and more. This will keep people coming back for more.

Publish How Your Products are Made

Consumers like behind-the-scenes content and you can leverage this fact with a video on how one of your products is made. These posts are intriguing and make your audience feel more included with your brand.

Shine a Spotlight on UGC

User generated content or UGC does really well on Instagram because it offers social proof that people like your products. Consumers crave third party endorsements when making a business decision and UGC can really increase brand interest and sales.

Use the Countdown Sticker to Create Urgency

Add a countdown sticker to your Story and use it to create a sense of urgency for when a sale is ending or a sense of excitement for when something exciting is going to happen at your brand. Never used a countdown sticker? No worries, this post thoroughly explains how.

Post Sale Items

Consumers love a deal. Capitalize on this fact by creating Stories every time your brand has a sale. This makes your followers feel like they’re part of your brand and it will lead to high sales revenue.

Create How-to Guides Utilizing Your Products

Enlist the help of a co-worker and film short guides about your products. These videos can be how to assemble your product, how to use your product, how your product increases well-being, etc.

Answer FAQs

Surely by now you know the FAQs that come up about your brand. Tackle one question at a time and frame Stories around them. Consider making this a theme and do FAQ posts on the same day of the week every week.

Provide Sneak Peeks

Who doesn’t like to feel like they are on the inside of a brand? Go behind the scenes and take pictures and/or videos of upcoming products before they hit the market. Generate some excitement and maybe even some pre-sales!

Host a Giveaway

Giveaways are a great way to foster engagement. Give something away for free from your brand and your followers can take different actions to be entered to win. Such actions can be a follow, a share, a comment, a sign up for something, etc. We recommend using Rafflecopter to run your giveaways. 

Capture the Story of How Your Brand Got Started

Humanize your brand to make it more relatable. Take a short video of you or a co-worker telling the story of how your brand got started. Publish it as a Story and educate your followers of your cool brand story.

Promote Your Content Assets

When you publish a new blog post or eBook, promote it on your Instagram Stories to get more views of your content assets.

Share Company Culture

Consumers truly care about brands being relatable. They crave a human connection. Taking pictures at company team building events or happy hours is a great way to associate actual people with your brand. 

Feature Employees

Bring back employee of the month and feature an employee once a month on your Instagram Stories. You can do a video or a picture and have the featured employee share something interesting about themselves and why they like working at your brand.

Customer Spotlight

Everyone likes a little lime light and to be appreciated. Feature your happy customers in your Instagram Stories. This will delight the customer and provide social proof of your brand. Win-win.

Start a Series

Since Instagram Stories are so short, consider breaking up concepts into a series. This can be done on the same day of the week every week or span days until the whole story is told.

Post a Meme

Instagram Stories don’t need to be serious all the time. Change things up with creative memes. You can find them online or create your own with this free meme generator.

Tackle Pain Points

Tap into what you know about your consumers and take note of some common pain points they experienced and your brand solved. Turn these pain posts into content for your Instagram Stories to appeal to potential new consumers.

Share Quotes From Thought Leaders

Whether it’s influencers or experts in your industry, gather quotes from blog posts, social posts, interviews, etc that you can use in your Stories. To make it look visually appealing, we recommend using Canva.

Are there any Instagram Story ideas that we missed and you’ve implemented? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!