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Instagram Stories Tips and Tricks for 2024
Marketing on Instagram has transformed from a casual promotional tactic to a serious lead generation, sales, and brand awareness funnel. That being said, creating a strategic marketing plan for Instagram is essential for setting your brand up for success on this platform. Cultivating a community on this platform is an important step, and utilizing Instagram Stories is an easy way to continue connecting with your audience. In this article, you will find tips and tricks for your Instagram Stories strategies in 2024.
Stories are indeed the most “relaxed” content on the platform and are generally more simple for brands to design, upload, and repost. However what many brands don’t consider is creating a thorough plan for this content format, which can limit your account reach and promotions.
But, don’t worry. By the end of this article, you will have a clear idea of how to refine your Instagram Stories strategy and continue to create fresh, engaging content for your followers.
What Makes A “Good” Instagram Story?
We often mention “improving” your content to reach a larger audience and grow your online presence. But, what makes “good” content on Instagram Stories? This content on Instagram is unique due to its spontaneous nature.
Since Stories only last for 24 hours, it serves as the perfect platform to give quick updates, ask questions, create polls, share limited offers, repost other users content, and drive traffic to an important link or sign up. Therefore, your content strategy for Stories should differ from Reels, feed posts, etc.
Storytelling should always be the focus of your content, and while IG Stories may seem like the “post anything” type of content, intentionality is key. When posting an Instagram story, think about your message, the event or offer you’re promoting, a resource you’re providing, industry knowledge you want to share, or questions that have piqued your curiosity.
At the end of the day, your audience will favor authenticity over carefully curating content that sells. Stories will most likely not be your highest lead generation content, but, content that fosters your community over time.
7 Tips and Tricks for Instagram Stories in 2024
Instagram is always innovating Stories’ features to provide creators, brands, and businesses with more tools to connect with their audiences. If you’re looking to upgrade your Instagram Stories content strategy, here are 7 tips and tricks:
Add Yours and Templates
The first tip is to utilize a native feature within Instagram Stories, which launched in 2021, called “Add Yours” stickers. Choose to customize your own “Add Yours” sticker or select from a public response. The idea behind this is to create a thread of responses with your individual content. These stickers are public and can be shared by anyone on the platform.
You can also utilize Instagram’s “Add Yours Templates” to add text, GIFs, or images to your content. You can also click on the dice icon to see pre-formatted templates as inspiration. These include templates to get to know you better, a song you’ve been playing recently, “this or that” prompts, and more.
Collage Layouts
Want to add multiple pictures to one story to round up your month in pictures? The Layout feature allows you to select or capture multiple images into one grid. The default will be four quadrants, however, you can also select “Change Grid” to change the number of photos included in the story.
Record the images or videos for your grid using Instagram’s native camera or upload images directly from your device.
Solid Backgrounds
There is no need to use the pen feature to color the background of your Instagram Stories anymore. Yes, there is a way to fill the back of your story with a solid color while layering elements on top. How can you do this?
- Upload your story or take a photo in the app.
- Click on the three-dot icon, and tap “Draw”.
- Select the background color.
- Press and hold the screen for the color to fill.
Want to select your own color? Click on the eyedropper tool to choose a color from your story. After the color fills, you can layer on photos, videos, stickers, and more.
Turn Live Photos into Boomerangs
If you take live photos in your camera roll, you can transform these into boomerangs directly in the Instagram app. When uploading from your device, you will see an infinity symbol next to the live photos in your camera roll, indicating you can change these to boomerangs.
After selecting your image, click on the boomerang symbol and your live photo will appear as a boomerang. Select the length, speed, and effect of your boomerang.
AI Stickers
Turn your ideas into stickers with Instagram’s AI stickers feature. Type your sticker idea into the text box and the AI tool will generate a unique sticker. This is a way to let your creativity fly and create stickers from your imagination.
Frames
Another sticker option inside Stories, the Frames feature lets you turn your photo into a framed image. Layer these frames on top of videos, images, and backgrounds. To access this feature, find the “Frames” sticker and select an image to frame. You can even add a caption to this framed image for extra context.
Backgrounds
Instagram has yet another AI tool, creating an AI-generated background. After uploading or capturing your story, click the Backdrop icon which will be the first option in the icon bar. Similar to the AI stickers, type in your design idea, and the feature will generate a background for you.
After generating the image, you will be provided with two options. If you don’t like either of these, you can edit your prompt to generate new backdrops.
As you can see, Instagram continues to innovate its Stories features to spark creativity and fun amongst creators, brands, and businesses. These are just a few tips and tricks to freshen up your Instagram Stories and continue to encourage your audience to grow in imagination alongside you.
FREE Canva Story Templates
While there are many Stories options to use inside the native Instagram app, we don’t always have the time to spend fine-tuning content. Stories are a great way to boost engagement and cultivate a community. To do this, here are some preset templates to help you quickly create unique Stories:
If you’re looking for more inspiration on strategies to market your business on Instagram, make sure to check out this Instagram marketing guide for businesses in 2024. Build an Instagram marketing strategy from scratch and start measuring your brand growth: