Instagram Stories For Your Small Business

Now the summer has come to an end it feels like it's time to really buckle down and get some work done. In the words of Bret and Jermaine, it's officially Business Time.

I'm working on launching my business, Strange Marketing (visit the site by clicking here!) and in doing so have been looking into which niches my expertise actually covers. One of the things I haven't seen a huge amount of people giving advice on is Instagram Stories and how to use them to promote your business and grow your brand so here I am today to give some of the knowledge that I gained as an agent to Instagram influencers in my previous job.

Instagram Stories is a feature of Instagram that allows you to create in-the-moment content that is visible to your audience for 24 hours. It's indicated by a purple and orange circle around your profile picture. When I look at followers or search for someone on Instagram, I like to see that circle around a profile picture as it shows that person is actively sharing new content, it's not a dead account or one that hasn't been updated for a while. This automatically makes them more attractive to follow.

Influencers, that is, users with a following of more than 10,000, have access to a feature that means they can add a link to their Stories. By swiping upwards on the screen, the watcher will be taken straight to the link. This is a fab way to get people to look at a blog post or go straight to a retail page where they can make a purchase, which can be extremely beneficial when it comes to using affiliate links. For the rest of us, who are growing their business and haven't hit that magic 10K mark, there are lots of ways you can use Instagram Stories to generate engagement, interest and purchasing action with a little clever thinking.

So, let's get to the meat, How can you use Stories in the best way for your business?

BUILDING YOUR BRAND

For any business, whether you design beautiful handmade goods or provide some sort of service (like my social media strategy services) it's important to build trust and be recognisable. The average internet user has an attention span of 8 seconds when it comes to content. If you can't get them in that time, they will swipe your Story away and be on to the next one. If everything you post looks different, random and unconnected, you aren't going to register in your audience's mind and they won't necessarily look out for your content.

You can use fonts, apps colours or filters to give your Stories a cohesive look. One of my favourite Instagram Story users is Lauren from girlstolelondon. She uses the same colours and the typewriter font, often with a simple line underneath the text as well as an app which allows you to put two pictures or videos on one Story for the majority of her static (non-talking directly at the camera) content on the feature. Here's some examples, which I hope she won't mind me using:

Use of black and white, a specific font and a defined style means that even when I'm idly scrolling through Stories, her content stands out and I instantly associate it with her. You can apply this tactic to your business really easily! Here are some ideas:

• Stick to specific colours and fonts for your text. Chose something that goes with your brand, perhaps your logo colours. Don't forget you aren't limited to the little circles of colour, you can use the dropper to select any colour visible in the image and if you 'long press' on one of the circles you'll be offered the whole rainbow! 

• Keep your text short and informative so that watchers can read it quick, even if they are shooting past your Stories. You can actually see stats about how many people clicked forwards, back or exited your Stories through your Insights. 

• Frames can look good, although you would have to add them in another image editing program. I like to use A Design Kit (available for Android and IPhone) on my Stories to give them a fun look sometimes, but I have to admit I'm much more likely to just stick a GIF on there!

If you are brave enough, use talking Stories. Talking directly to the camera isn't something everyone is comfortable with, but it definitely gives your audience a better idea of who you are and can help people feel that they 'know' you. I don't see anything wrong with whacking a filter on your face if you want to - using the same one with every talking Story is a another way of creating cohesive content.

BEHIND THE SCENES

There are so many ridiculously beautiful Instagram feeds out there - I literally don't know how people have the time and inclination to only take photos that are pink and burgundy, but it's pretty common. The Instagram feed for my business is kind of beautiful and I'm really proud of it, the images run into each other (I wrote an article on how I achieve this here) but it definitely means there isn't much room for sporadic content! Anything that isn't part of my carefully curated grid can go in Instagram Stories though, which leaves lots more room for sharing extra info and insights into the business and my day-to-day life.

One of my favourite people for showing serious behind-the-scenes is Gummergal, an American blogger, her feed is what dreams are made of with a perfect house and baby and outfits, the lot. But her Stories are hilarious and often show the real house behind the blogger, mess everywhere, food covered baby. It really helps to build a bigger picture of her life and makes everything seem ultimately more real.

Another account I love for using their Stories to show sneaky peeks of behind the 'gram is dreamlandclothing. I LOVE their fun eighties prints and their grid is beautiful, all purples and pinks and eighties influences without being too rigid. They use Stories to share peeks of new collections as well as silly behind the scenes stuff that wouldn't fit on the grid.

Here are some ideas for doing this yourself:

• Share pictures of your work-in-progress. For handmade businesses, this can create some really fun engaging content for your fans and followers as well as show how much work, energy and effort goes into creating your product.
• Sneak peeks of upcoming content (a corner of a new piece of art, an off-cut of fabric) can build excitement for your upcoming product launches. Or, use GIFs to cover up elements of an image to create suspense - more about GIFs below.
• Create a video tour of your workspace, studio or office. People are always interested in this type of content and it adds to the picture that you are building of your business. You can use your voice or text to describe what you are showing. Don't forget you can film with your phone in the normal video setting then add to Stories afterwards, which means you can edit before sharing. Most apps for editing include support for video content now too. My favourite is A Color Story, whose filters give my video a dreamy quality and it's free!

ENGAGEMENT

Getting people to engage with you and your business is the whole point of using Instagram, or in fact, any social media. Whether that engagement is a like, a comment or a click through to your website, creating content that gets people to interact with it is everything. Instagram Stories gives you lots of ways to get people to engage with you.

• Use polls. One of my favourite Instagrammers uses polls in the best way I have seen. Sophie Tea, an artist based in the UK who creates the most cosmic abstract paintings, uses polls regularly on her Stories to get her audience to engage, and both of the options she offers are positive. There's no room for negativity right? The majority of people want to answer polls and there's something almost automatic about reaching to tap the answer you most agree with, so this little psychological trick of offering only positive options does a lot to build positive brand awareness for Sophie.

• Ask people directly to message you. Every Instagram Story has the option to send the creator a message at the bottom. Remind your audience regularly that you are open to communication and you can also screenshot and share any lovely messages you receive, tagging the sender in. This has a significant impact on people getting in touch with you, as everyone wants shout-outs to build their own following. 
• Questions! Instagram recently added an option to ask a question to your audience and many of the people I follow use it to do something like 'Ask me anything' - you get the option to share the responses as part of a Story which creates great interaction with your potential customers.

TURNING STORIES INTO SALES

So, once you have created some fab videos that kind of all look like they are coming from you and share with your audience stuff that you probably wouldn't on your regular feed, it's time to get a return on your investment. When I used to speak to clients about the benefits of using Instagram, I would explain the three things they had to gain; brand awareness, gaining followers and direct sales. It goes without saying that brand awareness + gaining followers = direct sales! 

Raising brand awareness is covered by all that stuff above. Creating a cohesive look and style for your stories, getting people to engage with you and sharing content that shows behind the scenes of your business - brand awareness level 100! Instagram Stories is primarily for your current audience as unless you are huge on Insta you are unlikely to show up on the Explore page. but there are ways to gain exposure to a new audience too. When I tag my stories with a location, even if it's just my local town, they get 100's more views and I tend to gain a few extra followers too. You need to add the location tag into each Story you do in a series - don't forget to add a slide that recommends people follow you for more great content! This works because people can follow locations. For more on following hashtags and locations, read my recent article here! Add at least one hashtag to every Story too. I recently found this great article on popular hashtags for independent businesses.

Don't forget to use 'Link in bio' whenever you are talking about anything that your audience might want to buy - you need to make it as easy as possible to find your products. There are some really cute GIFS you can add to your Stories that say Link In Bio too - use them often! I love GIFS, my favourite ones are the drawings that look like they are coming out of something. With a little ingenuity it's possible to create a really fun and engaging Story out of something pretty mundane. Use your imagination when searching for GIFs and you'll find some really unique artwork, it's definitely worth a browse every so often to find more obscure, underused images. GIFs also have the benefit of adding something moving and eye-catching to an otherwise static image which might be enough to get a casual browser. 

I hope this has given you some ideas about how to use Instagram Stories to promote your business. There is so much more to cover, from highlights, to going live and all of the other features that Instagram offers it's community, but I kind of feel like I have rambled enough already.  I'd love your own ideas, success and failures to form part of this resource for others so please leave a comment if you have anything at all to add! If you want further help, I'm currently offering a free 20 minute consultation as part of my business launch where I'll offer a review and some personalised ideas on how you can use Stories to grow your biz and get your audience engaging - drop me an email on katy (at) strangemarketing.co.uk

Have a wonderful day and please do follow my new biz on Instagram for more tips on making social work for your small business - @strangesocialmarketing

Katy x

How To Create Beautiful Split Images For Instagram

I've been spending quite a bit of time over the last few months setting up my own little freelance venture, Strange Marketing - check out my amazing website here! When it came to starting an Instagram account for the business, I wanted to do something I've never been able to achieve on my personal account, images that flow into each other.

I first spotted this concept on Spectrum Cosmetics Instagram page. Whilst each of their individual images is a standalone picture, elements of the background serge into the next post. I think it looks great and one of the key things that stuck in my mind about it was that it's clear they have invested resources in developing their social presence - which makes sense for an incredibly success brand that's built it's entire customer base with Instagram.

When it came to thinking about how I wanted Strange Marketing's Instagram to look, I knew I wanted there to be a 'bigger picture' but I wasn't sure how to go about doing it. I don't have Photoshop on my laptop and I also wanted to be able to create and post images while I was on the go.

I tried a LOT of different apps to make this happen and below I've given you some info about each app - spoiler, only one app really did the job and it's one you have to pay for - but I did find a free and pretty simple way to do it also which I've detailed further down.

I'm pretty pleased with how SM's Instagram page looks although I'm aware that my graphic design skills need improving on if I really want to make a splash, so any and all advice about composition and colours will be gratefully received. I'm excited to share more about starting Strange Marketing in the future!

So, firstly, you need an image. The majority of apps that I found that can create this effect had the option of uploading a picture to them or taking one which you can then edit in the app with a limited variety of tools before splitting the image into parts. I used Canva to create my collages - you can upload your own images, resize and recolour them, place them in grids, add a huge number of elements to your design and it's free. I create these collages in a very large size (3000 x 3000) utilising Canva's 9x9 image grid and dropping different pictures into each space. I'm currently using a pretty flower picture that I took myself as the background. Here's the next large image for SM's Instagram feed:

Once you have the larger image created you'll need to save it and download it in PNG form (so you don't lose any quality) If you want to use one the many image splitting apps available, you'll also need to export your collage to a mobile device, I use Dropbox for this and I also save every image including the main and split image onto my laptop.

I tried a few apps but without a doubt, Planoly is the better option. Unfortunately, you can only upload 30 pictures to it per month in the free version, but I feel it's probably worth investing in the next level up for £7.99 which allows a lot more uploads as well as access to all their other features, including adding batches of pre-defined hashtags which can really save time when you are uploading 9 images at once! It also saves the images and the split versions for you, so when you are ready to post you can just open up the app and add the images directly into Instagram along with the hashtags and location information. It's a real time saver. I messed up the first month of my free trial by deleting images once I had uploaded them because I wanted to change something - this still ate into my 30 free uploads and meant I couldn't add another 9 images to the upload section. You can't save the split images to your phone in any easy way either. 

Some other apps that I tried:

Giant Square - Easy to upload images to split but it adds it's own watermark which I definitely didn't want. I know this sounds a bit mean, because I do believe that apps should be able to earn money for future development etc, but for starting my business venture I needed something that wasn't going to affect the overall image.

9Cut - Worked well but there was some reduction of quality which I was trying to avoid. 

Grids - When I went into the app to remind myself of what it was I didn't like about it, it tricked me into signing up for a £4.49 weekly subscription! I seem to recall when I used it last week that the ads between every step were the main issue but I now seem to have a super version which works a lot better - at a ridiculous price! That's getting cancelled straight away.

In the end, I found the best way to get what I wanted -  all nine images in the same quality, with no watermarks, ready on my phone to upload to Instagram at any time. I used a site called Img Online an online tool which you can access by clicking here. The site creates 9 separate images which you can download individually. There are a few options to select from and you don't just have to do 9x9 grids. I chose the optimize for Instagram option despite not knowing exactly what this does!

I then saved them to Dropbox on my laptop and was able to export from the Dropbox app on my phone straight into Instagram. I save my hashtags in a batch on the Notepad application and then just copy and paste them into my caption when I'm ready to post!

Here's how the first 3 pics look on my feed, hopefully you'll give us a follow over at @strangesocialmarketing to see the rest ;-)

I hope this has helped, whether you use an app or the online tool I would love to see your creations, tag me @katyclouds or my new business account, @strangesocialmarketing.

Katy x