Since 2010 Instagram has been a key tool for businesses to help promote their brand, products and services… Everyone’s heard of it but does everyone know how to optimise their usage? Probably not.

What are Instagram stories?

In August of 2016 Instagram launched ‘Instagram Stories‘, an instant photo sharing feature to compete with the growth and popularity of Snapchat. This feature enables users to send and edit photos with their friends and add to their ‘Story’, which can be seen by the public, and is saved for 24 hours.

Instagram users that post to their ‘Story’ are able to see exactly what other users have viewed their photos. This feature enables the user to see who, out of their friends, have been keeping up to date with their posts and are actively using the app. For businesses this has been a game changer…

…now we can see exactly who, when and how many followers are actively looking at your content. This can help distinguish precisely who to target with future advertisements, among other benefits.

What is Instagram Live?

Instagram Live is a feature that allows the user to stream live from their device to all of their followers. Notifications are sent out to all of their followers alerting them of your broadcast. This can be a brilliant tool for businesses that want to directly connect with their audience, answer questions in real time, or announce a brand new product.

Like Instagram stories, all viewers of the stream can be seen by the user and comments can be left by viewers similarly to a regular image post.

How can businesses use Instagram stories and Instagram Live?

 The list of uses for Instagram stories and Live is endless… They can be used to promote new products, how products are made, new advertisements or even to celebrate a company milestone. Anything that will capture the interest of your audience is perfect to post. Short, snappy and to the point; after all, once it’s gone it’s gone!

How can you evaluate the effectiveness of Instagram stories and Instagram Live?

 Step #1: Are you targeting the right people?

Let’s start at the beginning… a great place to start is by looking at not only your Instagram marketing goals but also your business’ goal in their entirety. Your social media accounts should become an extension of what your brand wants to represent. All of your posts should reflect that image!

Instagram has a handy feature for businesses that allows for all of your visitor’s information to be collected and plotted into graphs. These tools can be used after a stream on Instagram Live to establish the level of user interaction and exactly who was watching you.

This data can determine whether the content you are posting is capturing your audience’s attention, and if this could be improved.

Try using posts with different colour schemes or fonts to determine what works best for your brand. Instagram users can now vote in polls added to stories which could be used to gauge the level of interest in a product or change in design. This will give you real qualitative feedback from real followers, one of the best indications of your audiences’ feelings and opinions.

Step #2: Increase/decrease in followers after story or live posts

Applications such as CrowdFire (separate to Instagram) can be used to track your Instagram and Twitter follower rates. These apps are fantastic for tracing the increase or decrease in followers after you post anything to Instagram.

An increase in followers after a post to your Instagram story would suggest your audience has a positive interest in your brand and your use of images and design has worked well. This is definitely something to note.

A decrease in followers may be due to posts being boring or incoherent with your brand’s image. Businesses that post constantly may also be in danger of losing followers as users don’t want persistent posts from the same companies crowding their timeline.

Step #3: Increase/decrease in traffic from your Instagram page

Instagram stories allow users to interact with adverts within their posts by means of ‘Swiping Up’ on the specific post. This feature can send the user to any landing page the creator links, such as a buying page for a new product or the company’s website. This is an amazing tool to direct traffic from your Instagram page to a place where you have more control of competition and other distractions.

Again, the increase or decrease of traffic from your Instagram page can be monitored and adverts/posts can be altered according to the positive or negative response from your audience.

Instagram for businesses allows you to track every movement of your audience on your page, every interaction with your posts and all traffic out of the app to your website or landing page.