Instagram stories are used by 500 million users every day. That’s a lot of users.
What about business? One-third of the most-viewed Instagram Stories are from businesses. While we assume this is the stat mostly for business-to-consumers, is there any potential success with Instagram Stories for B2B? Of course!
With the large popularity of Instagram Stories and predictions of big Instagram updates, improvements, and attention to stories in 2020, it is crucial for B2B companies to hit the ground running with stories because they serve as a lead-generating outlet when incorporated into a digital marketing strategy.
So how can B2B companies get started on Instagram? Start with an Instagram Story game plan.
What are your goals? To increase leads? Drive people to your website? Whatever your goals are, it’s good to plan your stories, along with adding the right CTAs to each. The possibilities are endless for B2B companies. You can upload webinar and podcast snippets, upcoming events, ask questions, and much more. Brainstorm what makes the most sense for your company and the type of content you would want to see if you were on the other side of the business.
There is no set time to post on Instagram, but you can check out your insights to see when your followers are on the app. If you see that the most popular time is noon on Wednesdays, plan your story posts around then.
Also, it doesn’t hurt to test different days and times to get a feel for your audience and check to see how many views each of your stories are getting during these times. Create an Instagram Story Roadmap that has the type of content and days you want to post.
Instagram Stories have stickers you can use to engage your audience, including polls, questions and countdowns. It’s always good to strategize content around this (ex: countdown to new software being released, or asking simple business questions within your industry). These provide opportunities for direct engagement from your viewers, and will keep your content active to give you more insights into your customers. Another helpful hint is to add a location tag, hashtag, and user tags that are relevant to your industry to increase more pertinent views.
Instagram Stories expire after 24 hours. They are meant to be short-lived, but you have the ability to highlight a story to live on your profile indefinitely. This will give new users more details on your business, as well as let those who have viewed your story go back to it after it expires. It is best to create a few highlight icons based off of your business, and continuously add your stories to the proper highlight. Take a look at how HubSpot organizes its stories and highlights.
B2B companies may not initially want to invest time into the platform and feel that the app is associated with a younger demographic rather than their typical clientele. But Instagram Stories have pulled in tons of B2B companies based on user experience and popularity alone, along with features that easily make the platform more B2B marketing-friendly.
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