Is your brand one of the 400 million people using Instagram stories DAILY?
Instagram stories provide a unique opportunity to reach a large audience with engaging and timely content.
If you’re still dipping your toe into the Instagram story pool, check out our guide that will have you creating engaging stories in no time!
Consistency is key
When creating stories for brands, remember it’s a different audience to your personal Instagram. Creating a consistent style and design comes down to having a consistent go-to story template.
We recommend having 4-5 story templates ready to go. All you need to do is drop in new images and update the text and it’s ready to post.
K.I.S.S Tip: Make sure templates consistent with the style with your brand
Stay on brand
Once you’ve created a branded template, using your brand colours, fonts and style across your designs is a must. In the story tools below, you will notice that some tools allow you to upload your own fonts and create colour palettes.
Instagram stories where created to be authentic, so if you feel that your brand’s font doesn’t quite suit the scene, decide on a secondary font to be used just for stories. Keep reading to check out our favourite apps for creating branded templates (see – “Putting it all together”).
K.I.S.S Tip: Try these font combinations:
- Pair handwritten fonts with bold angular fonts.
- Pair san-serif fonts with serif fonts.
- Pair chunky sans-serif fonts with light serif fonts.
Choosing images and elements
The images you use should refer to the story, so most of the time you will be using own images and branded images, with an exception for “inspo” stories.
Once you’ve dropped your images into your story template upload it to Instagram.
Add moving elements and engaging stickers. Polls and questions also receive great engagement which add another element to your content as you can share the results as a story or post.
Adding location and hashtag stickers helps push your story to a wider audience who may not yet know about you, as your story then appears on the location or a hashtag story.
K.I.S.S Tip: Post time sensitive information such as specials, limited edition products or story only offers with a ‘swipe up’ link (for accounts with over 10K followers)
Story highlights are a MUST
Highlighting your stories is a useful way to get longevity on your story content.
Customising your highlight cover images will ensure your Instagram feed is on brand and visually appealing.
Tip: Make your highlights the same themes as your templates from stage 1 above.
Optimum story frequency
Don’t be afraid to post more than one story.
Take the time to plan and design your story to keep people scrolling through. You can see where viewers dropped off your story by looking at the story viewers on each story.
K.I.S.S tip: we like to post no more than 6 parts to a story, but as always, every audience is different, so test and measure where your audience drops off during your stories.
Putting it all together: Our top Instagram Story tools
Branded templates
- Over– Over is a free app that allows you to easily create templates, upload your own fonts and create a branded colour palette.
- Story art– Story art is another free app that has hundreds of pre-made templates, however it’s not as customisable as Over or unfold.
Editing your stories
- Unfold– An extremely customisable app that allows you to add elements as you wish. Simply drop in images and you’re done!
- Cut story– Wanting to upload a video over 15seconds? The Cut Story app allows you to trim videos so you can fit it all in one story.
Bonus tip:
Lastly, cross post to your Facebook story via the ‘share’ option in the story!
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