High-frequency Instagram sharers no longer need to worry about flooding their followers’ feeds. With the release of Instagram Stories, they can not only curate picture-perfect photos and videos, but they can now also share random snippets of their lives as much as they want.
The stories appear within profile bubbles on top of one’s Instagram feed, and they only stay there for 24 hours before they are gone forever (unless saved). Does this sound familiar? This new feature is Instagram’s take on the widely popular Snapchat, a platform with 200 million active users and 9,000 snaps shares every second.
New age advertising
The short bursts of videos, on a marketer’s perspective, resembles television advertising —brands get their stories viewed live and in full-screen. Instagram has about 300 million daily active users, and an effective advertising algorithm in place, which makes it easier for brands to reach their target audience and cultivate a following.
The already captive audience in place, as well as hashtags, geotags, and discover features that make it faster for brands to be found, make this app hot for digital marketing.
Case in point: Instagram Stories still hasn’t gone full-on advertising yet, but brands are already using this new feature to share live stories to their organic followers. Nike, for example, shared a story on the first day the new feature was launched, and the content generated more than 800,000 views in 24 hours.
“Instagram is really brand friendly, so that’s a huge opportunity,” said Nick Sheingold, associate director of strategy at Laundry Service, Nike’s social media agency. “Those numbers are staggering.” (AdAge)
Designed for marketers
While Stories would surely excite the average user, the new feature is said to be aimed at marketers and advertisers, according to A List Daily. “The numbers show that over one in four digital marketers have a plan to invest more money in Instagram over the next twelve months, as per Business Insider. Snapchat, as popular as it is with its millions of viewers, is still the less-preferred choice for advertising, the study shows.”
Instagram Stories is still in its early stages, which is the perfect time to experiment with campaigns. Apps like Instagram and Snapchat allow brands to share photos and videos that don’t feel like ads, but still build strong brand lifestyle, according to Forbes.
Marketers should be able to tell catchy, timely, and authentic stories in 10 seconds or less. This could mean dropping the polished and perfect for the raw and spontaneous. The challenge now is creating the right type of content and delivering it to the most interested viewers.
Bambrick, a digital marketing agency in Brisbane, has led successful campaigns for Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, SEO, and many more. We have helped over 500 individual businesses in our 15 years of trade. These businesses include a vast array of SME’s, large publically listed and privately held corporations, and not-for-profit organisations. Talk to us about your next campaign today.