Instagram Stories for Businesses; All You Need to Know

Instagram is a powerhouse platform for businesses looking to connect, engage, and convert their target audience into customers. Among the many Instagram features businesses can use to expand their reach, I find Instagram Stories very fascinating as a strategic tool for business owners to enhance their marketing results. IG Stories have the potential to give your business the visibility, engagement, and conversions it needs to stand out in a highly competitive industry.

In this blog post, I’ll extensively discuss Instagram Stories and everything you need to know to leverage stories for your business’s Instagram marketing. Below is a breakdown of everything I covered and some key takeaways from the article.

What Are Stories?

Instagram Stories is a feature that enables Instagram users to share texts, images, music, and videos temporarily (they disappear after 24 hours) with their followers. You can share as many stories as you like, with the stories forming a glowing ring around your profile picture, just like a slideshow-like presentation.

Image stories can typically last up to 15 seconds, while videos can last up to 60 seconds before the viewer is automatically moved to the next story.

This presents a fantastic way for business account owners to showcase their products and services to their Instagram audience.

How I Use Instagram Stories For Business and Why You Should Too

I love Instagram Stories primarily because it helps me create awareness and drive sales for my brand in a fun and engaging manner. You can drive traffic to your profile and website and create compelling call-to-actions for your products while also entertaining, educating, and informing your audience.

Because Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours, there is a FOMO (fear of missing out) that makes followers view them as soon as you post them.

This is a great money-making opportunity. You can create irresistible offers to get your followers to take a specific action fast after viewing your stories. And since they’d miss out on the offer if they procrastinated, you’d record a good conversion rate.

These stories on Instagram are also an excellent way to update followers about your business activities without sharing them on the main feed. Like me, you could share certain details about your business that you wouldn’t want to leave permanently on your main feed.

One of the fascinating things about these stories is that they’re interactive. They prompt the viewers to send you a message, which improves customer engagement and helps you build a strong connection in the long run.

Are Instagram Stories Different From Posts?

Instagram stories are different from posts in many ways. 

One major difference is that stories appear only on your profile, while posts appear on your followers’ feeds. Also, posts are evergreen, whereas IG stories, like Facebook stories, disappear after 24 hours.

Apart from the placement and duration they’re up, another key difference between IG stories and posts is the size of the images. Instagram posts have a square shape, with a size of about 1080x1080px (a 1:1 aspect ratio). However, Instagram stories are in vertical formats, with a size of about 1080x1920px (a 9:16 aspect ratio).

There are many more differences between Instagram stories and posts, such as the user being able to make text-only posts and add background styling to videos and images on Stories.

Table Showing the Differences Between Instagram Stories and Posts

S/N	Instagram Stories	Instagram Posts
1	Appear only on your profile	Appear on your followers’ news feed
2	Disappears after 24 hours	It is evergreen until the Instagram account is deactivated
3	Vertically shaped, with an image size of 1080x1920px	Square-shaped with an image size of 1080x1080px
4	Allows text-only posts	Doesn’t allow text-only posts, except in image format

Different types of Instagram Stories

There are about six different Instagram story types. They all offer different outputs you can take advantage of to improve your reach and engagement. Here are the Instagram Story types:

Standard: This is the default Instagram Story option, and it’s for posting regular photos or videos. In the standard mode, you’ll find filters to enhance your content at the bottom of the screen. Also, you have the options of either creating a story directly in the Instagram app or uploading one you’ve already made. This means you can take a photo or make a video within the Instagram app.

Create: This story option allows you to add text or stickers on a solid background. With plenty of fonts and styles to choose from, this mode is great for asking questions, sharing quick stories, or posting mini-blogs.

Boomerang: Here, you can capture a short, looping video that plays forward and backwards. Perfect for fun, playful, and eye-catching moments.

Layout: The layout option allows you to combine multiple photos into a collage-style grid. This mode is ideal for showcasing a series of related images in one story.

Hands-Free: Record a video without holding down the capture button. This is useful for longer clips, tutorials, or when you need both hands free.

AI Image: This option enables you to create any image you can imagine for your story. Simply type a prompt, and Instagram will generate a unique, AI-crafted visual that you can customize with text, stickers, or filters before sharing. Your story viewers can see that the image was created with AI.

How To Create Instagram Stories

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating Instagram stories for your business:

• Open your Instagram app and log in if you aren’t already.
• Click on your profile picture from your home screen to access the Stories camera. You can also access this feature by swiping right from your home screen.
• Tap the Shutter button at the bottom of the screen to take a photo, or tap and hold to record a short video. You can also swipe up to select a photo from your phone’s gallery or tap the gallery icon to do the same.
• Tap the icons at the top of the screen to add text, stickers, music, or drawings to your photo or video.
• Customize your privacy settings by choosing whether to make the story visible to all your followers private or public, restrict specific people, or show it only to a select group of followers (maybe friends or family).
• Publish your story. It can only be seen by those who follow you or those you allow to see it, and it disappears after 24 hours.
• You can also share text-only stories using Create Mode on Instagram Stories.

Tips For Creating Engaging IG Stories For Your Business

1. Keep It Authentic and Simple

Instagram stories should be less formal than posts. They’re vital for building a stronger connection with the audience. You can share behind-the-scenes content, employee stories, user-generated content, etc. Keeping stories authentic and simple is essential to building audience trust.

People view stories to unwind, have fun, or learn things in snapshots, not to be burdened with the bureaucracies of the business. Think about it this way. What can you do in 15 seconds to steal your followers’ attention and get them to take a specific action? 

2. Use High-Quality Visuals

Visual quality makes a lot of difference on Instagram, so always ensure your photos and videos are high-quality and visually appealing. People rarely engage with your content if you use poor-quality images and videos. 

If you’re working with your Stories camera, ensure proper lighting and that the background adds relevant context to your story. However, if you’re using a photo or video from your gallery, ensure it meets good quality standards.

You can use the filter feature on your Instagram Stories editing page to make the stories more visually appealing to your audience.

3. Maximize Instagram Stories Features

Take full advantage of the interactive Instagram Stories features, such as stickers, polls, countdowns, questions, quizzes, etc., to make your stories more engaging.

Instagram Followers are wired differently from those on Twitter or Facebook. Business page or not, they want to be entertained and wouldn’t hesitate to leave once your stories become too long or focused on one thing.

In addition to the basics, features like polls and quizzes encourage viewer engagement, while others like the countdown feature urges them to take action or miss out on important offers.

4. Use Captions

Your visuals might do a good job of entertaining, educating, and triggering audience action, but a compelling caption goes a long way to enhance the effectiveness of the visuals. Adding clear, concise, and complementary captions adds context and makes your key points more vivid.

Captions are also a good way to make your stories more accessible to a broader audience. You can add hashtags to your stories’ captions so other users can see your story when they search for those hashtags.

5. Include a Call-to-Action (CTA)

One of the things that makes Instagram stories good business tools is their FOMO-triggering capacity. You can add CTAs and get tons of engagements and conversions, as people don’t want to miss out on offers that might expire as the story disappears.

You can use these CTAs to encourage your followers to take different actions, such as sending a DM, clicking on a link to read a blog post, visiting a website, buying a product, or entering a contest.

6. Create Story Highlights

While Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours, you can keep them permanently on your profile by turning them into Instagram Story Highlights. This is especially useful when you have stories that got many engagements and conversions within 24 hours, and you want to keep them permanently.

With the Story Highlights feature, you can curate these stories, attracting more engagement and conversions for your business. You can create unlimited Instagram Highlights on your profile; each highlight has a limit of 100 photos or videos.

7. Incorporate User-Generated Content

IG Stories is perhaps the best way to show your followers how other customers feel about your products or services. You do this by showing content your customers created about your product or service, earning your customers’ trust.

User-generated content provides social proof for your brand and encourages engagement and conversion from your followers.

8. Add Music To Your Stories

Adding music to your Instagram stories can make them more engaging and entertaining. It’s a simple process you can follow to set the mood or tone for your story. Instagram offers a vast music library, so you’re bound to find something that fits perfectly. 

When adding music, choose tracks that complement the vibe you’re going for—upbeat tunes for energetic stories, mellow beats for chill vibes. Tap the sticker icon, select the music sticker, and browse through the available tracks. Once you’ve picked a song, you can adjust the part of the song you want to play. 

9. Be Consistent

Consistency is vital to the success of any marketing effort. If you want your stories to generate the needed results, you must be consistent with your strategy. Create a story series so you don’t exhaust all your Instagram Stories content at once.

Furthermore, use Instagram Insights to monitor the performance of your stories, then optimize accordingly and consistently to improve your results.

What Else Can You Do With A Story?

There are lots more you can do with your Instagram Stories, beyond posting photos and videos. Here are a few of them:

Instagram Polls

Creating polls helps you understand and serve your customers better. You can set up polls on your Instagram Stories to assess what your followers are interested in or get their opinions about your products, services, or anything else.

Poll responses come as Instagram messages (similar to Facebook Messenger). 

Add Fun GIF Images

Adding GIF stories makes your Instagram Stories stand out, especially when they appear to a new audience searching through a hashtag’s result page. This is because GIF images are catchy and tend to pop off the screen, attracting people just scrolling through your Stories.

Geotags In Your Instagram Stories

Adding Geotags in your IG stories lets people know where you are or have been. It works well for open houses, restaurants, retail stores, etc.

If you don’t want to pinpoint your exact location, you can use a city or state and not be as specific. It also helps others know where you are from and gives your account more visibility.

Share A Link (URL)

This is the best newer feature on Instagram today. Before, you needed to have 10,000 followers to share a link that users swiped up to visit a page. But now, you can add URLs to your Stories by using Instagram’s new clickable link sticker.

Since these new link stickers are much more visible, you can attract followers and direct them to your blog, product page, or destination page.

Add Notes To Your Instagram Story

Finding Instagram Notes on your desktop is simple. Open Instagram on your desktop and click on your profile. Next, click on your profile image, and the notes will appear at the top, similar to how stories are displayed on mobile.

If it’s empty, you can add a note; if one is already there, you can add another. You can use up to 60 characters for a note.

How Often Should You Post Stories On Instagram?

Posting 2 to 5 stories daily is crucial for being seen and helps grow your Instagram account fast, although most users will exit from stories within the first 3 posts. I always recommend that small business owners find a consistency formula that works for them and go with it.

This might require you to test out different formats, timing, and the number of stories up at a time.  And, like on most other social networks, video content does best!

I must mention here that using IG Stories also helps with the Instagram algorithm and increases your visibility. You can also share your Instagram Reels on your Stories and messages to increase your visibility on Instagram.

How to Watch Competitors’ Instagram Stories Anonymously

While only followers can see an account’s stories, others can also view them without following the person, especially if the account isn’t private or is a Business Instagram account.

However, there are different ways to view Instagram Stories anonymously. You can even adopt these ways to your Instagram marketing strategy to spy on your competitors and learn from their marketing efforts and mistakes.

Here are some ways you can view Instagram Stories anonymously:

• Create a new Instagram account and conceal your identity.
• Switch to airplane mode before watching a preloaded story
• Use free Instagram Private Story Viewer apps.

These methods only work for public or Instagram business accounts. However, there are ways to view private Instagram accounts anonymously.

Track Instagram Stories Analytics to Improve Engagement and Reach

To make the most of your Instagram Stories, track your performance. This will help you know what’s working and what’s not, so that you can adapt your strategy for improved reach and engagement.

Instagram provides a built-in analytics tool, Instagram Insights, for creator and business accounts. This tool provides valuable data you can use to improve your Stories strategy.

Here are key metrics you should monitor:

Reach and Impressions: The number of unique accounts that viewed your Story and the total views it received. High reach shows strong visibility, while repeat views suggest your content is engaging.

Engagement: Includes replies, sticker taps, poll votes, quiz answers, and message interactions. Strong engagement means your Stories are resonating with your audience.

Completion Rate: The percentage of viewers who watch your Story all the way through. A low rate may indicate your content isn’t holding attention; therefore, you should try shorter clips, interactive features, or a more compelling opening.

Taps Forward/Back and Exits: Taps forward show quick consumption, taps back often mean viewers want to rewatch (a sign of interest), while exits suggest your Story lost attention. Adjust pacing or visuals to keep viewers engaged.

Link Clicks: This metric tracks how many people tapped a “link sticker” to visit the website, shop, or landing page. It is especially important for conversion tracking.

How to improve Instagram Stories with Analytics

It’s useless to check your Stories’ performance regularly if you have no intention of improving them. Instagram analytics give you all the information you need to make your stories better, more engaging, and more converting.

Here are things you should do to improve your Instagram Stories with analytics:

Experiment with Formats: Test different Story styles, such as videos, polls, Q&As, and other features, to see what resonates most with your audience.

Optimize Posting Times: Share Stories at various times of day to identify when your audience is most active. Use Instagram Insights to spot peak engagement periods.

Double Down on Top Performers: If certain content types, like behind-the-scenes clips or product demos, generate strong engagement, create more of them.

Track and Adjust Regularly: Review your analytics routinely to spot trends and refine your Stories strategy for better reach, engagement, and results.

Use Instagram Stories Effectively for Business Growth

Instagram Stories has grown beyond a simple sharing tool into a powerful business feature that blends storytelling, engagement, and conversion opportunities.

From showcasing products and behind-the-scenes moments to driving website traffic and creating urgency through time-limited offers, Stories gives you an authentic way to connect with your audience.

The key is consistency and creativity, especially in using high-quality visuals, interactive features, CTAs, and analytics to refine your strategy. When done right, Instagram Stories will boost your reach and strengthen customer relationships, turning casual viewers into loyal fans and buyers. 

Instagram Stories FAQs