Stories are one of the most underutilized social media outlets for showcasing high-quality work. 

Many brands have the mentality that Instagram Stories are meant for “in the moment” content. I am here to tell you that if you are looking to catch your audience’s attention, increase your engagement, and set yourself apart from your competitors then you need to begin using Stories to share high-quality thought-out content. 

Since F4D Studio began sharing Stories that are thought out and utilizes higher quality creative we have seen our story completion and engagement rates increase from 30% to 90%. 

Here are five reasons why you should increase the amount of effort you put into creating content for your story:

Be Different

When people are click-through Instagram Stories, they are expecting to see low-quality images or videos that do not have many purposes behind them. So when they come across your high-quality images they are going to instantly grab their attention.

Entertain Viewers

Stories are used to fill idle time. Viewers on looking for some form of entertainment. So entertain them! Once you have created a reputation with your followers for having entertaining stories, they will begin seeking out your story content, which will in turn increase the amount of time they spend interacting with your brand.

Repurpose Content

Stories are a great way to repurpose content. A photo that is used on the feed will look completely different once it is cropped to fit as a story. It also allows you to use text overlay to shorten your captions, using only the important parts. Almost creating a TL;DR version of other pieces of content you have published. 

Utilize Entire Catalogue

Marketing teams can have large volumes of high quality creative, but only use a small percentage of it because they are limited to how many times they can use photos from a single shoot before becoming repetitive. Stories allow for marketing teams to begin utilizing their entire libraries of content without the fear of posting the same content over and over again in their feeds!

Decreased Distractions

When users are watching stories on their mobile devices, the entirety of their screen is filled with the image or video. At no other time are you able to remove all other distractions from your follower’s screen and have them fully focused on your brand.

Next time you are aimlessly clicking through Stories feeling unenthusiastic about the content you are seeing, think about how much you would enjoy if there was a brand that was putting a little more thought and effort into their stories. Maybe your brand should try sharing less “in the moment” content and try sharing some high-quality images or videos.

 

Change your mentality on stories if you want to increase your engagement with your audience.

 

Stay tuned for another article on how to properly format your creative specifically for Stories!