The new emoji sliders & 4 other ways to optimize your Instagram Stories

The new emoji sliders & 4 other ways to optimize your Instagram Stories

Instagram is nowadays, without a doubt, one of the main platforms used as an influential tool. The Instagram Story has become a great opportunity for brands to make their followers’ experience a dynamic one. It is a simple way to interact with an audience while catching their attention.

According to some statistics, someone with over 3000 followers will easily get 25 - 30% of the audience watching their stories. This is a great opportunity for brands to create attractive and entertaining content to acquire loyal followers.

But how? With its last updates, Instagram offers lots of different features that can help. Here are four features to use in order to make your Instagram Story more efficient.

The Emoji Slider: quickly estimating a brand followers’ interest

This brand new feature allows the audience to give a slightly nuanced answer to a question, unlike the polls which only give two choices. This tool can also help a brand evaluate its followers’ interest in a product or a subject. If the subject being discussed with the Emoji Slider triggers a great interest, the brand could measure how to proceed with its future publications.

Polls: obtaining a clear answer

As mentioned before, the poll is more restrictive than the Emoji Slider, but it is still an important and practical tool that helps knowing what the followers like. Furthermore, it’s ideal to avoid being overwhelmed by comments. It is a feature used by lots of youtubers and beauty influencers in order to know what kind of content is the most appreciated. It can also help one take decisions by asking simple questions like: “Do you like this sofa’s colour?”

Stop-Motion: Creative and user-friendly

Who doesn’t like stop motions? This feature record short videos in no time! It is an easy way to have a creative and artistic story in a matter of minutes. The tools also is the occasion for a brand to demonstrate how unique and original it is. An accessible brand will attract a future customer or employee more easily.

Stop-Motion: Creative and user-friendly

Sharing a song from Spotify used to mean doing a screenshot, or filming a video while listening to music. From now on, all it takes is to select “share”, “Instagram story” and the song appears in the Story. Per usual, it is possible to add the stickers available in the app. For an artist, it is a good way to share a new album or a new song. For a brand, it sets the mood and helps sending out a certain kind of image to the audience. Rumour has it, a music sticker is in the making. It would help adding music in the background of a Story. It would be interesting to know if, on the long run, it will also be possible to share music through Apple Music or Soundcloud.

Re-sharing: making sure no post passes under the radar

This new feature is not available in every country yet but it’s already making waves. In order to make sure no follower missed a post, this tool will allow sharing a post instead of doing a screenshot. For users, influencers in particular, who often ask followers to ¨check their latest post¨, this will not be necessary anymore. All they will have to do is click on the image linked directly to the post to share it on their Story.

Bonus: GIFS!

Gifs are the people’s favourite and their arrival on Instagram seems to be a real success. However, we recommend using different kinds of GIFS and not the necessarily always the one featured on the trending section. In the search box, make sure to enter words that are pertinent. You can also search for the GIFs related to a specific creator or brand as sometimes they also have their own set of GIFS. In order to stand out, it is very important to do the right GIF research to keep your Story unique.

A brand that targets young people has to use this feature. Not using GIFs would be a missed opportunity to reach a young audience that likes memes and viral content.

Test out the different features!

This was just a short list of features you can use on Instagram in order to make your Story entertaining and attractive. Keep in mind that there are many ways to achieve this goal. The important thing is to try different things and find out what type of content your audience is the most responsive to. Don’t hesitate to share with us your best tips and tricks and we might share them in another article! Follow us on Instagram to see how we use all of these many Story features!