Brilliant Instagram Story Ideas To Help You Get Your Profile Noticed 

Instagram is one of the biggest, best social media marketing networks of all, with almost 1.2 billion users across the world showing the world their day to day lives.  There’s plenty of scopes and an enormous amount of exciting Instagram Story content.  It all sounds great but when you’re competing in a busy arena to get your profile noticed and stamp your social proof, you need to stave off some pretty stiff competition.

It’s Hard Standing Out In A Crowded Marketplace

In today’s crowded marketplace, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd. Whether you are trying to gain visibility for your small business or promote yourself as an individual online, you need to find ways to stand out from all of the other voices clamoring for attention.

Without a doubt, it’s difficult to stand out from a crowd when there are so many content creators on Instagram.  Perhaps you’ve used Instagram for a while, and you feel that you’re hitting a brick wall when it comes to coming up with inspirational content that keeps followers coming to your profile page?

One thing’s for sure, Instagram Stories should always be a part of your social media strategy and always part of your feed posts, they can convert warm leads into hot leads!

Is Your Engagement Dropping Off?

Not getting the story viewers you’ve been used to in the past? Maybe you’re not getting the real life engagement you want on Instagram?  You’re not growing your followers? Your profile isn’t getting the Instagram views that you’ve been used to and when you visit your insights, you’re noticing a plateau effect.  Even worse, your Instagram followers are starting to drop away.  What are you doing wrong?

We’ll Inspire You With Story Ideas!

At Instagram Likes, we believe that a great story can inspire and captivate audiences from all walks of life. If you are reading the above and nodding your head, then we can help you find some inspiration for some exciting Instagram story ideas.  We will help you shift your “Instagram” creativity block and grow your engagement once again and everyone wants more engagement on Insta!

We’ve put together a useful guide with some superb suggestions to help you boost your Insta Stories’ views, keep your followers engaged and gain more Instagram followers to grow your presence online.

Never Used Instagram Stories Before?

Maybe you’re new to Instagram Stories or you’ve never used Instagram Stories before?  If you’re brand new to Insta Stories, then this handy guide on cool Instagram Story Ideas will help you to get more creative using the little circular button on your Instagram profile and your mobile device’s camera roll.

So let’s dive in and make your next story a brilliant one.  First though, let’s refresh your memory on what Instagram Stories are all about.

What Are Instagram Stories?

Instagram is a photo and video sharing platform.  The app first launched back in 2010 and was a place to display pictures, mainly used by people to stay in touch with their family and friends.  Over the last twelve years, the app has evolved into something so much bigger.

Instagram is a place where businesses, brands and individuals connect with others.  It’s also the birthplace of the modern-day Influencer.  These people have huge followings on Instagram and post different aspects of their lifestyles.

Look at what other accounts do. Some might be fashionistas, others might be fitness fanatics or sports’ personalities, perhaps a great chef or someone who makes homemade gifts.  They use their profile to leverage their own “brand” and their followers look up to what they do.  So, whenever they highlight a particular item and tag a brand, their followers take note and often buy into that item too.  Influencing is huge on Instagram and Influencers use Instagram Stories to highlight aspects of their lives.

When Did Instagram Launch the Story Feature?

In August 2016, Instagram launched Instagram Stories. Although similar to Snapchat’s Stories, there are a few key differences. For one, Instagram Stories disappear after 24 hours while Snapchat’s disappear after 10 seconds unless saved as a highlight. Secondly, you can buy instagram views on your Story while this is not possible on Snapchat.  If you visit your Instagram account and look right at the top of your news feed, you should see a horizontal line of small circular icons. Each icon is a different user who’s posted a “Story.”  Click on the circular icon to see the story.  Stories are a fantastic way of adding more drama to your Instagram posts and adding multiple photos.

Stories Last for 24 Hours

A story could be a mini video, a collection of photographs or images.  It could also be an Instagram question or an Instagram poll.  Stories often have Instagram filters applied to them, with emojis and stickers.  They’re designed to be short and sweet but also to only last 24 hours.  Other stickers include quiz stickers, countdown stickers and link stickers, play around with what’s available and try them all out.

Once the 24 hours is up, the story disappears from view making them even more exclusive!  You can prolong your own story by “Adding it to Highlights.”  When you choose this option, your story stays visible on your profile page for as long as you want it.

The beauty of Instagram Stories is that you can use it for lots of different things and we will talk about why use Instagram Stories as we move through this guide.

Why Use Instagram Stories?

Let’s start with the reasons why you should use Instagram Stories.

Whether you’re an individual with a personal Instagram account, a business, brand or Influencer, Instagram Stories are part of your Instagram journey.  By using the Stories feature, you can get access to even more Instagram users.  A quality Instagram Story can help to capture more Instagram followers (but you must have a Public Account to be visible to other users.  A Private Account only displays your Insta Story to your followers).

Aim For the Instagram Explore Page

A very strong story with thousands of views can even make it to the biggest prize of all – the Instagram Explore page, usually used for the most creative ideas!  This is the area where Instagram highlights its biggest performing content and encourages other users to interact with it.  If you have a social media marketing strategy, getting onto the Instagram Explore page should be one of your goals.

Use Instagram Stories to Grow Your Followers

Savvy marketers know that the Instagram Story feature on the social media networking platform is a brilliant place to grow your followers Instagram.  If you’re in a hurry though, you might find creating and posting Instagram Stories a long-winded way to gain more followers.  So, using 1394ta, you could choose to buy Instagram likes if you want a quick result.  Our service is reliable and most importantly it’s genuine.

We work with millions of Instagram users, conducting extensive market research to find out about their social demographics.  Then, we place them into categories on our extraordinarily large and comprehensive database.  So, when you buy Instagram followers from us or buy Instagram Story views, you get the real deal. Live, genuine accounts that want to follow your type of business area.  We don’t do fakes, bots, or spam.  You’re always in safe hands with our service.

Increase Brand Awareness

Instagram Stories are wonderful for businesses and brands because you can use them to highlight new collections, talk about new services, do a behind-the-scenes at the office, and generally keep your brand high in mind.

For Market Research Purposes

Another reason why you might want to use Instagram Stories is for market research purposes.  For example, you can use it to ask questions using own branded questionnaires to your audience or conduct a poll to gain information about your brand.  You could ask them what they like, what they don’t like, what they think of a new service – pretty much anything!

With 499 million users watching Instagram Stories every day you need to take advantage of the feature so we’re going to help you with some amazing Instagram Stories ideas to help you grow!

Ideas to Grow Your Instagram Profile Using Instagram Stories

1. Do You Run a Blog?

Blogging is an effective way of improving your online presence.  If you have a blog then you could display it on Instagram, especially if you have one associated with your business or brand.

If you don’t have a blog, perhaps this is the right time for you to start one up!  There are so many platforms out there to create a blog and write about your business or brand (or whatever you want).  Have a go and remember to post a link to your blog on your Instagram profile, and on any other social media platforms that you use too.

Within your blog, here’s what you can do:

-Place your blog link in your bio so anyone visiting your profile will see that you have a blog.

-Use the “Swipe Up” Instagram feature on an Instagram Story so that anyone visiting your story can immediately access your post.  This is easier for your followers as they don’t have to hop back to your profile and visit a link in the bio message.  The Swipe Up feature is only available for Instagram accounts that have more than 10,000 followers.

-Don’t just use it to discuss business or brand related topics.  You could make it a place for lifestyle, or if you’re a chef, post recipes, or if you’re a hairdresser, post how-to tutorials.

-Having a blog works two-fold.  It can also grow your overall online presence because you will hopefully build up your blog subscribers.

How About Promoting an Instagram Post on Your Stories?

Any post that you’ve already experienced good engagement with is ripe for an Instagram promotion!  one popular way to promote content on social media is to buy likes for Instagram. By sharing your posts with a large audience, you can help increase engagement and make your content more visible to potential viewers.  So go through past posts and pick out those that resonated with your followers. This exercise also helps you come up with creative new posts.

Why not share your biggest engagement Insta posts on your Instagram Stories?

This helps to get your post to a bigger audience because in-feed posts can never guarantee that all of your followers will see them.  People use Instagram at contrasting times of the day so your post can easily be missed.  Give it an extra boost with a paid promotion.  It’s easy to do.

How to Promote Your Instagram Post

Here’s how to promote your Instagram Post so it appears on Stories.

-Promote your post to encourage followers to make sales of a product or a service.

-Screenshot your Instagram post.  You could blur the image and use it as a teaser, so your followers go to your feed to view it, or vice versa!  Blur a picture in your Instagram feed and take your followers to your Story instead…

-You can use this to announce a new product launch.

-Record a short how-to-use post to show people the best way to use your products.

-Or ask for feedback on your post to encourage user engagement.

-Record a “Have to Have It!” piece on your stories, if it’s clothing related, wear the clothes.

-Always direct your followers back to your bio so they can shop your products.

-Try shoppable Stories – we’ve got more information on this idea a little further on in this piece.

Make Your Instagram Story Shoppable

This has to be one of the best Instagram Story ideas to grow Instagram followers and it’s another way of monetizing your Instagram profile.

Role back to 2019 and Instagram released yet another new, exciting feature to help business, brands, and Influencers to monetize their social media content.  Shoppable Story Stickers.  Don’t forget to add music to make your post even more interesting, there’s plenty of free music available on Instagram that you can add to your story.

What is a Shoppable Story Sticker?

This feature allows users to shop directly from a business, brand, or Influencer’s Instagram profile.  A Shoppable Story sticker is a special sticker that appears on your Story. This means there’s no need for your followers to use the “Swipe Up” feature and therefore have to move off of the Instagram platform.  Shoppable Stickers show users that they can shop direct from a user’s Story.

There is criteria for using Shoppable Story Stickers.  Firstly, you need to sell products or a product that complies with Instagram’s user policies.  You can check Instagram’s policies by clicking on this link here: https://help.instagram.com/581066165581870.

Criteria for Displaying a Shoppable Story Sticker On Your Stories

As mentioned, you do need to be selling products or a product that complies with Instagram’s policies.  You also need to switch over your personal account to a business profile if you haven’t done it already.  It’s easy to do with our steps below:

Switching from a Personal Instagram Account to a Business Instagram Account:

To switch your personal accout to Instagram business account;

-Visit your Instagram profile.

-Tap on the three, short horizontal lines (top right-hand side).

-Tap on Settings and switch over to a Professional Account.

-Tap on Continue.

-Select your business category (the one most relevant to what you do).

-Tap on Done.

-Next, tap on OK to confirm the switch over.

-Then tap on Business.

-Tap on Next and enter all your contact details.

If you have a Facebook account, you can link the two in the next step.

We should mention that some countries don’t yet have access to the Shoppable Story Stickers – but we are hopeful that it will roll out to more territories in time.  For more information on Shoppable Story Stickers, click on this useful link here: https://business.instagram.com/blog/announcing-shopping-in-instagram-stories-and-explore?locale=en_GB.

4. Showcase a Story Takeover!

Here’s another clever Instagram Story idea to help build your presence on the popular social media platform.  Showcase an Instagram Story takeover for a day!  It’s literally a way of getting people to see your profile in a different light by allowing someone else to host on your story.

What does that mean?

Why not allow someone else – preferably a brand or a business, perhaps even an Influencer in your category – to take over your Story for a day.

Don’t just choose randomly.  Be careful with your selection and choose anyone who has a different following to you (but still have the same type of audience) and who already greatly understands how Instagram works.

Next, you offer them total reign over whatever they want to post.  Don’t forget to ask to see their takeover post before it goes live, you should still see what they’ve created for you.

You Get a Fresh Voice and a New Person On Your Feed!

The idea here is that the Story takeover gives you a different, fresh voice.  The story will be live for 24 hours and will get lots of different views from users who haven’t yet had the opportunity of discovering you, as the account you choose to do the takeover will have a different following to your own.

If you partner with an Influencer, you get to promote your products, services, and brand to different Instagram users.  As far as payment, most Influencers will ask for money, but some will take free product or free services in exchange.  You might get lucky if you offer to do the same for them and takeover their story – they might do this in exchange instead of financial payment.

Finding Influencers to Work With

You can search for Influencers on Google or why not conduct your own Influencer research on Instagram to find Influencers in your area?  There are more than 500,000 Influencers on the platform, you’re bound to find a few.

If you’re just starting out or you’re a small business with a small budget, look for Influencers with a few thousand followers. These Influencers are called Micro Influencers.  They may be small, but they’re still powerful in their niche and they won’t cost you as much as the Nano Influencers who tend to have millions of followers on their account.  You might even be able to pay them with free products or offer them free services.

When you find the right Influencer to work with, perhaps put together a plan of action for more than one Instagram Story?  There’s so much more you can do with Instagram Influencing and for more information on the topic, visit our blog to read our piece on The Different Types of Influencers.

5. Have You Tried a Go Live – it’s one of the strongest Instagram Story Ideas Available Today!

Once you’ve got to grips with posting interesting, engaging Stories, the next step is to move over to doing some Live videos.  They’re easy to do once you know how and they are extraordinarily effective.  They’re even better than the basic stories you’re used to posting on your Instagram profile.

Why Live Instagram Videos Are So Engaging

A Live video is a super way to speak directly to your audience because these types of videos occur in time.  It’s also an interactive Instagram Story idea that really works.

You could use this feature on Instagram to ask your users questions and invite them to ask you questions.  Or why not use the Live feature to display real video testimonials and share testimonials from your customers? Reviews past customers have written are ideal for posting on your Instagram Stories.

You could hold an interview, get involved with your users and host real conversations!  It’s a little fun way of engaging with your audience, for you and for your followers.

The bonus to a Live Instagram Video is that it’s always recorded so you can use it later on your profile.  That means that users who weren’t available during your Live Story can still see what you posted – you get more views and even more user engagement.  You will probably pick up more Instagram followers too, using this feature on Instagram.

Tell Your Users In Advance That You’re Going Live!

Remember to post about your upcoming event.  Tell your followers that you’re doing a Go Live and tell your audience what time and what day.  Your users then receive a push notification when you start broadcasting.  For Instagram Story views, order them here and see real people engaging with your Story to help increase your engagement.

6. Have You Tried IGTV Yet?

Once you’ve mastered posting interesting Instagram Stories and you’ve made them Shoppable (if you can do so), you’ve also created some Instagram Reels – the next step is to try IGTV – or Instagram Television.

IGTV was first introduced in June 2018 and is a video app designed for long form video content – a little like YouTube. It was launched to rival YouTube and TikTok.

You can connect your IGTV profile to your Instagram profile and use this feature to create Instagram Stories with a short, one minute preview of your channel on your Instagram Story feed.

Who doesn’t love the idea of being on TV!  Well, with Instagram, now’s your chance to finally be famous!

The Length of IGTV Posts

Of course, you can also go long – and by that we mean that IGTV allows broadcasts of up to   60 minutes (these must be recorded from your desktop browser).  If you use a mobile device to record an IGTV, you can only record for up to 15 minutes per video.  The minimum time for an IGTV post on Instagram is only one minute.

Play around – you’ll have so much fun doing it!

IGTV is quite simply a brilliant addition to Instagram because it’s the first time that users can post long videos on the platform.  So, try out an IGTV if you haven’t already and preview it for a minute on your story.  If you’re a verified Instagram user, did you know, you can record a video for up to an hour?  If you’re not, you still get a worthy fifteen minutes of footage.  Make sure it’s fun!

7. Create a Poll

We’ve touched on Instagram Poll Stickers earlier in this post.  These are special stickers that are expressly designed to use on Instagram Stories.  All you need to do is post a question with two responses and ask your audience for their opinion when they answer questions.

Polls Create Brand Awareness

A poll is a terrific way of creating brand awareness and encouraging more user engagement.  Plus, because you’re asking them to get involved, you build up more of a rapport with your followers.

Use Polls to Canvass Opinion About Your Brand

Why not ask your followers what they prefer?  Show them outfit a or outfit b?  You could ask people which they prefer out of a couple of products or whether you should launch a certain product.  You can also canvass opinion on anything, from politics to sport to fashion to education with clever educational content if you want – whatever you want to ask!

So the next time you need an opinion on something to do with your business – try the poll feature and use it as a “free” market research tool.

8. Share a Hot Tip on Instagram Stories!

If you’ve got something really interesting and empowering that you’d like your followers to know about it, (such as an upcoming sale) tell them.

You could make tip sharing a daily insight piece, with information on a specific topic. Or a motivational quote, perhaps an inspirational quote?  For example, if you’re into money, why not post a money saving tip?  Or if you’re into cooking, share a time-saving kitchen tip? Or you could share some Instagram Story game ideas!  Maybe you can’t stop cleaning up! So use this to your advantage and why not share some cleaning hacks every day?  It’s another way of making your story more interesting and engaging and will help you to get more followers for Instagram.

9. Ask a Question

There’s also a Question Sticker that’s similar to the Poll Sticker and designed especially for use with the Instagram Stories Feature.  It’s especially for you to use when you want to ask your followers a question.

It’s similar to the poll but it’s different in that the sticker actually says “Question.”  So you could ask your viewers what they’d like to see from you or ask them what they’re doing or, where they’re going today?  Ask for recommendations, ask them what they like about what you do and be brave, ask them what they don’t like too.

10. Give Your Followers a Behind-the-Scenes Tour

Here’s another great idea for your Instagram Stories engagement. Why not record a short video sneak peek for your Stories and show everyone what happens behind-the-scenes at the office?  Introduce them to your staff, allow them to meet new team members, show them what you’re working on, perhaps even give them a guided tour.

A behind-the-scenes is an innovative story idea.  It engages people with what you do, and they feel they get to know your business even better.  It’s also transparency because it makes you look more authentic.

Your behind-the-scenes could be about anything – your view from your desk, where you’re sitting at home, your home-office, your redecorating!  Get creative and think outside of the box.

Final Words on Creative Instagram Story Ideas

Of course, one of the best ways to gain inspiration is to look at other Instagrammers’ stories and see what they’re doing.  What do you like?  What makes you sit up and take notice and perhaps watch more than once?  Use these types of Stories to help you find something to post.  If you just can’t think of anything to post, have a break, and come back to revisit Stories when you’ve refuelled, and you feel refreshed.  You’ll have more cute Instagram Story ideas up your sleeve when you’re ready.

A List of Fun Facts About You or Your Business

Other things you can do is post a list of fun facts about your business or run a GIF challenge.  Ask people to tell you some fun facts about them too and get the conversation going.

You could always use an Instagram Stories template to help you if you’re still drawing a blank.  Here’s a useful link to one. There are lots of Instagram Story templates available, just do a Google search for more.  One last thing, always be the real you!  Instagram is about real life and showing others what your life is all about, whether it’s your business life or personal life so keep it real.