How to Use Instagram Stories For Influencer Marketing - 11 of The Best Ways
Want to learn how to integrate Instagram Stories with influencer marketing to achieve your marketing goals? Read this post to find 11 ways to achieve that.
Stories are a brilliant Instagram feature for people who don’t want to spend a lot of time on social media, but still like to quickly and frequently check for updates. That’s the beauty of ephemeral content—it’s engaging, but not time consuming.
That is probably why marketers and brands have made Instagram Stories an integral part of their social media marketing strategies. One area that is yet to be explored further is the use of these for influencer marketing.
How can you leverage this feature for influencer marketing?
Well, that’s what this post is all about. In this post, you will find 11 effective ways to use Instagram Stories for influencer marketing.
Ready to find out more?
Here you go. Here are six ways to use Instagram Stories to boost your business.
1. Host Q&A Sessions
You can use Instagram video Stories or live video features to host a Q&A session with influencers and industry experts. You can call influencers in your niche to talk about trending industry topics and provide your audience with insights.
You can also host personal Q&A sessions with popular influencers to drive their followers to your Instagram account to listen to the session. The influencer can, in turn, promote the upcoming Q&A session on their Story to drive more people to watch it.
You can also have a live Q&A session where the audience can directly ask questions. The good thing about Instagram is that you can then post your videos as Stories that stay on your feed for 24 hours.
If you’re new to influencer marketing and need help finding the right influencers, you can hire agencies to find influencers. These can help you find and reach out to the best influencers in your industry.
You can also do a manual search and find influencers directly from your Instagram network or by doing a detailed hashtag search. Once you find a few influencers that you think are relevant, you can reach out to them via direct message or email. Here’s a detailed guide on how to find anyone’s email address, for your reference.
2. Conduct Polls and Quizzes
Many people use Instagram Stories’ poll and quiz stickers to gather valuable insights into their audiences’ preferences. You can integrate influencer marketing with this by having an influencer conduct a poll or quiz relevant to your brand.
They could create a poll and ask which of two products their audience likes and then host a giveaway with that or share a discount code. You can also conduct a poll about which new product or feature people would want to see in your next launch.
Similarly, an influencer can also create a quiz around your brand or products to not only engage their audience but also introduce them to your brand. They can also add your brand mention to direct their followers to your account. This will also help you increase your followers on Instagram.
3. Share Influencer Event Pictures
The first rule of marketing on Instagram is to use great visuals as it is a primarily visual platform.
Therefore, one of the most popular influencer marketing tactics is to host influencer events and ask the participants to post about it on social media. Instagram Stories provides a good platform for sharing frequent updates and behind-the-scenes footage from those influencer events.
The main content can be posted on the influencers’ feeds, but everything else can be shared as stories. This is a great way to keep the audience updated and involved in the event and is good for the publicity of your brand.
So, host influencer events and encourage them to share frequent updates from the event in their Stories. Also, do the same from your own Instagram account to reap the most benefits from the event.
4. Leverage Instagram Stories Ads
This is a lesser-known way of utilizing Instagram Stories for influencer marketing but it definitely works. You may be thinking that Instagram Stories Ads are a paid marketing strategy and not exactly influencer marketing, right?
Yes, they are. But there is a trick to integrate both paid ads and influencer marketing.
Want to learn what it is?
Well, you can take some of your best influencer content and use it in your Instagram Stories Ads. This way, you will not only get the most out of your influencer collaboration but will also get good content for your ads.
Moreover, these ads are shown to a lot more people than your or any influencer’s followers, thus getting your content very wide reach.
So, the next time you collaborate with an influencer who creates some amazing content, don’t forget to use it in your Instagram Stories Ads.
5. Use Countdowns for Product Launches and Events
One brilliant feature of Instagram Stories is the countdown sticker that’s available. This sticker starts a live countdown at the end of which you can schedule an event.
You can leverage this for your product launches to create buzz around the new launch and generate excitement before the launch. Making people wait for your upcoming product will create excitement and curiosity, thus making people more interested in it.
Similarly, you can also use countdowns to announce an event and get influencers to promote it. This could be used for both offline and online events. You can partner with a few influencers and ask them to start a countdown on their Instagram Stories to promote the event.
6. Host Instagram Stories Takeovers
Some brands work closely with influencers and allow them to take over their Instagram accounts for a set period of time and talk directly with their audience. This is exactly what an Instagram Stories takeover is.
If you have a few influencers or brand ambassadors with whom you regularly collaborate, then you can use this. Let the influencer take over your Stories and talk directly to your followers.
Also, ask the influencer to promote the upcoming takeover on their Instagram profile to bring in as many viewers as they can to your account. This tactic often leads to an increase in the brand’s follower count on Instagram.
7. Promote Contests and Giveaways
As marketers, almost all of you have likely used contests and giveaways to attract new audiences and increase your followers. It is one of the most popular growth strategies for Instagram to increase follower count.
However, if you integrate it with influencer marketing, then you can improve the results multifold.
Wondering how to do so?
First, you can ask influencers to promote your contests and giveaways on their Stories to drive traffic to your account. A simple mention of the contest on a popular influencer’s Instagram Story is enough to get you a lot more contest participants.
Second, you can co-host contests and giveaways with influencers. This is a mutually-beneficial way of running contests where the condition for participation is to follow both accounts.
You can both share the contest on your Instagram profiles and even ask participants to tag their friends or get other people to follow. Then, promote the contest on your Story and ask the influencer to do the same.
The idea of promoting a giveaway in Stories is simply to bring people’s attention to it and drive them to the actual post. And, as more people view Stories than scroll through their entire feed, it makes sense to promote your contests and giveaways there.
Here’s an example of an influencer promoting a giveaway on her Instagram Story:
Image via Instagram
8. Share Product Tutorials or Explain Product Features
One brilliant use of Instagram Stories is to use them to explain a product’s features or even give a tutorial. Doing this is comparatively more difficult on a post unless you decide to make a whole tutorial video. But, in Instagram Stories, you can simply start talking about the product without making a professional video.
This strategy is even more effective when it is a popular influencer who does that talking and explains a product’s features and functionality.
Here’s an example of an influencer talking about an electric toothbrush and making a boring product like that interesting.
Image via Instagram
The same Story may not have been as fun if the brand posted it themselves. But, because an influencer is talking about it, the product seems more interesting.
9. Show Sneak Peeks
This is another way in which you can use Instagram Stories to create buzz around your new product launches. You can collaborate with multiple influencers and ask them to share sneak peeks into your upcoming product launch and generate some excitement around it.
Moreover, by using multiple influencers, you can reach many more people as you would have by sharing it only on your Story. Also, don’t forget to share high-quality pictures of the product with influencers to ensure that it gets the desired engagement.
You can also share some unique features or pertinent details about the product that you think will attract the right audience.
10. Showcase Product Pictures/Videos
This is probably the most common way in which brands use Instagram Stories for influencer marketing. Provide your partner influencers with some high-quality product pictures/videos and ask them to share them in their Stories and mention your brand.
This is a simple, yet effective, way to direct traffic to your Instagram account and get people interested in your products.
Here’s an example of a food influencer sharing a video of a meal from a restaurant and tagging the restaurant in his Story.
Image via Instagram
The picture gets people’s attention and the tag lets people check out the restaurant’s Instagram page.
Simple, yet effective, right?
11. Share Discount Codes and Other Promotions
Another effective way to leverage Instagram Stories for influencer marketing is to provide influencers with unique discount codes and have them share them in their Stories.
We all know that promotional techniques like discount codes are as effective today as they were decades ago. Instagram Stories, however, help influencers reach a lot more people.
Also, don’t forget to ask your partner influencers to mention your brand or tag it so that their audiences can easily visit your page and use those coupons.
Conclusion
Instagram Stories are a fun and engaging way to share updates, promote contests or events, and even announce new product launches. And, if you integrate them with influencer marketing, you can achieve even better results.
These are some of the best tips to utilize Instagram Stories for influencer marketing. Try these Instagram marketing strategies and see the results for yourself.