Good morning! Do you have one minute to read and one hour to do? If so, you can improve your small business’ marketing in a big way. Each week, we will provide new ideas. Grab your morning beverage and let’s get started:
This Week: How to Make Your Instagram Stories On-Brand
Instagram stories may be the key to your company getting more engagements on the platform. But how do you make sure they enhance your overall brand strategy? Yes, stories should look spontaneous and more casual than your other marketing communications, but they should still reinforce your overall brand strategy that you have carefully concocted over time. The goal is for your brand to look and feel the same wherever your target audience encounters it: from your stories and posts to your webpage.
Here are three steps to follow to make sure your Instagram stories are on-brand.
STEP ONE
Identify your story topic.
Looking at current photos is usually a good place to start. Choose one or several upon which to base your Instagram story.
STEP TWO
Create the story.
Canva, a design platform for non-designers, can be really helpful if you are not a graphic designer. The platform allows you to create the story right there. They will give you a template that is designed to fit perfectly into Instagram’s story dimensions. No worries with sizing!
Remember to use your brand colors and font when creating. Again, Canva makes it easy to add your brand colors and fonts to your brand folder ahead of time, so they’re waiting for you to use when you are building your story. Easy!
STEP THREE
Load the story into Instagram.
Here is another place where some businesses go astray. You have the option to add additional flourishes at this point. You can add stickers, geographic locations, hashtags, a hand written message, etc.
But again, remember your brand guidelines. If you are a trendy, bohemian, youthful, or other such brand, go crazy with color, angle, and font.
However, if your brand is more mainstream, traditional or business-like, remember to try to stick with something similar to your usual color, font, and feel. You can also fall back on the white or other neutral colors like charcoal gray or black that the Instagram platform offers for adding text when uploading your story. Alternatively, you can forgo these other options all together and use the story “as is” for a cleaner look.
For inspiration: see how the pros do it. Find several brands that you really admire and watch what they do with their stories. Start out by emulating them and next thing you know, you will be coming up with your own way to do things that is uniquely yours and, of course, on-brand.
Payoff: Instagram stories (static and video) are really working well for small biz owners. Jump on this trend and see how your engagement numbers on social media will skyrocket.
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