Using Instagram Storytelling to Connect with Your Audience

Storytelling has become a very popular form of digital marketing, and there are a number of reasons why this is so. The digital age has provided us all with far greater access to information, but it still takes considerable time and energy to digest all that information. For instance, it's fairly well known that consumers have greater confidence in online reviews than any other kind of hearsay recommendations, and that they can now compare products offered by different companies simply by using a single click online.

That's why marketers must now make an effort to convey to users why their brand is superior, and why it should be the one selected for purchase. Storytelling is one of the marketing techniques which brands can use to simplify ideas that would otherwise be fairly complex, and might tend to confuse users. For marketers, the most important aspect of storytelling should be that it's highly effective, and that there are always greater customer conversions when online product pages relate some kind of story.Storytelling also moves consumers to pay more than they normally would for a specific product which has captured their attention, because there's a powerful story associated with it. Storytelling is one of the best ways marketers have for tapping into younger demographics and their desire to attain experience with specific products, by making them feel like part of the community, and by making them feel more involved by purchasing. If you're looking to supercharge your Instagram marketing strategy by making use of storytelling, here are the main elements you should keep in mind.

Understand your brand values

Really good storytelling is always based fundamentally on having a clear understanding of your brand's values and its history. By developing the history of your brand, you can easily communicate to your audience exactly why your business espouses the values that it does. The stories that you tell as part of your marketing strategy should be based on your company's mission and its business vision, so the user has a clear concept of what you're all about.

On Instagram, these values need to be expressed visually as well as by a strong content, since visual information is always more readily digested than straight text would be. This is a perfect opportunity for you to prepare a social media style guide, which can help you determine how your brand's values should be presented, since the style guide will provide you with a highly accessible reference point, which can translate into a kind of tutorial for managing your account.Your social media style guide should include information on how all of your profiles should be optimized, as well as information on tone and voice when writing copy and providing responses. Additionally, the style guide can include important information on formatting for all of your posts, a rundown of your branded hashtags, and visual guidelines associated with your account, such as fonts, colors, and the placement of your logo.

Synchronizing copy and images

Since people do commonly read the captions on Instagram, you should take advantage of the opportunity to provide more context to your images, and you should use your social media style guide to help with this. First of all, you should edit all your photos so they mesh well with your brand's personality. This doesn't mean you need to incorporate your color scheme into every photo, but it does mean that photos should tend to support your brand's mission and vision. As an example, a brand which attempts to appeal to parents and children should not be displaying photos which are gloomy or dark in nature.You can edit your photos simply by making use of Instagram's many filters, or you can use your own photo editing app. One of the best of these is Instasize, which comes with a creative toolkit that has a number of modern filters which can be used, as well as border options and font options that can really make your images appealing, while still remaining true to your brand.

Next, you should write out any caption you wish to use along with your Instagram photos. These can be long captions if you feel that it meshes well with your brand identity. On any of the images which you post to Instagram, make sure to provide adequate context and comments, while carefully choosing quotes or other text that will be easy to associate with your provided images. Keep in mind that coloring can heavily influence people's perception of any idea, for instance in the way that light colors provide brightness and cheer to an image.

Use analytics to make continuous improvements

Another thing you should keep in mind is that it's just not good enough to communicate your branding message in a manner which will be understood by your own team. You also need to take into account the perceptions and the viewing habits of your target audience, and that's where analytics can be a big help. Make sure to do all necessary research and consult the analytics which are available on your Instagram account.This should help you to determine which demographic identifies most closely with typical content that you post. It should tell you who is viewing your content and what time of day they're viewing it, and it should provide information for you far beyond the ordinary age and location data of the past. When you put all this analytical information together, it should help you fine tune your message and to communicate more effectively with your target audience.It's also a good idea to make use of Instagram insights, so you will be aware of which of your posts resonate the most powerfully with your target audience. You can create either weekly or monthly reports, but by regularly examining the content which is most successful, you'll be able to continuously make improvements to your strategy regarding the social media. It might even lead to a complete reworking of how your brand is presented at some point in the future, but you won't know any of this unless you review all the relevant data.