#GrowOnlinewithChinny: How to Attract more Clients to your Brand Using Instagram Stories

Hey there,

Thank you so much for the love shown on my last post! It was surreal! The comments kept coming in and my DM notifications kept popping with amazing feedback. If you missed it, it’s okay to take a break right away and check out my interview with Amin. She is simply badass boss babe! An engineer whose creative outlet is Instagram, where she is building a dope place for creatives. She shared how she has built a strong tribe and gave advice for navigating Instagram. There are 31 comments on the post and 154 comments on Instagram. Join the conversation!

Is it just me or are Instagram stories becoming a lot more fun than the feed itself? I love how Instastories allow you to show more personality (and this applies to brands as well because people want to feel like they know your brand). Don’t get it twisted though, your Instagram feed is very important. An aesthetically appealing feed is how you invite people into what your brand is doing. I am just saying that Instagram stories requires a lot less effort and is really a freestyle-y thing that can yield a lot of results if used the right way. So why not?

Post Consistently
With Instagram becoming more curated, I needed a place that allows me to connect with people every day without the pressure of a perfect caption. If I were a style or beauty blogger with a professional camera or top-notch editing skills, maybe I would post twice a day on my feed. However, I am mostly behind my computer typing papers for grad school or creating content that can help brands use social media effectively, all of which I get to share on my Instagram stories! So, hey, busy entrepreneur or 9-5er, share the behind-the-scenes of your hustle. What did you learn from that book? How was work today? What’s the inspiration behind your new product? You don’t have to let us in on everything, which is exactly my next point.

Be Intentional
What do you want to be known for? What should we always expect from you? Great style? Tell us how you decide your outfit choice. When you’re known for something, people expect that and if they’re interested, they’ll stay tuned!

Decide what you want to be known for (of course, you can freestyle sometimes), put some personality to your brand and share with us. I am not sure where I found this quote but it stuck with m: “Do not live on Instagram; live your life, then share on Instagram.”

Seek Genuine Connections
Are you seriously still stalking people on Instagram? Playing the Who’s-following-me game and comparing your clothes and makeup game to others? I want to believe you don’t have time for that. Seek to build genuine connections. If you like someone’s page, follow them and tell them something nice. There’s a big chance they will reply and check you out. If they don’t, move on. Not everyone answers you in real life.

A quick example: I checked out every Instagram comment on my last post and sent a thank you note to everyone. I felt a genuine connection to some of the accounts and followed them (also told them why I loved them). During the weekend, I was reviewing my resume and found a helpful tip which I shared on Instagram and voila, someone I just met on the gram said she was reading something similar and emailed me an entire book that answered so many questions. Guys, I will be able to write an e-book after reading that book. It’s that good. The question is: are you creating value? Again, live and then post on the gram. Start thinking of genuine connections. Be interested in what people do!

Get Creative
If I am out here recording blurry videos, talking about how my day went in 30 Instagram stories, I doubt you would be interested. I always take note of Instagram stories that catch my attention and think of how to make mine interesting. Play around with fonts, sizes, background colors, GIFs (I have tons of tutorials on my Instagram stories highlights that would be really helpful).

Make sure you keep things interactive, use polls, GIFs, ask questions, play around with templates from Canva or Unfold (these two apps can up your Instagram game in a minute). Lately, I’ve been screen-recording and using voice-overs in my tutorials on Instagram stories. Oh yes, download Inshot, guys. Thank me later!

Post Feedback
I tried this out last week and loved it. What I did was I took a screenshot of different comments from the Instagram post promoting my last blogpost and shared a collage on my stories. A quick trick for iPhone users would be to take a picture of anything in your stories. Click the pen icon, select a colour, press and hold the screen till it’s filled with that colour. Done. Now go to your gallery, try to share the picture and you’ll see the copy option. Go back to your Instagram stories and paste! You can do this multiple times to create a collage. Not an iPhone user? Over and Inshot are great apps to recreate this.

Try some of these tips and let me know how it works. Also, become my friend by following me @chinnysimperio and sending a DM. See you in the comments. Xoxo