Stories feature heavily on Instagram and its social media siblings, but knowing what to post as a story can be tricky. Some Instagram users struggle with coming up with new, engaging stories when they want to share daily content. Luckily, there are some good story ideas that can provide Instagram users with plenty of inspiration and keep viewers engaged. In this article, you’ll discover some great story ideas for Instagram, as well as tips for maintaining a strong and successful Instagram story presence.
1. Overview of Good Story Ideas For Instagram
Coming up with good story ideas for Instagram can be a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to be! There are many creative and interesting story ideas that you can use to capture your audience’s attention and keep them engaged. Here are some ideas for Instagram stories you can use:
- Interviews: Ask your followers to submit questions for you to answer in an interview. You could even feature an interesting person or company in an interview-style story.
- Q&A: Have your followers ask you questions or topics they’d like to see you cover in your story. This can be a great way to interact with your followers and spark conversations.
- Behind-the-scenes: Show your followers what it’s like to be behind the scenes at your business. This can be a great way to give them a peek into your operations.
If you’re looking to keep your audience engaged, you can also create polls, use creative graphics and animations, or create ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ stories. Whether you’re looking to create engaging content for your followers or to engage with them more, these story ideas for Instagram can be a great way to start!
2. Challenges, Events, and Posts
Having challenges, events and posts provide the opportunity for members to socialize, learn from each other and improve user engagement. It is an opportunity to get creative and enter into conversations on a vast range of topics.
- Challenges – These are short, interactive activities which require members to submit evidence that they have properly completed the challenge. These challenges are fun, informative and promote user engagement.
- Events – These are one-off activities incorporated into your group or community that may not always have any specific goal but are used to generate interest in your group. These activities could be contests, workshops, etc.
- Posts – This is one of the most effective and common ways to engage with members and promote your group. By sharing posts with information, stories, tips, advice and other data, then engaging in discussions of that post, you can effectively create an internal dialogue and an engaging environment.
Using challenges, events and posts, to encourage engagement is an effective way to increase user interaction and keep interest in your group or community. Keeping members informed and engaged with your group through these activities will ensure members feel valued and create a vibrant and motivating environment.
3. Creative Experiments and Visuals
Analyse Results: After completing creative experiments, analyse the results and find out what works best. Knowing what works best is important, as it enables you to focus your efforts on creating visuals that are effective, interesting and attractive. This helps you to portray the key messages accurately and powerfully.
Understand Your Audience: Understanding your audience is the key to creating visuals that are compelling and persuasive. Get to know your target audience to create visuals that create an emotional connection. Check out the demographic, interests, preferences and buying behaviour of your audience to ensure your visuals fit in with their lifestyles.
Brainstorm: Brainstorming is essential when creating visuals. Think of various interesting ways to design some visuals to get a large range of ideas that can be narrowed down. Evaluate each idea to ensure only the most effective visuals are used. Explore the options, talk to the team, and experiment using the right software and tools.
- What colour schemes work best?
- What icons or images make the point?
- Is the font readable and clear?
4. Engaging and Entertaining Ideas
As a school or business, should be top of mind. You want to keep your audience engaged, entertained, informed and connected. Here are some ideas:
- Public speaking events to encourage audience participation and collaboration, like town halls or debates between experts.
- Trivia or game nights, especially if you have prizes to give away.
- Promotions and contests with different incentives to attract customers and students.
Storytelling is perhaps one of the oldest and most effective ways to keep your audience entertained. People have been using stories to pass on lessons, provide entertainment, and capture the imagination for centuries. With the rise of social media and technology, storytelling got even easier and more accessible. You can use audio, video, and interactive elements to help engage your students and customers, such as sharing videos and articles about school achievements, inspiring community stories, and success stories from alumni.
Film Festivals are a great way to bring people together to watch and discuss films. Consider screening locally-made, educational, or international films that align with your school or business values. Have speakers or panelists on hand and provide ways for the audience to share their thoughts and ideas, such as a live Q&A session after the screening.
5. Keeping it Relevant and Timely
Gone are the days when a single piece of content is shared many times over, long after it has become irrelevant. For sustained viewership, publishers need to keep their content fresh. Here’s how to go about doing this:
- Identify topics that are trending – Monitor social media and news sites to get a better sense of what people are talking about.
- Access up-to-date research and reports – Digital documents can provide first-hand information and valuable data, giving your post a more reliable edge.
- Cover recent events and news – Take note of the most recent updates about your subject, as it serves as a great hook for gaining readers’ attention.
Ultimately, the aim of intelligent content creation is to showcase your expertise in that field, whilst bringing something new to the table. That’s why publishers should carry out extensive research and ensure all content is current, relevant and up-to-date.
By actively avoiding stale, outdated content, publishers can ensure higher engagement and loyalty from their readership. Keeping the content relevant is the key to success!
To conclude, Instagram is an excellent platform for unleashing your creativity and telling your story. Whether you choose to focus on a single narrative, post individual episodes, or combine videos and pictures, it is a great way to document your life, share a message, or educate your audience. Hopefully, this article has given you some good story ideas to get you started!