Your success on Instagram is all about creating better Instagram Stories. These fun additions to your brand can spotlight your brand and keep you top of mind. Want the full scoop on how to create better Instagram Stories? Read the full blog post.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Instagram Stories

There are four main tips to remember that will help you to get the most out of your Instagram Stories.

1. Add UTMs to Your Links to Track Your Instagram Stories Success

Instagram’s analytics can’t track link clicks, so our number one tip is to use UTM parameters—short text codes added to a URL that allows you to track website visitor data and traffic sources.

UTM parameters are also known as UTM codes and are a variant of URL parameters. URL parameters are shortcodes added to a URL. The main difference is that URL parameters are only used to dynamically modify content on a website and contains some tracking functionality and UTM parameters are for specific tracking functions only.

There are five different types of UTM parameters: campaign source, campaign medium, campaign name, campaign term, and campaign content.

The three main benefits of UTM parameters are:

1. Gives you a sense of where your overall traffic is coming from and insight as to what is working and what is not.

2. Allows you to test individual posts in classic A/B testing style so that you can get the best return on your campaigns

3. Provides the value of social to decision makers, helping you secure ongoing buy-ins and boost your budget.

When using UTM parameters, it is important to get the most reliable data for your brand. This means you should use and document a consistent naming convention.

When you look at the five different types of parameters, you should start to think about how you will describe the categories. You have to be consistent here because inconsistencies will lead to incomplete data.

It is essential to document the naming conventions you are using now even if you’re the only one working on your brand because this might not always be the case. Recording the naming conventions that you use will make it so that all of your hard work is saved and ready to be used if your brand grows large enough to need a team.

There are a couple of rules all UTM code naming conventions should follow:

• Stick to Lower Case

UTM codes are case sensitive. This means that if you use facebook, Facebook, FaceBook, and FACEBOOK they will all track separately. This will give you a set of incomplete data for your Facebook tracking. Keeping everything lowercase will avoid this problem entirely.

• Use Underscores Instead of Spaces

Replacing all spaces with an underscore and documenting this decision in your UTM style guide will help you to keep things consistent. For example, if you use traffic-source, traffic_source, trafficsource, and traffic source, it will all track separately. It is also important to note that ‘traffic source’ will turn into ‘traffic%20source’ in the URL.

SEE ALSO: How to Get Your Brand Verified On Instagram

2. Use Polls to Gather Feedback on Your Instagram Stories

Polls are a great way to survey your audience for real-time results and quickly see what people think of your content. The better you know your audience, the better you can serve them.

Polls are also a way to crowdsource ideas from your followers. You can use them to gather suggestions for new blog content or your next social video.

Another way to use polls is to merely keep the online conversation flowing. You can do this by including random questions on current events or popular culture references.

Polls are a smart way to engage people on social media because online participation is easy.

When a company tries to get you to fill out a survey, more often than not our initial response will be to click no. We rationalize that we don’t have time to do a study right now. However, a poll is never met with the same kind of feeling.

Polls require little effort, with set answers making participation easy.

Quick Tips on Running Polls

1. Launch Your Poll When Your Audience is Active

There’s no point in posting a poll that no one will see. A little research into when your audience is most active will save you from this problem.

2. Don’t Over Use Polls

Too many polls will make your site look like an area for free market research or a pseudo-online focus group.

We recommend doing a weekly poll. This will help you to avoid the possibility of losing your effect with too many polls. This scenario makes it less about engagement and more about using your audience for information, a situation best avoided.

3. Be Responsive

If someone responds to your poll, they’re looking to engage with your brand. You started the conversation; now you need to be present.

A comment should warrant a response, a like, and a thank you for their contribution. You should monitor your responses and reply to them throughout the day.

Continuing to be responsive even after the poll has closed is also essential. You can even tell your audience what you want to do with the data you recover from them if you want. This will encourage them to engage with you again in the future.

3. Include a Clear Call to Action on Your Instagram Stories

The right call to action can drive more visitors to your content, generate sales, and increase leads and conversion rates. Your call to action must be clear, actionable, and comfortable for your user to follow. When using call to actions in your Instagram stories, they need to remain short and straightforward, but also attention-grabbing.

You can make your call to actions pop by writing them in big, bold font. You can even add an arrow pointing to the call to action to give it a little extra attention.

There are a few things to consider when creating your call to action

1. Use Actionable Language

The whole point of your call to action is to ask your reader to act. You need to use verbs like discover, find, or explore to draw visitors in with intrigue and push them towards the action you want them to take.

2. Have a Clear Value Proposition

For your reader to make a specific action, you have to offer them value. We tend to do a lot of things based on an incentive, so you need to be clear and concise about how your readers will benefit.

4. Make it Easy

Humans on the internet have a similar attention span of a goldfish, so you need a call to action that will grab attention and be easy to do.

You might want to ask yourself what sounds easiest before you get started. This can help you to know whether or not to try a ‘fill out this form’ or a ‘sign up today’ call to action.

SEE ALSO: 4 Effective Instagram List Building Tips

4. Use Location and Hashtag Stickers for Discoverability

Using location and hashtag stickers in your Instagram Stories is a great way to get new followers. These stickers will make you more visible in searches and will make it easier for potential followers to find you.

Stickers are great for adding context to your story no matter where you are or what you’re up to. When you’ve taken a photo or video, you’ll see a stickers button next to the text and drawing tools. Merely tap the smiley face to find customizable stickers for the current time, weather, or even your location. If you choose to add a location sticker, it works the same as adding a place to the posts you share to your feed.

You can even make stickers on your own. You can move them around, make them bigger or smaller, and choose from different styles that match your mood. Selecting subtle stickers can let your photo shine, or pick a vibrant sticker to bring an extra pop of color to your story.

Using stickers may even allow your Story to be featured in the sticker’s larger story. This is a curated collection of Instagram Stories that are all tagged with a particular location or hashtag sticker.

SEE ALSO: Everything You Need To Know About The New Instagram Update

Final Thoughts

The Instagram Story feature can be a great way to boost engagement and build your audience if done the right way. Using UTMs, polls, calls to action, and location and hashtag stickers can find you a more excellent audience and get them involved with your brand.

There are people out there who what to find your brand, and hashtags can help you to help them. The same can be said of polls. UTMs and polls can make sure that your account is working for your followers, which will keep your brand relevant. Utilizing these tips will help you to get the most out of your brand.

What makes a great Instagram Story? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section…