How Brands are Experimenting with Video on Instagram Stories

Despite launching only a little more than a year ago, the number of users on Instagram Stories has already bypassed those on Snapchat. In fact, Stories has more than 250 million daily active users, which is 60% of all daily Instagram users.

If you haven’t been active on Instagram, you might be wondering what Stories is. Basically, it is a way to post daily photos or videos without adding them to your main Instagram profile, which could interrupt your aesthetic. The photos and videos in your Story also disappear 24 hours after you post them. For brands and media companies, this is an excellent way to test out different types of content, experiment with brand voice or messaging, and to reach people in a more personal way.

What’s even better is that, unlike on Facebook, you can be sure that people engage with your content when they watch it, as over 70% of Stories are watched with the sound on. To do this, people must engage as they have to manually toggle the audio on since it doesn’t play automatically. Plus, if you’re wondering whether this will help your brand create sales, you should know that at least 30% of Instagram users (Story users and non-Story users) have purchased products they’ve first seen on the social media platform.

Because of these encouraging statistics and ability to test out content without it posting to their profile, brands are using Stories twice as often as Snapchat. Here are some different types of content brands have been testing out on their Stories:

Livestreams

Whether you’re streaming news, behind-the-scenes, or event coverage, livestreams are a great way to add content to your story. In order to add the live video to your story, you have to share a replay of it, or the video will disappear when it ends.

Behind-the-Scenes

If you’re not going live, you can still share video of life behind-the-scenes of an event, at your office, and more that will help your brand relate on a personal level.

Teasers

If you’re releasing a longer-form branded video, adding a teaser that links out to the full video is a great way to promote the content. Some brands have also teased their livestreams, products, and influencer takeovers with a quick video and link.

Multiple Clips

Videos for Instagram Stories can only be up to fifteen seconds long, so brands that want to share longer videos can cut the video into short clips and add them in order to their Stories, so that the next clip plays immediately after the previous clip ends.

How do you plan to experiment with Instagram Stories? Tell us in the comments below!

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By D. Simone Kovacs, Storyhunter Editor