26 Mar What’s the Story with Insta Stories?

Instagram has been popular for a number of years, but it really took off when they added Instagram Stories, a Snapchat-type feature, in August 2016. Snapchat once ruled the Story game, but the platform has become less popular in general, especially among millennials, now that Instagram offers this feature.

What Are Insta Stories?

Insta Stories can be found by clicking on a user’s profile picture, and they include photos or short video clips that expire after 24 hours, unless saved as a “highlight.” Once the Story is saved as a “highlight,” it will be featured on the user profile’s main feed.

How Can Insta Stories Benefit Your Practice?

If you aren’t using Insta Stories to reach your followers — which are your patients or potential patients — you’re missing out. It’s an extremely effective way for followers to engage with your practice. Typically, Instagram Stories have a more casual tone than what viewers expect to see in your main feed, where it’s necessary for all posts to be professional and branded to create a beautiful layout.

Another great aspect of Insta Stories is that it is extremely cost efficient. This feature lets you educate and market to your followers at little to no cost. Using Instagram Stories to demonstrate treatments such as injectables, body contouring, skincare treatments and even surgical procedures is an excellent way to grow your viewership and increase website traffic.

Below are two great examples of highlight covers for prominent board-certified plastic surgeons. In both of these examples, their brand colors were implemented, and they did an amazing job creating appropriate categories to highlight their different profit centers.

One current client gains between 387 and 452 new leads a month via the specials and events website page featured in their Instagram bio. Posting specials and driving followers through to their Instagram bio drives traffic and increases conversions more effectively

Once you begin to master the art of growing your audience with Insta Stories and reach 10k followers, Instagram rewards you by letting you add links to your Stories so that viewers can swipe up to open the page. This can greatly increase your blog and procedure page viewership by providing a minimal amount of information to create interest and then directing the audience to the appropriate website page to learn more. Your practice’s social media and online marketing strategies work hand in hand, so it is critical that marketing professionals collaborate effectively to maximize results.

If you wanted to sum up the benefits of Instagram Stories in one sentence, it would be to say that Insta Stories let you tell your brand’s Story in a fun, creative way that increases followership and engagement.

13 Reasons to Use Instagram Stories

• There are 200 million daily active users.
• Instagram Stories are discoverable.
• You can add hashtags to Instagram Stories.
• You can include an outbound link.
• It helps grow your community.
• It promotes exclusivity.
• It adds a personalized approach to engagement.
• It keeps you top of mind (brand awareness).
• There’s no best time to post because they’re visible for 24 hours.
• You can download/save them.
• You can turn off Stories for certain users.
• They can be hidden.
• There’s a big fun factor.

4 Tips for Creating Successful Insta Stories

Find out these stats to help determine if this influencer is the right fit for your practice. Men are gaining more and more traction in the industry, but it is still currently dominated by females. If a blogger’s audience is more than 25-30% men, I would not recommend them unless it’s a male blogger and the purpose of the collaboration is to gain more male patients.

• Be confident: Don’t allow shyness or feelings of self-consciousness to prevent you from indulging in the wonderful benefits of Instagram Stories. Have you checked out your competitors? Providers in the aesthetic industry are hustling with their Stories and will absolutely continue to steal market share from you if you do not stay competitive. Once you learn the best practices of how to use Insta Stories, you have to take the plunge. The good news is that it becomes easier and more comfortable the more you do it until whipping out a quick Insta Story becomes second nature.
• Remember your value: Whether it’s you or your staff members overseeing your social media, remember you have amazing procedures and treatments to offer patients.
• Keep it relevant: While Insta Stories are more casual, it’s still important to maintain a certain level of professionalism. The best way to do that is to ensure all Stories are relevant to the aesthetics industry. You may see some providers post clips of irrelevant topics such as their favorite snack or their morning workout. Every Story you create should always tie into the aesthetics industry is some capacity.
• Stay varied: An effective approach to Instagram Stories is to mix professional stories and organic footage posted by you or your staff members. This maintains your audience’s interest and helps prevent them viewing from your content as boring — the dreaded word in social media. Here at MOD Marketing, we encourage our clients to implement visual effects, graphics and designs that attract and maintain the audience’s attention.