Instagram Stories for a Business Account

What launched yesterday

Instagram added Stories yesterday. They are photos and short videos that appear in a row of profile pictures at the top of the app, and they disappear after 24 hours.

You can write a line of text over a photo or draw on it in a few colours. Stories do not appear on your profile grid or in your followers' main feed.

Anyone who uses Snapchat will recognise the format. For a business, the useful question is what belongs there that does not belong in the feed.

What belongs in a story

• Today's selection, or what is left in the case.
• Behind the counter: prep, deliveries, a fresh batch.
• Quick notices, such as closing early or a sold-out item.
• Work in progress that is not ready for a finished photo.
• Moments from an event, a market stall or a busy afternoon.
• Short how-to clips that would clutter the grid.

The first is the one most businesses already put in their feed, where it ages badly. By tomorrow it is wrong, and it stays on the profile for every new visitor to scroll past.

Why daily posts do not suit the feed

Since the main feed began showing posts in order of interest rather than time this summer, followers may see a post a day or two after it went up.

A post saying today only, seen two days later, is worse than none. It sends people out for something that has gone.

The profile grid is also what a new follower judges you by. A grid full of dated notices hides the photographs that show what the business does well.

Stories take the daily material away from both, and clear themselves.

How a story is made

From the top of the app, take a photo or a short video, add a line of text or a quick drawing if it helps, and share it.

Each photo or video you add joins the day's story in order, and viewers tap through them one after another.

Upright photos work best, since a story fills the phone's screen from top to bottom.

There is no caption to polish and no reason to perfect anything, which is most of the appeal. A story is meant to look as if it was taken a minute ago.

What it does not do

Stories have no likes and no public comments. A viewer who wants to respond sends you a private message instead.

They mostly reach people who already follow you. A story keeps existing customers up to date; it is not a way to be discovered.

And nothing in a story lasts. Opening hours, prices, the menu and how to book belong on your website and your profile, where they are still true next week.

A worked example

A cupcake bakery on a neighbourhood shopping street bakes a different set of flavours each day and has posted the day's list on Instagram every morning for two years.

Its grid had become a column of near-identical photos of the display case, each captioned with a date and a list. The cakes it was proudest of, made for weddings and birthdays, were buried several screens down.

Customers sometimes arrived asking for a flavour from a post they had seen that morning, which had gone up two days earlier.

The cause was simple: a feed no longer shown in order, holding posts that were only true for a day.

This week the daily list moves to Stories, with a photo of the case at opening and another mid-afternoon showing what is left. The grid goes back to finished cakes, one or two a week.

Whoever opens takes the first photo, and whoever is on the counter at three takes the second.

Keeping it simple enough to keep doing

Pick one or two moments a day that happen anyway, such as opening the doors or the afternoon restock, and post at those times.

Give the job to whoever is on shift then, on the shop's own phone, with a short note of what is and is not shown. No approval is needed for a photo of today's tray.

Skipping a day costs nothing, since an empty day leaves no gap on the profile. That makes Stories easier to sustain than a feed.

A story that took two minutes is the right amount of effort. If each one starts taking twenty, the routine will not last the month.

Faces, permission and screenshots

Disappearing does not mean private. Anyone watching can take a screenshot, and a clip shown to a few hundred followers can travel further.

Ask staff before they appear, and ask customers too, every time. A customer's face in the background of a busy afternoon is still a customer's face.

Keep anything that should not be public out of the frame: the order book, the staff schedule on the wall, a supplier's invoice on the counter.

Business profiles are still coming

In May, Instagram announced business profiles: a contact button, statistics about posts and followers, and a way to promote posts from the app. They are due to arrive over the coming months.

Until they reach your account, the bio does that work. Make sure it says what you do, where you are and how to reach you, since people curious about a story often look at the profile next.

Stories do not change that. They bring people to the profile, and the profile and the website have to answer them.

The counter-case

Businesses with few followers, or with nothing that changes from day to day, gain little from Stories. An accounting office does not have a daily case of cupcakes.

The feature is also a day old, and how people use it will become clearer over the coming months. It costs nothing to try, and nothing to stop.

For a business with something new each day, though, the division is sensible: Stories for the daily and temporary, the feed for the best work, the website for what must stay true.

To start

1. Update the app and find the row at the top.
2. Choose one daily moment worth showing.
3. Hand it to whoever is there at that time.
4. Keep text to one line per photo.
5. Move daily notices out of the main feed.
6. Ask before showing customers or staff.
7. Keep hours and prices on the website.

Step five is the one with the lasting effect. The stories themselves vanish, but a grid cleared of dated notices keeps showing new visitors the work you want to be known for.

Why page posts reach fewer followers without paying is covered in Facebook shows fewer page posts again.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.