Cognition #12: Instagram Stories: Feature you know. Impact you don't.

Apr 24, 2022

Instagram stories are one of my favourtie features. I'm not very active on Instagram these days because of my workload, but I really like the vibe of the platform and the variety it provides.

One such feature I'd love to play with is Instagram Stories.

If you think Stories are just one feature among many other features, you've got your Instagram game completely wrong.

The way I see it, Stories are a blessing to every creator.

A few months ago, Harshita Garg invited me to give a FIFO talk on leveraging Instagram stories, and I have to say, it was one of my most enjoyed presentations.

I've refined the strategies and topics from the session into today's edition, and here is what you're gonna get:

Why Instagram Stories?
Building authority with Q&As.
Attaining authenticity via content curation.
Shaping a solid personal brand.
Non-technical aka Fun segment!

Grab your coffee! Things are about to get sexy.

Why Instagram Stories?

Out of all the features, why Instagram Stories?

I mean the reels have insane reach.

Hashtags on IGTV, posts, and carousels give you reach too.

But why do you want to use Stories that'd be visible only to your followers and profile visitors?

Here is what I believe:

"Reels, IGTV, posts, carousels reach people outside your profile and make them follow your profile, but Stories make sure the followed people stay by keeping them engaged."

To give you more context, creators won't post every day. Instead, they maintain a frequency of 3-5 times a week.

Especially if you create educative/informative content, three content pieces per week is a great frequency.

But what do you do on the remaining days?

How do you engage your audience?

How do you maintain your online presence?

It's exactly why you need to leverage Instagram Stories!

The best thing about Stories is that they disappear after 24 hours, which means you're never overloading your profile with everything you want to share.

Also, the culture of Instagram users helps to build your brand with Stories.

Users like to tap through the stories even when they've got a 10-minute break. This makes sure you have the attention or interest you need.

In the following three segments, we'll try to understand how you can build authority and authenticity using this fantastic feature.

Building authority with Q&As.

Q&As are my favourite. Especially when I share informative content.

It is a faster and easier way of presenting your expertise to your audience.

The best part? You can do it in bulk.

When you give solutions to your followers' problems, they see you as a person to look up to when they need any advice related to your industry.

In short, they see you as a position of authority.

And as wrong as it may sound to a few people, you have to build that position if you want to make business out of creation.

This is how I approach my Q&As:

Topic selection

I brainstorm all the things I know and try to find specific topics to talk about. It's important to find topics that most people want to know answers for.

For example, if I pick freelancing as a broad topic, I can conduct Q&As on topics like:

Pricing as a freelancer
Contracts for freelancers
Should freelancers create content?
How to know what skill to pick and freelance?
Job vs. Freelancing.

After I pick the topics, I ask my audience to shoot all their queries on these topics.

Research

After choosing a topic, I research to know if there is anything more I can talk about on that topic.

Or, if I don't know the answer to any of the questions asked, I still research and try to answer to the best of my abilities.

Framing questions

Yep, you read it right.

I frame questions for my Q&As.

It's 50-50 on my profile. Half questions are asked by the audience. Half questions are framed by me.

And I don't feel embarrassed about it.

The reason is, sometimes your audience wants to know what you want to share, but they're not sure what to ask.

Some people want to ask, but they're a bit conservative.

Some people will be interested in just waiting and watching, i.e., they want to consume what you share but don't want to ask anything for their own reasons.

I feel it is the responsibility of the creator to address the section of the audience who don't ask questions along with the peeps who shoot their queries.

So yeah, I include a few of the questions I framed in my Q&As.

Also, if you're an early-stage creator like me with not many followers, it's on you to promote yourself in a way your expertise is known to your followers and community.

Choosing format

It's basically text vs video.

I do both based on 2 things:

What do I want to do?

If I want to write, I write. If I want to speak, I speak. And that's a good enough reason to choose one.

Where are my audience?

If I'm doing a Q&A on a weekday afternoon, most folks might be in colleges or offices, and they might not be able to listen if I answer questions in video format. So text is the better option.

Similarly, videos might be a better choice on weekends.

Structuring Q&A

I go through all the questions and try to answer them in a structured way over picking random questions or going in chronological order.

This gives a better content consumption experience.

Dealing with counter questions

As an early-stage creator, you will not face much criticism, but many doubts, counter questions, and alternatives to your solutions will come your way.

It is necessary to keep an open mind to deal with such questions.

Whenever a disagreement occurs, I say,

Bad creators argue.

Good creators understand and explain.

Great creators create content around it.

Whenever an unprepared question comes your way, there is an opportunity to create unplanned content. Pounce on it.

That's about Q&As. Let's get to curation now.

Attaining authenticity via content curation

The best thing about content curation on Stories is it is clearly visible that what you posted on your story is not your content. You're sharing someone else's content on your story, and users are comfortable with it.

Since there is no question of "Oh, I've seen this before or this is a copied content," it all gets to how valuable the content you share is.

As a result, authenticity becomes easier to acquire as you're sharing things that your audience can apply at some point in their lives.

NOTE:

Be very careful with the content you share. This builds a perception of your content taste among the audience, and you don't want that to be bad.

And it's not only about the educative content.

Sharing jokes will give an idea about your humour taste.

Sharing songs will give an idea about your music taste.

Sharing movies will give an idea of your entertainment taste.

It is vital for your audience to know your personal choices and tastes to relate to your personality.

The people who have been following me for some time now will know I'm a big Marvel fan, animal lover, foodie, loves jokes and songs, reads books, etc.

Here are a few examples of such Stories. 👇🏻

This gives them an idea of my personality.

They don't just know me as a creator who creates content on freelancing and writing. They know me as Vikra Vardhan, who creates content, likes X, Y, Z, and is an ABC kind of a guy.

And I feel that's the right way to build a personal brand.

Shaping a solid personal brand

I feel giving your followers some backend access is a great way to shape a personal brand.

Your followers already know the kind of work you do and where you stand in your career and industry.

But they don't know how you do it, which is why you need to give backend access to your life/work.

It can be pictures of your work environment. Or a short 15-second video clip explaining what you're working on, etc.

Sharing about your day is an excellent way of showing your working style.

If you ask me, sharing the process is much better than sharing only the achievements.

I usually try to give an insight into what my day looks like. I do a series of stories like this 👇🏻

The best part about these stories is I don't share only the tasks I completed.

I even talk about my procrastination, laziness, and unwillingness to work at that moment, which shows my human side.

The best version of your personal brand is when you're being honest.

A little more

Also, you can tag creators when you curate content. And it's a must do if their target audience are similar to yours. In case if they post your story as theirs, you'll be visible to their audience.

And trust me, we all love to stalk accounts.

Plus Instagram is a great platform to reshare content.

Let's say you've gained 30 new followers this week, you can put a post from six months ago as your story, and people will still consume and engage with it.

I just love this feature.

So that's about leveraging Instagram stories.

We all see Stories as a simple feature, but if used strategically, it can make a huge impact on your brand.

Think about it.

On that note, we'll hop onto Non-Technical segment, and see if I have something to keep you occupied this weekend.

Non-technical aka fun segment

Favourite quote from a book

“You can't win an argument. You can't because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.”

How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie.

Could never relate more to a quote.

It is exactly why I'm not too fond of debates where people argue to prove their point.

Instead, I'd like to participate in a discussion where two opposing forces come to a common ground and find a mutually beneficial solution.

Movies/shows I loved recently

I watched KGF 2 in the theater last week. I loved it and have a mixed opinion towards some scenes but it's definitely worth a watch on the big screen.

The BGM tho! 🔥🔥