Instagram Stories: How to get started

What is Instagram Stories?

Instagram Stories is a great feature within the Instagram app which can boost the visibility of your therapy page.

The feature allows you to share moments from your day you may not want to appear on your profile permanently. They help to provide a behind the scenes feel to your therapy business, and can reveal the fun side of your personality.

Stories allow you to post multiple pictures or video content, and it will create a slideshow-type feature. After 24 hours these images and video will disappear, unless you save them to your ‘highlights’ section.

How to create Instagram Stories

When you log into your Instagram app the ‘stories’ appear at the top of your news feed.

If the circles are highlighted with red around them, this means there are new stories to view from the people you follow. If you click on a story, you can view their content, and if there is the facility to do so, you can send messages and reactions to them.

These will be delivered to their inbox. From the image below you can see there is a message in my inbox where there is a ‘1’ showing on the right hand side.

Story Settings

Before you post your first story you can set your privacy settings to decide who you want to view your content. Remember, you can alter this at any time.

1) Go to your profile and click on the three lines in the top right corner;

2) You will then arrive at the below screen, select ‘settings’ at the bottom of the screen;

3) Once you have selected ‘settings’ now select ‘privacy’;

4) Once you are in the ‘privacy’ area select ‘story’;

5) Once in the ‘story’ section you can now select who you want to view your ‘stories’ content. For a business page you may want to let the content be visible to everyone to help boost your reach, but remember if you want to change this, you can at any time.

Now you have your privacy settings organised you can then start to post 🙂

How to post Instagram Stories

When you are ready to post a ‘story’, click on the circle with your logo/head shot on – it will say ‘your story’ underneath it. For example, the green heart on the left clearly shows this is where I will post stories for Love Reflexology.

Once you have clicked on the ‘story’ for your business, you can start to select what you would like to post.

At the bottom of the screen, once inside the ‘story’ section, you will see options to choose from such as ‘type’, ‘music’, ‘live’, ‘normal’, ‘boomerang’ and more. It is fun to have a play with each option to see what each feature does.

Select one of the options to decide which type of content you want to post.

If you want to share a photograph that is saved on your phone, select ‘normal’ and on the left side you will see a preview of an image from your phone. Select this and you can choose which image you want to share.

The view on your phone which allows you to select one or more images to upload to a story.

Once you are happy with the image you want to upload, select it and then you have the option of adding lots of fun features. These features can really help to boost engagement and bring people to your profile.

You can add text to go with your image by clicking the ‘Aa’ option. Add hashtags, a location, music, quiz, poll, a gif and more by selecting the ‘square face’ icon. You can add filter effects by selecting the ‘smiley face’ icon, or have fun with the drawing option by selecting the ‘pencil’ icon.

New features within Instagram Stories are being added constantly, so do keep an eye on what is new. For example, just today a new ‘chat’ feature has been added which I am about to explore.

And finally

The key with stories is to have fun, reveal a bit of your personality and post content you don’t want to remain on your permanent profile. I love this feature as you don’t have to create the ‘perfect’ image, you can be spontaneous and really show off the personality of your business.

Always add a relevant hashtag, as this will help new people find you.

Instagram Stories are continuing to grow in popularity and will play a large role in getting your therapy paged noticed.

“In January 2019, photo sharing platform Instagram reported 500 million daily active Stories users worldwide, up from 400 million global DAU in June 2018.” Statista

So, even if you are not posting regularly on your main profile, adding content to your ‘story’ will help to boost your engagement and bring new or existing clients to your page.

Have a play, have fun and see what it could do for your therapy business.

Kelly x

All Instagram features in the article are correct at the date of publishing the blog article. New features are added/removed regularly to the Instagram app, so do keep an eye on the latest additions to support your business.

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