Do you have a story to tell? I do. You know you need to tell your story. Just say it.
We'll be watching. Tell your story. Stories are your friend. Use them wisely.
Hello everybody. Welcome to the Pod Sound School. We teach entrepreneurs, content creators,
and podcasters to grow their digital footprint by planning, producing, and launching a successful
podcast. On this video, and continuing with the saga on how to use Instagram to promote
your podcast, brand, or business, I will be showing you how to use Instagram Stories.
And if you need to know how to create and optimize your Instagram account or how to
create killer posts, we have these two videos right here. They will teach you all about
it.
Instagram Stories are a great way to connect with your audience in a personal and close
way. Your audience wants to get to know you better and IG Stories is the best tool for
this. These fun and simple steps will get you up to speed on how to use this feature,
so you can grow your followers, your subscribers, and your community. But before we start, I
invite you to hit the subscribe button so you can stay up to date with the videos that
we post each week with valuable information. And to help you even more with Instagram,
I put together a guide and you can download the free PDF version in the description below.
And hey, give this video a thumbs up now. Okay, let's get to it.
Wait till I tell you everything.
Remember I mentioned before that our social media strategy should focus on providing value
and engaging with your audience? Well, Instagram makes it easy for you to connect with your
people. You can use Instagram Stories to interact with your audience, gain more followers organically,
and position yourself as a brand. Instagram stories are 15 second segments that last for
24 hours. Because they're not permanent like your feed, you can take some liberties and
be creative. You can take in the moment pictures and videos. They don't have to be perfectly
curated or edited. In fact, the more real the better. Instagram Stories are as important
as your feed, or more. On our IG account, we get more people interacting with our IG
stories than with our posts. So, if you're not using this tool, you're missing out on
an opportunity to gain more exposure.
Here are some tips on how you can use Instagram Stories to gain more exposure. Number one,
show what makes you, your podcast, business, or brand, relatable and fun. Use Instagram
Stories to show the behind the scenes of what you create or who you are. Whether it is a
podcast, blog, product, art, showing the behind the scenes of the process creates curiosity
in your audience. Make it a habit to snap a picture or make a quick video of yourself
when you are creating. Take pictures or videos when you are recording your podcast, doing
research or writing your blog, getting ready for a meeting with a client, et cetera.
Number two, there are three main ways you can interact with your audience using your
IG stories, using the Who's Watching feature, hashtags, and other IG Stories features. The
Who's Watching feature. This is a powerful tool. You can see the people who are watching
your stories by tapping on the bottom left corner, or your viewers' profile pictures
up here. This will show you the list of users that watched your stories. You can also access
your story's analytics from here by tapping on the bars located at the top left corner.
Here you can find the number of profiles visits your story has generated, if the story has
been shared, and the number of profile visits. This feature is so important because you can
see who is watching your stories with regularity and interact with them more. If you tap on
the arrow, you can message them directly and start a conversation.
This is different than the posts on your feed. If people don't like or comment on your posts,
there is no way for you to find out if they regularly read your captions or pay attention
to what you post.
Hashtags, tags, and location tags. The same as your post, you can add hashtags, add a
location, and tag other accounts to give your story and your profile more visibility. The
location feature is a great way to connect with people in your area. This is a great
feature if your project, podcast, business, or blog involves local subjects. Every time
you add a city, Instagram aggregates your story to that city's stories. Same with hashtags.
Every time you add a hashtag to your story, Instagram features your story on that hashtag's
story. That's right. Hashtags have stories too. You can add more than one hashtag to
your stories.
We want our stories to look neat. One tip that we use is that we hide our hashtags behind
our gifs, emojis, or pictures. This is how I do it.
When you use a hashtag on your story, your story is automatically shared on the hashtag
stories.
Other IG Stories features. These are polls, questions, quizzes, countdowns, and the new
chat feature. These are a lot of fun. These features create a call to action on your stories.
So, let's start with polls. With polls, you can ask your audience questions regarding
your recent blog post, podcast episode, YouTube video, or product. For example, you can ask,
"Did you guys know that tango originated in Argentina? Yes or no? Have you guys listened
to the latest episode of Tango With Veronica podcast? Which one do you prefer? Tango or
merengue?" Polls are a great way of discovering who is showing interest in your brand.
Questions. The Ask Me a Question feature gives your audience the opportunity to ask you questions
on the spot while they're looking at your stories. These communications are so valuable
because you can use them to create future content for your podcast, blog, or YouTube
channel.
Quizzes. Quizzes are also a great tool to gather data from your audience. We recently
used the quiz feature to find out how long the Podskis in our audience take to produce
a podcast episode.
Countdowns. Countdowns are a fun way to create anticipation around the launching of your
product, your new podcast episode, blog, et cetera.
Number three. Use Instagram Swipe Up features. Instagram allows users with more than 10,000
followers to add a link to their stories accessible when you swipe up. This feature allows users
to access links, websites, products, podcasts, et cetera, from the story, without going to
the link in bio, by swiping up. This tool is so important because users who will feel
prompted to act because a call to action you add to your story do not have to go to the
extra step of going to your profile to click on the link in bio. The less steps your audience
has to take to access your content, products, and services, the better chance you have at
them taking action.
For accounts that do not yet have 10,000 followers, we learned the trick from our business coach,
Vanessa Lau, that allows you to use the Swipe Up feature to direct users to your IGTV. IGTV
allows you to add links to your descriptions. This is how it works.
Lastly, let's talk about number four, branding. Instagram stories are a fantastic place to
establish yourself as a brand, and one of the things that you can do is to create animations
using pictures, videos, fonts, and colors, of your brand. We just discovered an awesome
tool for this called Mojo. Mojo has all sorts of fun templates you can use to make your
stories less cluttered and attractive.
There you go, Podskis. Did you find this information useful? I hope so. And if you did, let me
know by leaving a comment below. And after you're done binging on some more of my videos,
come and find us on our Facebook group, Podcasting for Bosses. We would love to have you there.
Two things before you leave. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button, [foreign language
00:00:11:35]. Okay. Until then, happy casting, amigos.