Planning Your First Instagram Stories Campaign with InstaBF: Part Two

Dec 16, 2019

Having talked about the power of the Instagram Stories campaign, InstaBF also started a free guide to planning out your first Stories campaign. Ready to go on? 

Figure Out Your Strategy and Creative

Deciding on the creative direction you will have a Story campaign totally different from your ordinary stories content. And if you feel uncertain about the strategy and creative direction, we offer to your attention four basic elements to pay close attention to. 

• Define Your Campaign’s Concept

Whatever concept lies in the basis of your Insta Stories campaign, it must be closely tied to the campaign goals. For instance, if you aim at promoting a new product line, the concept must be driving sales and the creatives to use should include product stickers, clicks on the link in the bio, swipe-ups to your brand’s website, and so forth. 

• Designate the Visual Style of Your Stories Campaign

Just as it’s important to have a brand voice, building a Stories banding kit is a must. It includes inspirational imagery, a static color palette, a design style guide, fonts, defined filters. 

• Draft the campaign message and editorial style of your campaign

Having schemed a campaign message you will feel sure about introducing, explaining and even selling your product as long as the campaign is consistent. Hence, draft a couple of words that you’re going to weave during every campaign asset. 

• Distinguish with the Stories features

It’s definitely a good idea to establish particularly what features of Stories you’re going to use in promoting the campaign. In case it’s built around a giveaway, which is time-sensitive, a countdown sticker will create interest around it the best. 

And don’t neglect Spark AR effects! You can always create and promote AR effects related to your own brand to drive more traction. 

Get a Storyboard for the campaign

A storyboard is a visual representation of your campaign that will help you foresee how it will unfold right from the beginning. It will help you determine how to convey your message most effectively.

Create the Assets

Now it’s time to get down with your Stories Campaign Assets, i.e. the content you’ll post including images, videos, GIFs, graphics, etc. Depending on the scope of the campaign, the assets will drastically differ. For instance, in case if you plan to promote a giveaway or a contest, lifestyle shots, illustration, UGC might work well as assets. 

Schedule the Campaign

Now just combine all the components and create your Instagram content calendar. It’s not necessary to have the official launch day of a product/event identical to the timeline of Instagram. Besides, think about the lifespan of the content you’ll share and the frequency. 

Promote the Campaign

The basic goal of any Instagram Stories campaign is to reach as many people as possible. For its promotion, draft a strategy. Create hype around it with a countdown sticker, partner with compatible influencers to build excitement, create a campaign hashtag, etc.

Go Live on Instagram on the Campaign Launch Day

Besides getting ready to answer questions, monitor the excitement and engage with your community on the launch day of the Stories campaign, there are several other points to perform. Here are they:

• Update your bio;
• Be quick with DM responses;
• Reshare the content your followers share;
• Go live for Q&A.

How successful the Stories campaign was, can be determined through Instagram metrics. Track your brand awareness KPIs (engagement rate, impressions, signups, e-commerce purchases, etc.).

Planning Your First Instagram Stories Campaign with InstaBF: Part One

Dec 15, 2019

In the beginning, brands weren’t sure about how Instagram Stories could help in promoting their campaigns. However, those days are long gone and today Stories are a major help for any Instagram business and perhaps every brand has found a way or several to exploit the feature to their benefit. If you feel enthusiastic about all this, InstaBF, your faithful guide in the world of Instagram and IGTV, will gift you with top tips concerning how to plan an Insta Stories campaign. Let’s get to work right now!

An Instagram Stories Campaign: What Is It? 

Just like an ordinary Instagram marketing campaign, a Stories campaign aims at achieving a certain marketing objective by means of posting Instagram Stories. That objective can be as broad as building brand awareness, or as specific as generating sales for the new product release. Regardless of it, the key to running it successfully is creating top-quality and interactive content that inspires viewers to comment and share. 

How to Plan a Stories Campaign

So, now when you fully acquire the importance of a Stories campaign, let’s see how you can plan it efficiently step by step:

Pick the Goal 

The first step of your Stories marketing campaign should be defining the goals since the latter determines what type of campaign you need to run and what metrics will be required to track it. So, spend enough time picturing what you are going to achieve when it comes to an end. After this, think about KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Whatever your goal is, it must be tied to numbers. For instance, if you aim at promoting a new product, think about how many units you want to sell. Actually, the more your Stories campaign is tied back to measurable results, the more palpable they will be. 

Additionally, don’t forget about the metrics. How many likes, comments, shares, and views you gather still matters a lot. 

Aim at the Target Audience 

Once you have your goals set, it comes to determining the target audience. Depending on the purpose of your campaign pursues, your audience can include only the narrow subset of your current followers or it can be a broad one with Insta users who are not your followers, yet. To get on track easily, base on the following points:

• What type of content your ideal audience should engage with;
• Whether they prefer photo or video-based stories;
• What stickers they give preference the most;
• In what communities they take part;
• What hashtags they mostly follow.

Only after completely nailing down your Instagram Stories campaign goals and target audience, you can courageously pass to scheming the rest of the campaign.

Set the Timeline

The goals your Stories campaign has, influences its timeline, too. For instance, if the campaign is tied to a real-life event (an in-store sale, a master-class, etc.), the timeline of the Story completely depends on the event and usually stretches to a week at most. If the campaign is tied to a larger event (a Pride Month, for instance), you can set a longer timeline. Just be cautious not to let it go for too long or you run a risk of losing the steam. 

Here are the parts to be based when setting the timeline:

• Pre-campaign hype (teasing it before the launch);
• The launch day (the day you post the main campaign content);
• Post-campaign follow up (continuing the conversations once the initial excitement has fallen by UGC, customer reviews, and so forth).