By Lydia Calderón

Instagram launched Stories, their rendition of Snapchat’s app, last year. Like Snapchat, stories are photos and videos that can be viewed for 24 hours before disappearing. On Instagram, they’re located as little circles at the top of your Instagram feed and can also be viewed on a user’s profile.

With more than 300 million people using Stories daily, users are spending significantly more time on Instagram compared to Snapchat. Instagram is quickly taking over Snapchat and dominating the Story scene. Of the eight million businesses that are on Instagram, over 50 percent have created a story. Of that 50 percent, one in five organic stories are estimated to elicit a message from a consumer.

If you’re not taking advantage of Instagram stories, it’s time to give it a try. Posting on your Instagram feed is a necessity for your marketing efforts, but also adding Stories will definitely expact your reach and impact. With tons of new features, your salon has the opportunity to stand out from the crowd and create interactive posts for your followers to take part in.

Instagram stories are a charming and unique way to reach your customers. Instead of your followers scrolling endlessly and potentially missing your post, they automatically see your story after they stream stories from their friends. And, there are additional elements you can add to your stories to enhance enhance engagement and help followers remember your post. What features should your salon use?

1. Polls

You can add a poll to your Stories and let the viewers make their selection. Not only are they interactive, but they also enable you to learn more about your customers and followers. Essentially, it’s market research. You’re gaining valuable information about your followers and learning what they prefer. Do your customers like spray or UV? What is their favorite bed? Polls allow you to gain their insight and feelings. Once you know their preferences, you’ll be better at targeting your audience in the future with specific specials tailored to their interests.

2. Stickers

Stickers are one of the most entertaining aspects of Stories. Stickers consist of location tags, hashtags, mentions, GIFS, time, temperature, photos, cute sayings and graphics, and even a slider heart eyes emoji scale. Along with the graphics and tagging abilities, there’s an option to add different fonts and colors to make your story extra engaging.

You can use all of these items to your advantage. Cold day? Post the temperature and a picture of a warm sunbed… it’ll sure look tempting to your followers! New lotion? Post a picture of the bottle tagging the brand. Add in cute text and a GIF – or even the heart eyes emoji scale! Stickers are an eccentric approach to keep your followers engaged.

In order to use these new features, you’ll first want to open and click on the plus button at the top of your Instagram feed, by the Stories. Then, upload or take a picture. After setting your backdrop, click on the smiley face sticky note in the top right corner. You’ll have multiple features to choose from. Instagram Stories is a very simple interface and makes it easy to plug in key information and fun visuals.