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How to make the most of your practice’s Instagram Stories
Instagram is so much more than simply another platform to display visual digital marketing content for your veterinary practice. When its features are used to their full potential, you can use Instagram to grow an engaged and loyal community of pet owners that you can reach in meaningful and powerful ways.
Instagram stories are visible for 24 hours and can be used to share everything from time-sensitive special offers to images or video content designed to capture the attention of your audience and encourage a specific action. More than 500 million users [1] engage with Instagram Stories each day, so they are an excellent way to reach your audience and connect with them instantly.
How to use Instagram Stories
If you are ready to explore a more specific Instagram strategy, it is highly likely that driving engagement with pet owners is at the top of your list of objectives. So, here are a few tips to incorporate into your plan.
1. Encourage interactivity
There are so many different ways to encourage your audience to interact with your Instagram Stories with their ‘stickers’, these are some our
– Ask questions
The questions sticker is a fun way to start a conversation and can be positioned over a video or photo in your Story. Simply select the sticker from the sticker tray and enter your chosen prompt, which can be anything from ‘ask our vet a question’ to something as simple as ‘what is your pet doing today’!
– Utilise polls
Using polls can be an excellent way to obtain feedback or opinions quickly and are more likely to drive responses than long-winded traditional customer questionnaires.
It is also possible to use polls to create an interactive and informative quiz that you can use to highlight seasonal events, such as increases in fleas and ticks in the local area, to general reminders such as the benefits of ensuring pets are vaccinated regularly.
Research shows that when asked which type of Instagram Story they were likely to tap through all the way to the end, 15% of respondents [2] said that they enjoy Stories with polls and quizzes, making this a great option to boost engagement.
– Seek out opinions with sliders
Sliders allow users to respond quickly to the content you’re sharing in your Stories, with many brands using emojis to understand how their audience feels about a particular topic.
You could use sliders to create ‘this or that’ style content, which can help you to understand everything from your audience’s favourite dog breeds to which products you offer prompt the most positive response.
– Share countdowns
The countdown sticker can be a great way to build excitement or anticipation about a service launching in your practice, upcoming event, or new announcement. Users can choose to be reminded when the countdown ends, and you will receive relevant notifications and data every time someone opts to be reminded.
2. Include links
When the links feature first launched it was only available to users with more than 10,000 followers, however it has now been extended to everyone.
Previously, the only place that you could include a clickable link was on your main profile page, but now you can include links within your Stories. Links open in a browser within Instagram itself, so when users tap the cross they will be delivered back to the content on Instagram with which they were previously interacting.
The best results can be obtained by including a very clear call to action (CTA), such as ‘book now’ or ‘start your free trial today’.
3. Go live
‘Going live’ on Instagram is an excellent way to boost your engagement, and using the countdown tool is a brilliant way to ensure your audience knows when you’ll be live. We recommend planning the content of your live event in advance, however this is a versatile tool that you can use to reveal new products or services, take your audience on a tour behind the scenes, or host a Q&A session with your vets and RVNs.
4. Be aware of the ‘safe zone’
To ensure that none of the information you want to share in your Instagram Stories gets cut off, it is important to leave a 250px gap at the top and bottom of each Story. It can be incredibly frustrating for users when they are viewing a story and want to interact with a feature only to see that it is too low or too high for them to click on because it’s stuck behind the ‘send message’ bar at the bottom or the ‘exit story’ cross at the top.
When creating your Stories, pay close attention to the grid lines that Instagram will automatically display if an element will cross outside of the ‘safe zone’. These grid lines will also appear to show you precisely where the centre of your Story is, which can be helpful when creating content that looks professional and pleasing to the eye.
For more information or to explore our social media services, get in touch with our specialist team!
