The Social Media world is booming right now over the new Instagram Feature- Instagram Stories. Instagram Stories is a new feature that lets you share all the moments of your day, not just snapshots you want to keep on your main profile. As you share multiple photos and videos, they appear together in a slideshow format, it becomes your story!
How It Works
This new feature takes away the worry of over-posting. Instead, you can share as much as you want throughout the day. There are special features that can be used on your story such as text and drawing tools. The fun part is your story disappears after 24 hours and does not appear on your profile grid or feed!
Your story, along with the stories of the people you follow, will be found in a bar at the top of your feed. When someone you follow posts something new to see, their profile photo will have a colorful ring around it.
To view someone’s story, just tap on their profile photo. You can view these photos at your own pace, tap to go back and forward, or swipe to jump to another person’s story. If you want to comment on something you see, you can tap and send a private message to that person on Instagram Direct Messages. Unlike regular posts, there are no likes of public comments.
Your Privacy
Your story follows the privacy settings of your account. If you set your account to private, your story is visible only to your followers. However, you can also easily hide your entire story from anyone you don’t want to see it, even if they follow you. When watching your own story, swipe up to check out who’s seen each photo and video. You can even choose to feature a particular part of your story by posting it on your profile.
How Instagram Stories Can Help You Grow
As you already know, Instagram is a useful tool for small business owners. The free app provides a wonderful way to showcase your services and make feel patients feel included in “behind the scenes” aspects of your practice. Since your practice is already using Instagram, the Stories feature provides you with a new quick and easy way of posting original content to an audience that’s already active and established. Stories provide another way to engage users on Instagram.
Plus, Instagram’s Stories feature is a part of the Instagram app, so there is no need to create a new account and build your audience on yet another platform. Instagram is a visual platform, and the new Stories feature provides another great way to help tell genuine stories about your practice. Showing that there are people, not robots, running your Instagram account can help you build stronger relationships with your patient and attract new ones as well.
What’s Next?
Once you decide if this is a feature your practice would like to participate in, you will have another decision to make:
- A team member from your office can upload Instagram stories
- We (VCG Team) are happy to upload your stories.
How organic do you want your story to be? The most organic approach to this feature is someone in the office capturing these moments and instantly uploading them to the Instagram profile that we already have set up for you.
However, if you feel you would rather have the VCG Team manage your story, those captured moments would need to be sent to us for immediate upload! We have the ability to upload the most recent pictures and 10-second videos (or numerous 10-second videos) from our phones.
One thing to note, this new feature does not mean the end of Instagram’s staple “feed” which showcases permanent photos. Ultimately, this means deciding what content deserves the urgency of the Stories and permanency of the traditional feed.
What We Need From You…
Please let us know which approach you would like to take with the Instagram Stories!
If you would like to take the organic route and have someone designated in the office to be the “Instagram Story Extraordinaire” please let us know and we will provide that person with your Instagram account information.
