Why You Should Take Advantage of Social Media Stories

Why You Should Take Advantage of Social Media Stories

Social media stories are a series of small fifteen-second clips that are live for twenty-four hours or longer, depending on your platform, that works together to tell your audience an engaging story. Of course, the story you tell depends on your overall goals, niche, and objectives as a business owner. In 2019, over a billion and a half people and businesses utilized the stories featured on their platform every single day. This fact should show you just how important and vital this tool is today as a business owner. 

3 most important reasons to take advantage of social media stories for your business: 

To Increase Brand Awareness and Exposure

Social media stories are highly shareable content, making it easy to increase your exposure and awareness on the internet. Bringing value to your audience ensures that they want to share it with their peers, increasing your views and exposure. A vital step to the success of any business on the web. It’s simple, the more people you can get to view your content, the more likely your viewership or audience will grow. Social media stories are another creative and interactive avenue to do this.

To Humanize and Personalize Your Brand

Social media stories are powerful because they are viewed as a more personal and less informal way to communicate with your audience. Showing your human side effectively increases your reputation as a business, as many viewers see this as a more trustworthy trait. This inspires more trust and credibility required to transition your readers or viewers into loyal or paying customers. Being more personable and human also shows your relatability beyond your business responsibilities and goals. You can understand what your audience goes through daily.

To Increase Audience Engagement and Interaction

Audience engagement is how you keep them interested in your business. It also provides them value or solves a problem, further increasing your exposure and reputation as a brand or business. Again, the more value you bring, the more successful you will be. Engaging content keeps your viewers wanting more and provides you more resources to update and perfect your products or services.

Take advantage of these benefits by adding social media stories to your marketing plan today. The more tools you use within each platform, like stories, the easier it can be to build your awareness and exposure as a business while improving your audience engagement and participation. In other words, not taking advantage of social media stories is a poor decision and only shows your audience that you don’t care to adapt or provide them more value.

FYI I have a membership that may help you!

I talk a lot about my membership is about repurposing content and getting your lead magnets and freebies out there.  If you’d like to see what that is all about you can check it out here.

If you need help with anything email marketing, shoot me an email HERE.

3 most important reasons to take advantage of social media stories for your business:
3 most important reasons to take advantage of social media stories for your business:

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3 most important reasons to take advantage of social media stories for your business:
3 most important reasons to take advantage of social media stories for your business:
3 most important reasons to take advantage of social media stories for your business:
5 Steps to Grow Your Instagram Using Pinterest

5 Steps to Grow Your Instagram Using Pinterest

Most of our potential clients are on Instagram these days, but they are also on Pinterest.  I teach my students to use a marketing strategy that enables them to reuse content (why reinvent the wheel) and help grow Instagram followers and engagement by using Pinterest. 

Why does Pinterest work so well?  Because it’s the most link-friendly social platform out there.  The referral traffic to your website, podcast, youtube channel is awesome but the referral traffic to Instagram is amazing! 

So let’s grow your engagement and following on Instagram! Read below for the 5 steps!

#1: Claim Your Instagram Account on Pinterest

It’s important for you to claim your Instagram account in your Pinterest account as your first step.  Doing so allows you to get much better analytics including Instagram info.

claim your instagram on pinterest by pinterest expert jen vazquez

You should also claim your website on Pinterest.  This is similar and again gives you so much analytics.  

One of my favorite sayings is by Dan Zarrella “Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.” 

pinterest post shows instagram on the ones shared by instagram by jen vazquez pinterest marketing strategist

Because Instagram posts have an average lifespan of 24-72 hours, utilizing that content by sharing on Pinterest, you are lengthening the life of an Instagram post that you spent time creating.  

You can also drive more traffic and engagement to your Instagram account. Win-Win!

#2: To Grow Instagram, take your popular posts, reels and IGTV and publish to Pinterest

Using Pinterest to grow Instagram is smart.  You are already spending time, energy, blood, sweat, and sometimes tears creating a ton of content for Instagram.

Get engagement on Instagram and have that content last longer and spread by sharing on Pinterest.

You’ll want to share the content to all the boards that make sense.

Pinterest is all about FRESH IMAGES.  Utilizing your Instagram content is fresh and your Pinterest analytics will grow also!

Video is king – so Reels and IGTV do very well.  Definitely share those first!

Pinterest (like Instagram) keeps changing things, but right now video length is 4 seconds – 15 minutes.  The sweet spot for best performing video length is 15-60 seconds.  To stay up to date, check out Pinterest’s help guide updated video creative specs.

#3: Share Your Instagram Stories

Instagram stories are fleeting and go away in 24 hours.  So a good way to use them is to save them in your highlights, or auto-save stories to your phone like I do.  I have an album on my iPhone and I pop them in there each day.  When I spend my 30-60 minutes a week working on Pinterest, I can just go to that album and post away.

Since Stories don’t have a link, you can use my workaround.  Here’s how to do it:

When you are on a story, tap the 3 dots on the bottom right:

sharing story to pinterest by jen vazquez pinterest marketing expert 1

Then tap SAVE 

sharing story to pinterest by jen vazquez pinterest marketing expert 2

Then you’ll choose PHOTO or STORY which is all the stories in an  MP4 file.  Choose STORY and crop the video to the one you want.  Or perhaps you create several stories of your day, then don’t crop because it will be a great video.

sharing story to pinterest by jen vazquez pinterest marketing expert 3

Go to Pinterest and upload.  It will ask to use the Instagram link — um yes, please!  If it doesn’t work, then include the link directly to your Instagram profile.

Then because it’s a video it will ask you to choose tags.  Think hashtags or keywords and try different combinations.  For this branding shoot, I use Photography, Branding, Content Marketing, Creative Photography. 

sharing story to pinterest by jen vazquez pinterest marketing expert 4
sharing story to pinterest by jen vazquez pinterest marketing expert 5

Videos require reviews — don’t panic.  It typically is approved within a few hours to 24 hours.

sharing story to pinterest by jen vazquez pinterest marketing expert 6

#4: Keywords are important

Pinterest is a visual search engine and is very powerful! If you ever do a search on Google, you’ll notice one of the top three posts is almost always Pinterest.  That’s because using keywords (an SEO term on Pinterest) is super effective on google too.  

What are Keywords or SEO? It’s really simple! It is what your ideal client is typing on their keyboard to find your content.  

A lot of people use cutesy names in the title or description of Pins and Boards.  You want to be super-specific.  Instead of saying “yum yum” as a board title.  You should say “gluten-free recipes you’ll love” or “Easy and simple recipes for busy moms”.

Add these keywords EVERYWHERE – use them in Instagram posts, and pin titles, pin descriptions, board titles, board descriptions, and your Pinterest Profile — also include a keyword in your name (under your image).  I have “California elopement photographer + branding photographer | Jen” because ‘elopements and branding’ is what my ideal clients are looking for.  I keep my name because people buy from people.

Pinterest Profile example by Jen Vazquez a Marketing Strategiest specializing in Pinterest Marketing

ALSO use 2-3 hashtags on each pin, board, and your Pinterest profile.  But, unlike Instagram, you want to use broad hashtags.  For me it’s #wedding #elopement #photographer

#5: Where to start?

That’s easy! Use your Instagram Insights of course! 

Start by clicking the three lines on the top right then click INSIGHTS

Instagram insights to see which post to share on Pinterest by Jen Vazquez Marketing Strategist 1
Instagram insights to see which post to share on Pinterest by Jen Vazquez Marketing Strategist 2

Click the arrow to the right of posts. Then select Post Interactions and 3 months.  You can select more or less but I always suggest for the first time select three.  Then do 1 year and see what posts are to the top.  Those posts a year old will now get more traction because of Pinterest and more engagement and potential business on Instagram!

Instagram insights to see which post to share on Pinterest by Jen Vazquez Marketing Strategist 3
Instagram insights to see which post to share on Pinterest by Jen Vazquez Marketing Strategist 4

Summary

Pinterest and Instagram are the biggest social media platforms that are focused on images and video.  If you use them together, you can create a powerhouse for marketing and also save a ton of time while repurposing your best content.  

NOTE:  Make sure you really know how your clients found you.  Many of my clients ask, “how did you find me?”.  Clients / potential clients will always say the last place they were when they decided to contact you.  It is usually Instagram.  

I always follow up casually with an  “Oh awesome, was it with a hashtag or did someone refer you”?  You want to know that hashtag of course or who referred them, but you are also digging.  70% of the time when I do that with my clients/potential clients say oh no it was a google search or they found me on Pinterest.  

It just took one little extra question, and information that would be valuable to confirm how your marketing is working.

Now….. WHO is going to be pinning their Instagram content to Pinterest now?  I thought so!!

If you need help with Pinterest, shoot me an email HERE.

Feel free to share this information with the pins below:

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5 Steps to Grow Your Instagram Using Pinterest5
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5 Steps to Grow Your Instagram Using Pinterest7

Black Friday Deals

IDENTIFY | ATTRACT | BOOK Course:

This 8-week course taught in a private Facebook group where you can ask questions directly for your unique business. You’ll learn along with a handful of students how to identify your ideal bride (who you will love to work with), attract them through a simple but effective system of marketing (all my tricks over 10 years as a wedding photographer), and step by step how to book them.

BONUS:

You’ll get both the 50 Content Ideas for Wedding Photographers and How to Create an Ideal Bride Avatar (a $59.98 value free!)

50 Content Ideas:

Creating content like blog posts and social media posts can be hard. This workbook helps you to be a content creating machine! So what’s included?

  • 8 pages of content
  • 50 Content Ideas For Wedding Photographers
  • An exercise that jogs your brain to create more ideas
  • A few pointers to get you started
  • A thorough example
  • BONUS:   5 “done for you” social media posts where you just fill in the blanks AND you can reuse them over and over including new information! 

How to Create an Ideal Bride Avatar Workbook:

This workbook helps you to be a content creating machine because it tells you WHO you are talking to! So what’s included?

  • 9 pages of content
  • Fill in the blank questions to ask
  • It’s a step by step workbook to help you identify who your ideal client is
  • Learn who you are and who your business serves
  • Learn who you’d love to work with
  • Learn what other wedding photographers are doing in your market so you can be unique
Grow your social media with this 14 day live video challenge

Grow your social media with this 14 day live video challenge

Women Who Execute helps female entrepreneurs to plan, prioritize, and execute to take your business to the next level.

  • Are you tired of your followers not seeing your content? 
  • Are you frustrated with not as many likes on your content as you once got?

Everyone is feeling that right now! I have a solution! LIVE VIDEO! Statistics say that it’s proven to increase people seeing your content and it’s free so why not!

Join me for our 14 day live video challenge!

So………Join me on this 14 day live video challenge! We’ll be doing a live video soon to brainstorm ideas for your particular industry. 

Everyone must sign up to get the free PDF of information and join the group for consistency, motivation, and accountability. Anyone who has been coached by me knows all about accountability. 

Let’s grow your social media sites and thus your client list!  Sign up below!