Are you considering starting your start-up or business? Are you not sure how to escalate the engagement with your customers and reach out to them more often? Are you wondering if you can use social media as the platform for the advertisement of your product? Well, Instagram seems to be the perfect podium for you to promote your business ideas, and for that, you must know how do Instagram stories perfectly fit your business ideas.

How Long Are Instagram Stories?

As of January 2019, 500 million users put up Instagram stories daily and nearly 40% of the stories which gain the most number of shares and views belong to the business category. Also, half of the business accounts on Instagram have added to their story at least once a month.

From the above-stated facts, it is more than evident that business professionals prefer to use Instagram stories to their advantage, quite often. So, let’s have a look at how Instagram stories work. If you do not have a lot of followers to encourage you, many online sites provide you with followers.

Instagram stories can be anything and everything. That is why they are probably the most widely held feature of Instagram. You can share pictures, Instagram reels, IGTV videos, your posts, posts by other people and pages, and do a lot of other stuff in Instagram stories.

Videos: The maximum length for a video to be put up on Instagram stories can be 15 seconds.
Photos: Photos appear for a little less than 10 seconds in Instagram stories.
Live videos: You can shoot up to sixty minutes of live video from the Instagram app itself. You can upload them to your Instagram stories once you have completed shooting the videos.

IGTV videos: If you have a verified profile with a huge number of followers on Instagram, you can upload up to 60 minutes long videos on IGTV. You can also share a glimpse of the video in your Instagram story so that all of your followers, who follow your story come to know that you have posted a particular video. If you do not have a verified account, worry not. You can still manage to upload videos of a minimum length of 15 seconds to 10 minutes.

How to Use Instagram Stories Effectively For Your Business?

How long are Instagram stories? Well, we have answered that previously but the main challenge is to use Instagram stories in such a short time, to enrich your business. Here are two ways how you can get a boost for your business through Instagram stories.

Posting a Long Video in Shorter Clips

We have already discussed that Instagram doesn’t allow you to upload a more than 15 seconds long video in Instagram stories. So what you can do is trim the longer video into short clips of 15 seconds and post them one after the other. But you have to keep in consideration that the first clipping should be the best one.

You must get the attention of your audience as quickly as possible, as it doesn’t take long to swipe right your story and move on. If you want your followers to respond to your stories and engage with them you need to be much specified about what you put up in your Instagram stories. If you can get hold of their attention from the very first clip it is most likely that your audience will go through the whole video and might even strike a business deal with you!

Posting Short Videos

Even short videos can be a good mode of communication between you and your target audience. Many famous brands and business agencies use short videos nowadays to bridge the gap between the producer and the consumer. Shorter Instagram videos can be very effective and engaging if used with proper content. The trick you need to know is short videos should always be to the point. You need to portray exactly what the audience will benefit from if they watch the video. This is a fast-paced age of technologies and you can use this to your advantage through the short videos in Instagram stories. The best part is now you can buy yourself some likes.

Instagram Posts

You can post something from your respective Instagram account and again share that post from your Instagram story. This is one of the best features provided by Instagram. To enrich your business profile you can post a small glimpse of your product and then share it in your story to get a better reach.

IGTV Videos

IGTV videos are also great options if you want to embark on your business journey through Instagram. For example, you shoot a concise advertisement video for a particular product that you want to sell. You can upload that to your feed as an IGTV video. Later you can share that post in your Instagram story which will help you increase the chances of selling the product.