Join me and the Goal-Getting Makers group as we challenge ourselves to post an IG Story everyday for the month of March!
Why are we doing this? IG Stories (and honestly – Instagram in general) are a social media tool that I completely, totally neglect. I do not enjoy consuming videos as a consumer, and I just don’t spend a lot of time on Instagram. So this avenue for marketing has always been at the bottom of my totem poll.
Plus I really just don’t get it – they disappear in 24 hours! Why am I gonna spend time & energy creating a post when it literally goes poof at the end of the day?!
But I got an email in early February that caught my eye – roughly half of Instagram’s 1 billion users are using Stories every day (that’s 500 MILLION PEOPLE). That seems like a lot of people. So maybe I need to stop avoiding IG Stories and see if this makes any sense for my brand. I’m a stats gal and that’s just too big of a stat to ignore!
I’ve been doing my research since then and learned a few more intriguing facts about IG Stories:
- They are more “discoverable” than regular IG posts, meaning more likely for non-followers to find you
- They are one of the fastest growing social media tools in the history of social media
- A FB study found that about 1 in 3 IG users claim to have become more interested in a brand or product after seeing it in Stories.
So, I’m sitting there thinking about how I can muster the energy to give IG Stories the good ol’ college try. And I think to myself, why not invite you guys along too? Accountability always does me some good.
If you want to give Stories a try, I invite you to join me for a month-long challenge during March. We’ll try to do a story a day for the entire month. Then – most importantly – we will sit back and analyze the results of this attempt – does it bring us more followers? Do people actually click through to our site? Do we see any increase in revenue? Are Stories WORTH IT?
I also wanna add the caveat – you don’t need to do this challenge if you’ve got a million other more important things on your plate. I don’t know much about Stories (yet) but I know they aren’t right for every business. I also know that there are a million OTHER strategies or ideas you may be focusing on right now. Please put your focus where it will (financially) benefit you the MOST. Don’t let this be another unnecessary shiny object on your to do list if it doesn’t make sense right now.
If you do decide to join us, make sure to use our new group hashtag – #goalgettingmakers in your Stories so we can follow along.
We will be cheering each other on in real time from the Goal Getting Makers group on Facebook. Join us!
Resources for Getting Started
- Tailwind app – for scheduling your Instagram posts (and Pinterest too!).
- Make your Instagram posts shoppable by linking your products to your shop – this is super important and I recommend you get this set up before March 1! Instructions can be found here.
- The Tailwind blog also has a really helpful getting started guide with best practices and all sorts of awesome info on how to utilize Instagram for your brand.
- Adobe Spark– This is a great tool for creating professional & engaging (and even animated) graphics for using in your Stories. You can use it on a desktop or on your phone.
Tracking Your Results
And you know I’m all about the numbers, so if we’re going to test this whole IG Stories thing out, you better bet I’m going to track the metrics related to this experiment.
I’ve created a simple spreadsheet (of course) to log my IG metrics pre-experiment, during the experiment, and after the experiment. I encourage you to do the same.
I am MOST curious to see if increasing my presence on IG Stories results in any sort of increase specifically to my website clicks, and then potentially has any impact on my revenue.
Personally, I am not convinced that Instagram is a good source of revenue-generating traffic for Paper + Spark. Now I’d love to be proved otherwise, but that’s my hypothesis going into this, and it may be totally different for you. I know plenty of people who make good money and IG is their #1 referral source! The only way you’ll know for sure is to test & measure!
Want the simple little Instagram metric tracking spreadsheet for your own testing? Download it by entering your email below.
How to track Instagram traffic to your site using Google Analytics
This is a live video I did in the Facebook group that you may find helpful!
Stay tuned for more info coming throughout February as we prepare.
I’m hoping to also share:
- An intro video on how IG Stories work with screen sharing from my phone
- How to get Google Analytics installed so you can monitor your traffic from Instagram
- How to use Google Analytics to track revenue generated from Instagram traffic
- Content planning ideas for your month of Stories
Remember to join me in the Goal Getting Makers group on FB for more updates.