 Are you using Instagram stories as part of your social media marketing strategy as an artist and creative? I know that likely the whole idea of being on Instagram seems like a big burden and a bit of a time suck, but I promise you that Instagram stories strategy is super easy to do, takes very little time and so long as you know what to post and of course how to get the most out of it. So in my previous video I shared 10 ideas, post ideas for you to use on your Instagram stories. Today I'm going to share 10 tips on how to get the most out of your Instagram stories. Now stories are really great because they build engagement and the no like and trust factor with your existing audience. They also are beginning to be found by non-followers as well, so it's a bit of a win-win situation. They're much faster to do, they're much more about spontaneity and being in the moment whereas when you're actually creating posts for your feed you're really looking at curated and a bit more thought and a bit more time, energy and effort and ideally of course your strategy is going to include both things feed and story but today we're just looking at Instagram stories so having got 10 content ideas let's make sure you optimise them and I'm going to give you as I said 10 tips to do just that. Well hello welcome or welcome back to my channel I'm Sophie and I help artists just like you to build a profitable business doing what you love. If you'd like more tips and tricks on how to build that profitable business then you're in the right place all right. Stay tuned, make sure you subscribe to the channel and hit that bell to get notified every time I post a new video. Well as I've mentioned we've just been through a whole load of story ideas and how you can use them then today I want to share with you tips to make it even easier and to make sure that your stories really do get in front of more of your followers and all as well as new followers potential followers as well. So let's take a look at my top 10 tips for your Instagram stories. So tip number one you want to try and post every day and multiple stories so that's not just one image or video but that's to be posting throughout the day. Now I know I know you might think I don't have the time Sophie but honestly as I said in the previous video it really doesn't take you any time quick photo quick video quick time lapse just as you go through your day. So tip number one is you really want to commit to doing it post daily start in the morning do an update mid morning another one at lunchtime mid afternoon and in the evening that would be ideal but even if you can't manage that and you get one good story up it's better than nothing. So post daily really important make sure you stay for tip 10 because I've got something to add to the post daily that's going to make this even more powerful all right and it might even just contradict everything I've just said so make sure you stay for that. So tip number two be spontaneous stories about in the moment. So when something's happening and you think oh my goodness I wasn't expecting that to happen you've I don't know you put some paint on the canvas and it's dripped in a certain way and you quite like the drip it's not something you normally do but it's spontaneous and we might just keep that to ourselves and move on but just take a moment grab a photo grab a quick video and share it say look this is just what happened I wasn't aiming to do this I wasn't expecting this to happen but I'm quite liking this drip all right so you've got to be prepared all the time like I've said a few times make sure to have your smartphone handy always be taking photos always be taking videos and if you're really doing something make sure you grab a few time lapses the worst that happened is you don't use any of it all right best case scenario you've got all sorts of things to pull from when you are creating not just stories but posts as well I think I said that a few times but I really want to get that across because it's super important so spontaneity is just staying in that mindfulness space of being aware that you need to take photos in the moment all right something could happen you go out on a walk and you're totally inspired you pull out your sketchbook you're doing something not something you plan to do all right you're just going to grab that photo you're out and about and you go into an art gallery and you bump into a friend spontaneous meeting quick selfie out and about what happened to go in this gallery look what I've met all right to be spontaneous be ready we always ready to take photos and videos and pop them up on your instagram stories all right tip number three been the curated posts all right I know it's really easy and I'm guilty of for doing it sometimes as well and I've totally seen that curated posts do not get the engagement of real raw in the moment photographs and videos so if you're doing if you're building up to something and you've got some curated post for an exhibition then do it but make sure that you put your own writing and you tag and you do something with it all right so just a curated post on its own just don't bother like get rid of it out of your strategy you want to take the photos and videos and post them up in the moment tip number four try thinking about videos we know that instagram loves videos we know that all social media loves videos so think about whether you could add videos to your story it's more engaging for your viewer so when you look at other people's stories what are you more engaged with a photograph or a video we know that likely the video is going to be the thing it's walking you around an area it's something you can watch you're following them you're like oh okay even if it's for a few seconds it just takes you from this place to this place remember instagram stories are just that you're telling the story of your life as an artist you're telling the story of the work that you're creating or the people that you're working with all the materials you use or the shops that you buy things from you're telling a story places that you visit so always be thinking about storytelling tip number five try to go live all right can't stress this enough this is going to super super important so you're in the studio space you're going to get ready for work and start working you're doing some preparation working on sketchbook you want to share a few ideas or if we think about it in terms of promotion then you're heading towards a show an exhibition hit the live button and talk to us all right share what's going on because i promise you those will get a much higher engagement rate as well so going live is the next tip all right tip number six let's get into the nitty gritty all right simply posting a photo or a video is not enough you need to use all the things all right all the things so when you post it up you want to put some writing on it to explain so if you pop to video up sometimes people in locations where they haven't got the sound on or they can't have the sound on because they're at work so you need to write over it what's going on what you want the person to understand what is the bit about the story you want them to get so make sure that you use a font that's that's readable preferably maybe it's subtly in your brand colors just to give that kind of awareness but put some writing on there so writing is super important lots of bits of writing if you've got a lot to say you add another story writing on that story so that again people can read and follow it through so writing is super important hashtags now when it comes to hashtags on story use a larger hashtag so rather than something that's that's much more small and niche and doesn't have that many followers you want to use a much broader hashtag on your stories you also want to think if you're out and about at an event there might be a hashtag specifically for that event so make sure you're a little bit savvy and you do that so for example in my on my side hustle which is my weaving I go to a market I have a market store I've just started doing that this year so the story that I post there will have the hashtag for that specific market all right that means anybody who's following that market will see that story okay the next thing you want to use is make sure that you put the location in you geolocate your story so that could be as simple as where you are in the world in terms of where yours working space is but it can also be if you're at an event or in a store buying something or at that market or you're somewhere that's a bit more specific or you've gone on a walk for inspiration and you've gone to a national park the more specific you can be with the geolocation sticker the better right sometimes you find that you put a geolocation sticker and there are people actually who follow that story based on that location because they're interested in that location so you want to do that as well then I like to do things like add gifts all right so if you want to add a gift you simply again you're going to go to the gift you're going to say okay on arrows are useful if you want people to read something or move forward to the next story but sometimes I use the painting one where there's somebody doing something with a brush or it's just something it's more engaging it's funny you might want to use a funny gift use all the things that instagram has you can also do countdown timers and this is where you can find all the questions and polls and all the extra things you want to use all the features that instagram has on offer they'll like you for that all right so the more you can put on a story the more interesting it is to the viewer instagram story tip number seven we've said about using text to explain what's happening you can also create a video and actually have the subtitles as well so if you've got a video app and you create a bit of a video and then you just pop the subtitles on there's a few apps if you want to know what those are then shoot me a direct message of one that I use you can add very easily subtitles and you can post that video and again so someone's sitting somewhere they can't have the sound on and they're watching you talk but then the subtitles are coming up so using text to tell the story of what you're doing so you can do with subtitles or you can do it in the way that I said where you manually write over them so here's the thing about stories you're likely to add to the story during the day and as we get busier during the day it's really easy to get lazy and you just add a photo but what happens is the story lasts for 24 hours so if your first story with all the writing on has gone and the person sees the next story and they haven't had the bit beforehand and there's no writing on the next story they're not going to know what's going on so each story needs to have writing and you need to think what happens when the first story disappears and somebody lands on that one having not seen the first one does it make sense is it something that stands on its own so unless you post stories all in the same time and they sit within the same time zone and they'll all disappear at the same time sometimes what you can do and sometimes what I do if I've done that and I go in the next morning and I think all the first one's gone the second one doesn't really mean anything I'm just going to delete it all right so that's what you can be doing as well so make sure that each story stands on its own and don't forget to use the writing to explain what is going on in the story so tip number eight for your instagram stories start looking to tag people all right so you want to get this story out in front of more people and get the engagement up that one obvious way of doing that is to tag somebody in the story they're likely to share your story to their story therefore it's going to get seen by more people so you don't want to randomly tag people obviously you want to tag where it's appropriate so if you've been to an exhibition you could tag the gallery if you bumped into that person somewhere you could tag them if you've been to an art shop and you bought some materials tag the art shop you know sometimes I go out for coffee and I'll tag the cafe because you know they like to see people out and about they share that on that story it's going to be relevant so make sure it's part of what you're doing don't randomly tag people but again for my market strategy if I'm putting a story up about that then of course I will tag the the place where I'm having the market so you want to try and do all of the things for as many stories as possible tip number nine take story breaks and you're going to think to yourself well hold on Sophie you said post a story every day and I did but there's something about the algorithm that quite likes it if you for 24 hours or 48 hours not posted a story and then you post again I have no idea why that works but that's worked pretty well for me I know that I've taken a break and then I come back with a series of stories I get much higher engagement for some reason I've no idea and at time of shooting this works six months down the line it might not but it's worth trying it's also quite nice for you just to take a break not to have to think about it all right so take a break just don't post anything for 24 48 hours and then post again and somehow that kind of reinvigorates the whole system like I said we don't want to we don't need to understand why but at the moment it's working really well so that's my tip number nine so tip number 10 is of course to share other people's content to your story so if you've got something that you really stand for or a topic that you're really working through at the moment so a collection that you're pulling together something that's relevant to you and your brand and you follow somebody and they've posted something that you think I really like that post it's really relevant to what I'm doing then you can of course just hit the little share button at the bottom and share that person's post to your story and then you can tag them in your story so for example you're building up to an exhibition and the gallery where you're having the exhibition has posted something that you think is of interest about the gallery and you think okay well that's where I'm going to be having my exhibition I will put that post into my story and say hey check out this gallery that's where I'm going to be having my solo show next month and then you can tag the gallery in the post they will love that and they will likely share your story to their story still following so they've posted a post maybe a little time lapse going around the gallery space you're going to have your exhibition in the gallery space so you share that post to your story and you tag that gallery and you say this is where my upcoming exhibition is going to be next month likely they'll see that obviously and they'll want to share that they share your story to their story and if you're really lucky they might again give you some might tag you back again but they might say check out this artist they're going to be showing in our wonderful space next month so now suddenly their followers have the chance of seeing you and getting to know you before you have your exhibition in their space next month okay it's the little things it's the nuances it's the little bits that you can do with the stories that will begin to make them more powerful what's the most important thing you can do post consistently just have that break every now and then give yourself a breather and somehow reinvigorate the instagram algorithm goodness me isn't it just a fantastic thing so don't overthink this just keep it super simple keep it in the moment don't beat yourself up if you have a day where you forget to do it or you just suddenly you think oh my god i didn't do that but when you can get into that habit of always taking photos always taking videos you will have things to post so even if you get to lunchtime you think oops i didn't do anything you can check back through and think well i can post that now that's relevant all right i hope you've really enjoyed this kind of instagram stories mini series i feel like it's a little bit like that so make sure to check out as i say the previous one which gave you some post ideas check out all my other instagram videos below in the description below this and don't forget to let us know in the comments what tip has been relevant for you what you're going to be doing with your stories and don't forget to follow me and if you've loved this video you can tag me in it as well i will be super happy and to share your story to my story all right thank you so much for watching and i'll see you on the next one