How I'm Using Instagram Right Now

Welcome to episode 348 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. With all the changes in the last year with Instagram, I wanted to help get clear on how you can use it right now, how you can make these pieces, like Instagram stories and Instagram lives, and of course your good old faithful, your actual profile to work for you now. I thought I'd talk a little bit about how I'm using it, how some of my clients are using it, how we sort of mend these pieces together. We're going to do that by really talking about each of the three pieces, starting with Instagram stories. Then, we'll talk about Instagram live, and we'll wrap it up with our profile page. Okay?

Let's jump in with Instagram stories. Instagram stories are a really powerful way for you to share what's happening that day. I do like having some plan if this is something that you are really going to be using. Even as far as actually planning what shots are going to happen or what chunks of video are going to go out. The cool thing about Instagram stories is that you can blend together multiple messages throughout the day to really tell one cohesive story. A really great example of that is behind the scenes of a product development, or a product launch, or packaging of some sort of special bundle. I do it a lot when I shoot video. If I'm doing a video day, I'll actually do stories throughout the day of my setup and what I'm shooting and my wardrobe changes and things like that, because it gives you again that connection point that we talk about all the time.

We talked about it in the last episode. We've talked about it a lot in my backstage. That connection point is the reason stories is valuable. That really is going to give you the chance to showcase what's happening in that 24 hours. Please things things. Make sure they make sense, and make sure they're cohesive with what's going on. Use them to support the content you have going out on the profile, the lives you have coming up, the content you have going out on your website, the content you have going out on other social media channels, the ads you're running at the moment. All of those pieces, this is still a part of that. Don't think about short-term social and Instagram stories as something that's separate from your overall strategy. It's not. It's just another support piece. It's just another touchpoint for us to connect this way in a little more of a short-term way because it does expire. People aren't going to be finding it six months later. It allows us to touch base right then.

It's also a really, really, really cool way to know who your biggest fans are. You can see who's watching those stories, so you can see. Oh, I know these six clients or listeners or viewers or readers or whatever; they watch every single story. Maybe I should reach out to them. Maybe I should make sure I'm engaging on some other content. Maybe I should see if they want to be a part of XYZ program, products, group, whatever. Utilize those stories to again support and also identify who you're going to connect. It's the only thing on Instagram that allows you to see who's watching in and out and it and out over and over again, who's lasting through whole stories. That's powerful. Okay?

The second thing I want to talk about is Instagram live. Instagram did a really cool thing. In I think April they released this. You now have the ability to save your Instagram lives to your phone, which is awesome because now as temporary as they are, because there's no replay or anything like that on Instagram; you know at least repurpose. Meaning, you can now go and share that video on YouTube or wherever else it makes sense again for your brand. What I really love about Instagram live is they're really so far staying true to the original live video, on the go, on the fly model that Perisc

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