Why Your Nonprofit Should Focus on the Power of Instagram Stories in 2020

With 7 billion users worldwide, 1.1 billion monthly users, and 75 percent of users taking action, it’s pretty easy to see why nonprofits are choosing to invest their valuable resources on the fastest-growing of the Big Three social media platforms: Instagram.

If you didn’t already know, the visual storytelling app allows users to upload photos and videos to their profile page and browse through other users’ and organizations’ posts in a newsfeed. What makes Instagram different from other social media networks (like Facebook or Twitter) is the way people use it. Instagrammers are checking the site multiple times a day and engaging with posts at a much higher rate than with other platforms. According to Nonprofits Source, 30 percent of nonprofits use Instagram to create inspiring messages about their mission, build awareness, and attract donors.

In August 2016, Instagram took a page from then Snapchat’s book when they launched Instagram Stories, a new feature that would let Instagram accounts post photos and videos that vanish after 24 hours. Nowadays, over 500 million Instagrammers use Stories daily, more than twice the number of users Snapchat has for its entire app (Sorry not sorry, Snapchat).

With Instagram’s complex algorithm continually changing and choosing which posts to show users when they log in, many organizations are frustrated by lack of engagement and are struggling to get in front of their target audiences on the medium. However, because Stories occupying prime real estate on the app as the very first thing users see when they open it and they are not shown in chronological order, organizations are now seeing the value in spending more and more time on Story content then feed content.

And where feed photos often tend to be hyper-curated and polished, Stories offer nonprofit’s a unique opportunity to add more of a human touch to their cause and organization. As an article on Recode by Vox puts it, “Stories offer a low-pressure alternative to Instagram’s high-pressure photo feed.”

However, if you’re like many nonprofits with limited staff or resources you may be wondering how you can make Instagram Stories work for your organization. So today, we’re covering five ways you can get started with Stories! 

1. Use Stories to give a human touch to your organization.

So much of what is often posted on Instagram feeds can feel too perfect and almost unreal…right? As the “Instagram vs. Reality” movement sums up, filters and angles can distort reality so that when you’re scrolling the feed you’re seeing an idealized world where everyone is climbing mountains or eating at fancy restaurants every day.

Now, we could write a whole other article about this concept, but suffice it to say that Stories emerged as the bar for what was “Instagram-worthy” raising every day. Instagram knew they had to do something to re-engage their users and encourage them to share even the less-than-perfectly-curated parts of their lives. “The biggest problem [people had] with Instagram is feeling the pressure of sharing really amazing photos,” CEO Kevin Systrom told Recode by Vox last summer. “People want to actually share a lot more, but they don’t want it to hang on the gallery wall.”

That same article sums up the spontaneous nature of stories that your organization can capitalize on saying:

“Stories are supposed to be spontaneous, realistic and fun — a simple slice of real life, or a daily video journal. Most Stories content is shot casually and quickly through the Instagram app’s camera. And because viewers control playback — it’s easy to advance through a story at the pace you desire or skip it entirely — time-consuming video editing isn’t required.

Videos can be shaky or blurry. They can feel raw and unpolished. They can sometimes get tedious. But because they’re full-screen in the mobile-native vertical format, they’re instantly engaging, especially on larger smartphones.”

So how can you show that “raw, unpolished” side of your organization that is going to resonate with the real, imperfect humans on the other side of your profile?

Well, for starters, you can utilize Stories to document a journey or show, organically, how your mission and organization helps its beneficiaries. Since Stories are only around for 24 hours, you can experiment with different content a lot more freely than what you might post to your grid. Share photos of your team or of volunteers working in the field, videos of your organization’s day-to-day, or even a tour of your office space or campaign headquarters. Flip your phone around, hit record, and explain your “Why” of the work you do and why you do it, and then follow it with a heartfelt ask for donations.

As mentioned before, Instagram stories don’t always have to be scripted and thoroughly planned out. While you can map out your feed content weeks in advance and carefully doctor each and every post, Instagram stories take very easily to impromptu and spontaneously posting schedules – which is great when you want to share something in the moment!

Stories give your organization the ability to produce content faster and on limited resources ten times more accessible and actually achievable. This is a major reason Stories can be so useful for nonprofits in particular.

• Donate Sticker: We had to lead with highlighting this relatively new sticker option that is a gamechanger for nonprofits!  Like Facebook Fundraisers, which have made a real difference for some organizations, the Donate Sticker allows users to raise money for nonprofits from their followers. Note: There are eligibility requirements and you have to take a few steps to make sure your organization is set up properly so that others can raise funds for you.
• Questions: This particular sticker is a GREAT way to engage your audience by offering them a direct line of communication to share their thoughts with your brand! When you ask your audience a question, their responses are sent to you as DMs. Conduct a Q&A via stories by asking your followers what questions they have about your organization. AKA “ask me anything!” Another great way to use the Questions sticker is by sharing information as a thought leader or expert in your organization’s field. For example, if you’re a nonprofit that focuses on financial literacy education, you might post a question that encourages your followers to ask you any questions they have about money/financial literacy. You can obviously reply directly to each person who submits a question with your answer, or you can choose to share their response (aka their question) to your story along with your answer to show you’re listening (and as an easy way to create additional content).
• Quiz: Use this sticker function to create fun multiple choice quiz questions for your audience to answer. This is another great way to creatively educate your followers on your organization’s mission and to make it more fun than just iterating facts! As M+R points out, you can also use quizzes to measure what your social media audience knows and what they might need to know more about from you.
• Interactive poll sticker: Ask a question and see results from your followers as they interact and cast their votes! Use the opportunity to ask “this or that” questions to find out your followers’ likes, dislikes, and what they’d like to see more of from your organization. Some questions Later suggests using polls to find answers to are: “Would they rather see more content in your feed or stories? Do they prefer more behind-the-scenes content or editorial shots? Do they like reading long or short captions?” People love sharing their opinion, so be sure to ask!
• Emoji Slider: Emoji sliders are essentially a different way to ask interactive poll questions. Choose an emoji that represents your question and your audience can just drag the emoji to the left or right to show how they feel. One pro of using the emoji slider is that you can offer more than two options for a question.
• Countdown sticker: You can use countdown stickers to build excitement for a big event or announcement! New blog post coming out Friday? Make a countdown for it. Organizational milestone or birthday coming up? Make a countdown for it. Oh and P.S: Did you know that people who watch your Insta Story can tap on your countdown and choose to set a reminder for themselves to celebrate with you when your countdown is over or share your countdown in their own Insta Stories? #themoreyouknow
• GIF: Search Giphy and embed a GIF within your story to add some movement. GIFs are fun and relatable and make people laugh. No further explanation needed.
• @Mention: Tag any organizations (volunteer or business) that your nonprofit works with to give kudos – they’ll almost always re-share the positive content!

And one final bonus: if you have more than ten thousand followers (no pressure if you’re not even close – that’s A LOT of followers!), you have the ability to include a “Swipe Up” link directly from your Instagram stories where you can direct users to your website or to content posted elsewhere. This is a really awesome feature to utilize, if it is available to you, as it takes a step out of the process of directing viewers to a link in your profile and, statistically, 15%–25% of people swipe up on a link in branded Stories.

3. Create Strategic Story Highlights on Your Profile.

Even though Instagram Stories have a short shelf life (just 24 hours at the top of your follower’s feeds) there is a way to get more “work” from them as pieces of content: Highlights. Nope, not the kind you get at the hair salon or the kind you see on Sports Center. We’re talking Instagram Story Highlights where you can group a series of past stories into a highlight with a title and cover photo that will remain on the Instagram profile until it is deleted.

4. As with most things digital, video is king. So utilize it!

So many people are scared to death of video, worrying how they look on camera or that they won’t know the “right” things to say. Don’t get me wrong, it can be nerve-racking to jump in front of the camera before all of your followers, but with 81% of businesses using video as a marketing tool in 2018, it’s time to make the leap (or double down)!

In case you could use a refresher or you’re totally new to this video concept, this article by Medium summarizes 8 reasons why, in fact, video content is king, including: 

• “Videos Capture Attention & Increase Engagement – When it comes to creating content, your main objective is to put something out there that will capture the attention of your audience. Videos demand more attention than any other medium and also open up plenty of opportunities for engagement.
• Videos Can Explain Everything – Videos are a great way to show how your product or service works because they show things in action. Text-based content isn’t useless by any means, but a video has the power to bring concepts to life in a whole new way. The bottom line is, most people easily retain information that they process visually.
• Videos Build Trust & Relationships – When your audience can see you on screen they are able to get a feel for who you are and can start to build a personal connection with you. Conversions and sales wouldn’t exist without trust, so keep in mind that content marketing runs on the long-term relationships you create.
• Videos Create An Emotional Connection – This point also connects back to establishing trust. Through video content, you’re being transparent by putting your face, voice, and personality on display. People connect with other people, and this makes video one of the most powerful ways to spark emotions online. Creating content that triggers the emotion of your audience can inspire them to take action and have a positive impact on their decision-making.
• Videos Can Increase Traffic – The more time that people spend viewing your content the better. Rather than text where someone can quickly scan through and move on, videos have higher retention rates since more people will stick around to watch them. When they spend a lot of time viewing your content, search engines will recognize that your site has great, trustworthy content and this will affect your ranking in search engines.
• Videos Boost Conversion And Sales – If you offer a product or service, add a video about it on your landing page to increase conversions tremendously. Our body’s most dominant sense is vision, and the majority of information that’s transmitted to our brains is visual. If a video is done right and in a way that provides value and a clear understanding of your offer, it can lead directly to sales.
• Video Content Is Embraced By Social Media – There are so many platforms out nowadays, and most of them are leaning towards how they can support video marketing. Social media is welcoming plenty of video features to connect with its users. We have Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and more, and there’s no sign of video content losing its charm anytime soon.
• Video Content Can Be Repurposed – There are endless possibilities when it comes to repurposing your video content. Whether you’d like to use images or clips from videos for promotion or share some behind-the-scenes stuff with your audience, one great piece of video content can be repurposed in countless ways.”

A recent Social Insider study found that of the 2,548 business accounts they studied, half of all the brands were using video in their Stories. Video was also outperforming Stories with images by having a 5.65% lower tap-forward rate. In terms of keeping people engaged with your content and not moving on to the next thing, people tend to “drop off” more on photos than on videos.

5. Make sure your organization’s Instagram is a Business Account.

Plain and simple: your organization is missing out its Instagram is a personal account and not a Business account. It’s free to become a Business account, and it provides you with several useful tools that you don’t have access to with the personal account including analytics and a Contact and Donate button on your profile.

When you become a business account you gain the ability to identify your “type of business” and list yourself as a nonprofit so that when users land on your profile, they’ll know right away that you have a social mission. Making sure you include your website and contact information on your new business profile is crucial as well.

With your new business profile, you also gain access to insights like impressions, engagement, and reach on all of your posts and stories. Social Media Examiner has some great Instagram-for-business tips on how to set up and analyze your new business profile.

All of this said, Instagram stories should not be the only place your organization is investing its time or resources. According to a study posted last month by Rival IQ which combed data from over 29k Stories and 145k+ individual frames, posts on your Instagram feed still get statistically more reach than Stories. Therefore, they suggest a strategy where you “hook viewers with posts and keep them engaged with Stories.” At this point, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says that Stories have become “almost as important” as Instagram’s main feed, but have not yet surpassed it.

But as with most things, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to social media strategy. You may find that, for your particular organization, you have a ton of engagement and success with posts vs. stories or vice versa. The important thing is that you have an active presence that positively promotes your brand with your target audience.