Are you looking for new innovative ideas for growing your Instagram account?
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Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms so it’s only natural that you’d want to boost your social media reach on the platform. On that note, collaborations with influencers are very effective for promoting your brand online. But traditional influencer campaigns aren’t your only option.
An Instagram Stories takeover is a great option for leveraging the power of successful content creators and influencers to promote your products and services.
We'll guide you through an easy-to-follow process for an Instagram Stories takeover. Specifically, you’ll learn:
- What an Instagram Stories takeover is
- The benefits of this marketing strategy
- The steps for a successful Instagram Stories takeover
And we’ll also explain how to promote and measure Instagram Stories takeovers.
Without further ado, let's jump to it!
What Is an Instagram Stories Takeover and How Does It Work?
An Instagram Stories takeover is, as its name suggests, a marketing initiative that involves working with someone (usually a content creator or influencer) who takes over your brand’s Instagram account and creates Instagram Stories highlighting your products and services for you.
Stories is a stream of interactive content that doesn't appear in your grid or Instagram feed.
Also, an Instagram Story duration is only 24 hours, a time-limited type of content.
For this reason, the promoted content should be well planned and you should consider the following when planning it:
- Main message of the Stories
- Graphics that match your brand identity
- Products or services to be promoted
This way, brands can increase awareness and interact with a wider audience.
But this social media strategy isn’t only beneficial to the brands—it’s a win-win situation for both parties.
Brands are promoted creatively and reach a larger audience, while influencers are also getting access to a more diverse audience than the one they have already established.
The most important things are to keep the content natural and encourage the users to engage.
This way, you’ll take advantage of the user-generated content (UGC) benefits, such as increased credibility and trust.
In terms of how Instagram Stories takeovers work, there are two options for giving access to a promoting partner:
- By giving the proverbial keys of your account
- Through the Meta Business Manager that allows you to give a certain amount of accessibility, mainly the permission for publishing content
Let's now find out how beneficial influencer marketing campaigns can be for businesses.
What Are the Benefits of an Instagram Stories Takeover?
An Instagram Stories takeover is an innovative way to boost interaction with your target audience by collaborating with creators and influencers who have their way of engaging successfully with social media users.
Let's have a look at some of the benefits of building Instagram Stories takeovers.
Benefit #1: Raising brand and product awareness
Influencers are generally great at creating high engagement with their audience and that’s the reason why collaboration with them can help you increase brand visibility.
One in three daily Instagram users say they become more interested in products they have seen in Instagram Stories.
That’s why Instagram Stories takeovers can increase brand awareness and promote new products effectively.
Benefit #2: Reaching new audiences
Stories can be easily re-shared by content contributors and the public.
There are over 500 million active daily Instagram Stories users and the reason for that is simple—Instagram users love to consume Stories since 70% of Instagram's Gen Z audiences watch the format.
What makes Stories great is that users can easily share them directly with their friends or re-share them on their Stories. So the distribution of Stories can be increased exponentially, which makes this type of content have a very large appeal.
Author’s Tip: Working with influencers and creating content that allows the audience to interact, such as Q&A content, in particular, can attract many new users.
Benefit #3: Building trust by providing social proof
In a takeover, Instagram Stories are created by creators and influencers themselves, with consumers more likely to trust the content as it feels more authentic.
In fact, 61% of consumers trust influencers' recommendations when making a purchase decision.
Benefit #4: Producing authentic content
According to research, 87% of brands are using UGC to make sure they share authentic content with prospective and existing customers online.
Because takeovers are all about creating content from the influencer’s unique point of view (POV), takeovers are chosen by brands that want to create original, authentic content.
Benefit #5: Boosting sales
All the benefits mentioned above, like increased brand awareness and more authentic content, can ultimately have a catalytic effect on sales and an increase in conversion rates.
Specifically, for sales purposes, Instagram Stories allows users to add links that lead to landing pages they want to boost or their eCommerce stores.
This way, the audience gets hooked by the content and can click on the link to go directly to your products or services.
How to Run an Effective Instagram Stories Takeover in 8 Steps
Let's roll up our sleeves because we’re starting strategic planning.
This strategy will ensure the progress of the takeover through a well-mapped plan.
If this is your first time dealing with this nitty-gritty part, follow the steps below.
Make sure you take your time on each step to make the right decisions and run a successful Instagram takeover.
Step #1: Define your objectives
First things first, you need to define what you want to achieve through an Instagram Story takeover.
In other words, you first need to define the main goals and metrics you want to monitor to measure your campaign's return on investment (ROI).
These metrics will help determine the success of the campaign. Some important metrics are:
- Brand awareness: Measure brand awareness by monitoring the reach and impressions of Stories. This will show you how many people, beyond your followers, watched your Stories.
- Followers count: This one is about how many people started following your account during the takeover.
- Sales generated or conversions: The number of actions, such as signups and purchases, that were triggered by your Stories.
Goals will help you evaluate and measure your Instagram takeover campaign and guide your partner’s activities to achieve them.
Step #2: Find a partner that aligns with your brand values
Before launching an Instagram Stories takeover, make sure you identify a partner that aligns with your brand values.
It’s important to find a good storyteller or someone your target audience would like.
To choose the right partner, you’ll need to consider:
- The subject matter of the content
- The demographics and audience personas
- The creator’s following
- Level of creator engagement with their audience
- The creator’s previous collaborations with brands
If the idea of finding the right partner for a successful Instagram takeover seems challenging, why not use an influencer marketplace like Insense?
Insense gives you access to a network with 35,000+ creators, and identifies the best partner for your next social media marketing campaign.
Once you've created your list of suitable creators, you need to craft a brief for your collaborators so they can learn more about your campaign.
Step #3: Define the takeover parameters and guidelines
A brief about the takeover guidelines is basically a documented template that explains the whole process and gives essential info to the collaborator.
It’s important that you set clear guidelines for your goals right from the start and communicate them accordingly to your potential partners.
A great idea at this point is to also ask your collaborators for feedback and consider their perspectives—that’ll increase your chances of receiving original content.
The plan should answer questions such as:
- What types of content will be created?
- What are the graphics or word requirements?
- What would be good to avoid?
Instructions are helpful to both sides but don’t overdo it.
The content will feel less biased and more authentic if you give collaborators freedom in the creative process.
Step #4: Decide on a tool for exchanging Instagram Story content
When it comes to using the right tools for exchanging and publishing Instagram Stories, you can give the contributor access to the takeover through the platform's original built-in tools, such as the Instagram Business Account.
Your partner can then publish content to your account by setting the appropriate permissions.
A great alternative to that is to use external tools, like Insense, that can make the process easier through its direct chat feature, which brands can use to communicate with creators hassle-free and also receive deliverables.
Step #5: Ready the assets
Creating the assets is an essential part of the process.
Brands should define the assets they wish to feature in the takeover content and send them to the creator.
The main assets could be a brand logo, icons, or graphics based on the brand identity.
The more assets there are, the more flexibility the influencers will have as they can utilize them in their content.
Author’s Tip: The best thing you can do is to communicate with the host to choose the appropriate assets together.
Step #6: Pick a branded hashtag
Once you're done creating and sharing your assets, it's time to pick a branded hashtag that can help you communicate your takeover and boost excitement.
This way, you can measure audience interaction by looking at how many users shared your branded hashtag with others or created personalized content based on it.
Tip: If you have a branded hashtag, make sure you display it on your bio to boost awareness.
Step #7: Schedule the takeover
Having a specific takeover schedule is essential as it’s that schedule that will help you make sure you’ve covered all the steps and that you’re making the most of your Instagram Stories takeover.
After all, you put a lot of work and effort into it—you wouldn’t want people to miss it or forget about it.
That’s why your audience should know when the takeover will take place and who the host will be.
To make things easier for yourself, you can use the features that social media platforms give you.
For example, you could create a Facebook event to promote the takeover or a teaser, which you can share across your social media platforms and website.
Step #8: Launch and analyze the results
As soon as you launch a takeover, start monitoring the process.
Here are some points to pay attention to:
- What exceeded your expectations?
- Did it all go according to plan?
- What didn’t go as well?
A safe way to go about this is to evaluate the results from the takeover of your brand’s account based on the goals you defined at the beginning.
We’ll now cover in more detail how to promote a takeover and which metrics are worth considering.
How to Promote and Measure Your Instagram Stories Takeover
It's time to promote your Instagram Stories takeover.
This part will help your followers look forward to the Instagram takeover and create a buzz around it.
The promotion process is divided into three stages to enable it to run smoothly.
- Before the launch: Inform your audience about the upcoming takeover.
This can be done by creating teasers or content posted on your grid.
Announce your takeover partner's name and use Instagram features such as the countdown sticker or Instagram live to increase user interest.
Share content about the takeover as much as possible across all your social media channels.
- Day in the takeover: The goal is to incentivize the audience to engage and re-share the IG Stories.
This can be done through interactive content, such as quizzes, takeover hashtag challenges, polls, and more.
Record the takeover content for future usage.
- After the takeover: Repurpose content from a Stories takeover and use it as an Instagram post in your feed, an Instagram Reel, and content for other social media accounts.
Also, summarize the initiative on your website.
What’s more, you can create an Instagram Stories Highlight with the best content from the takeover.
Finally, wrap up the collaboration with your takeover host smoothly, sticking to what you have agreed and maintaining a good relationship.
Upon completion of the process, it’s time to measure the results of the influencer takeover.
Evaluating the process based on certain key performance indicators (KPIs) is important.
The goal is to choose the KPIs that matter most to your brand and primarily track those metrics.
Some typical KPIs that you can consider for the Instagram Stories takeover are:
- Number of new followers: The number of new Instagram followers gained during the takeover, which may conflict with your overall growth index.
- Reach and impressions: The number of users who watched your Stories and how many of them have or haven’t become followers.
- Story engagement rate: A crucial metric that shows how many actions were taken by the users, i.e., shares, replies, etc.
- Link clicks: This counts how many users clicked on the link you put in your Stories. An equally good way to track link clicks is through UTM tracking links.
- Hashtag usage and mentions: Hashtags are easily measured within the Instagram platform using reports of the action through the takeover hashtag.
- Website traffic: This is about attracting people during the takeover. It can be checked by using analytic tools and easily compared by selecting the days you want.
- Conversions: This has to do with completing actions, such as a purchase, a subscription to the newsletter, etc.
Let’s wrap up!
Now Over to You
There you have it!
You've learned about Instagram Stories takeovers and how to leverage growth through them.
Finding the right partners is key to making the most of this powerful Instagram marketing strategy.
Does this seem challenging?
Don't worry at all!
Feel free to book a demo with Insense and we'll help make the collaboration process of any Instagram Stories takeover a piece of cake for you.
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