Instagram stories business are a great way to communicate to your customers and share with them glimpse of your world. But coming up with those Instagram story ideas for your business is harder than you thought, right?
Do not worry, here I am with more than 50 Instagram story ideas for your business, and now you can keep your customers hooked and even convert them into warm leads easily.
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Why Instagram stories are important than ever?
I know everyone is talking about Instagram stories, reels and live again and again. But have you ever given a thought on why are they so critical?
Keeps your account active
Instagram stories puts your account on top and there is more chance that your followers see your stories than you feed.
As the stories are arranged chronologically, the more often you post, the higher the chances of your story to be viewed by others.
Helps competing with bigger brands
While the Instagram stories are shown chronologically, the feed is not. And unless you have a very strong following, your post on your feed can get lost.
And as a creative entrepreneur and a small business, it can be harder for you to compete with the big brands.
They are more natural and authentic
We all know the amount of effort and planning that goes into creating your Instagram feed to look the way it is. And your audience will love you for that.
But Instagram stories are little more spontaneous and thus, real. Given that they last for just 24 hours, you can afford to be little “on the go” and be creative about your posts.
Better engagement with your followers
Instagram stories are often the gateway to beginning conversations with your followers and warm leads.
By asking them to answer a poll or your questions, they are giving you a space to speak to them via DM (Direct Messages). Utilize this power responsibly to cultivate relationships with them.
Instagram story ideas for business
Now that you know how critical Instagram stories are for your business, let me show you some story ideas that you can adapt as your own.
Show your wins, even if they are small.
Show what you are working on for the day
Show your working process – Behind the screen
Show your workspace
Show off your packaging style
Get your customers to post the unboxing of your products
Capture the before and after of your work in progress
Share educational guides and tutorials relevant to your prodcuts
Share the screenshots of testimonials and reviews received
Help your customers know your products better
Teach your customers how to use your products
Share DIY tips related to your products
Answer relevant FAQs
Offer a behind-the-scenes look at your unpacked products
Teasers for your new product/service launch
Count down for a new product launch
Collaborate with related accounts for a takeover
Share your failures and lessons learned
Share productivity tips
Talk about role models whom your audience could relate to
Run a trivia contest
Ask questions about your products and offer a discount to the winner
Play games with your followers
Run quizzes with AR effects
Create This or that templates and ask them to tag you with answers
Share seasonal updates, if relevant to your products
Reward your loyal customers with “followers only” deals
Run a customer spotlight
Share experience of a customer (only with their consent)
Ask your followers what they want to see on your story
Run an “ask me anything” question
Share user generated content
Show us your morning routine
Show us how you plan your day
Introduce your team
Ask your employee’s to takeover your story for a day
Take a tour of your office
Create your own hashtag and challenges
Create a regular series on Instagram stories (#sundayfunday #Mondayplans #tuesdaytips etc)
Preview an upcoming post or video
Share your latest post from your feed
Share your posts from your other platforms (blog, Tiktok, Twitter etc)
Share latest posts from accounts you love
Recommend a service or a product you loved
Post about your giveaway/contest
Share Shout-outs or press features
Share your favorite quote
Repurpose and update your old content from your feed post into a new story
Go live on Instagram live and share about your day
Share your daily update with a location
Show off skills (cooking, art etc)
Follow a meme/trend
Share inspirational content
Share what inspires you to create
Share valuable and relevant DMs
Share your top 5 lists of ….
Share your favorite tool or tip that you recently learnt
Show your night time routine.
Do’s and don’ts for Instagram stories for business
But before I conclude, I just want to share a few do’s and don’ts when it comes to Instagram stories for your business.
Don’t Just Promote Things
Use your story feature to create relationships, rather just using them to promote your product.
Show Your Personality
Make your stories fun and creative. Pepper in a bit of your personality, rather than copying others idea.
Use hashtags
Did you know that you can use hashtags on your stories as well?
Make use of highlights
Don’t forget to add important and relevant stories to your highlights as well. A highlight can act as a menu for your Instagram.
Don’t post too often
Last but not the least, avoid posting many stories at a time. Your followers might get bored/annoyed and ignore your posts.
Bottom-line
There you have it, an extensive list of story ideas that would keep your Instagram account active and kicking. So what are you waiting for? Start posting on your Instagram stories right today. Feel free to tag me elgeewrites, for an extra bump for your business.
Opening the Google Analytics dashboard for the first time can be intimidating for most of us. But let me talk about a few important Google Analytics metrics to track. These Key Performance Indicators or KPIs are a great place to begin with.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a powerful tool for measuring your website or blog’s performance and it also shows insights on how to improve it. Whatever may be your goal (improve traffic, get more leads and conversions, etc), installing Google Analytics could help you achieve it.
I know it has so many options and reports that it might overwhelm that you are putting off deep-diving into Google Analytics.
Important Google Analytics Metrics to track
But here I am to make things easy for you and help you get the best of this powerful tool. What are the Google Analytics metrics (KPIs) and numbers that you should watch out for on your dashboard, and why?
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Bounce rate
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of your visitors who leave your site without interacting with it. They bounce out of your site, get it?
A high bounce rate shows that the content was
not relevant – You are attracting the wrong audience
not convincing enough for the visitor to convert or interact. – Improve your writing skills or engage a content writer.
Where to look for this KPI on Google Analytics?
Audience> Overview
You can also view the bounce rates of an individual page at Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.
This metric shows how much time a visitor spends per session (30 minutes of inactivity, usually) or visit, on your site on an average.
It is an aggregate time spent on multiple pages on your site. It includes the time they spend reading your content, leaving a comment, scrolling down, etc.
Obviously the longer they spend, the better it is. The higher average session duration indicates your content is engaging and holds attention.
This metric is very important if you are displaying ads on your site. It also shows the quality of the traffic you generate.
This metric shows the average number of pages a visitor clicks per visit.
The goal here is to keep the content engaging and relevant so that the visitor keeps clicking another page. The higher the number of pages per session, the higher the content writing quality is.
Where to look for this KPI on Google Analytics?
Behavior> Overview
Benchmark:
1 to 3
How can you improve it?
Focus on your content pillar and link to relevant pages.
Use a “related post” widget.
Hub and spoke model of content marketing can be helpful
Source
This is one of my favorite metrics to look at. This report shows where your traffic comes in from. You can find not only which channel sends you traffic but also which sends good quality traffic (= convertible leads).
Knowing which channel brings you good quality traffic can help you make marketing decisions like where you can spend more ad budgets.
Where to look for this KPI on Google Analytics?
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium
Benchmark:
None. But it is always better to have diversified sources for your traffic.
How can you improve it?
Focus on where you get good quality traffic, even if they are low in number.
Referrals
The referral report shows who links and sends traffic to your site. You know backlinks are great for sites, and this report will show where your quality backlinks are.
You can find out which guest post you wrote brings in the most traffic or find out which pin on Pinterest is most effective. Determine where your next collaboration should be by using this report.
Where to look for this KPI on Google Analytics?
Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals
How can you improve it?
Collaborate with relevant and quality blogs and sites
Popular posts
This report shows what are your most popular pages. It is super interesting to look at because it helps you choose the type of content that works best for you.
Where to look for this KPI on Google Analytics?
Behavior > Site Content > All Pages
How can you improve it?
Create topics related to the top-performing posts
Add affiliate links on those posts
Create an opt-in freebie on those pages
Bottom-line
Again, these may seem intimidating but once you get the hang of it these Google analytics metrics and KPIs are your best friends. It will help you understand your audience better and to tailor content to their tastes.
If you have any questions on how to understand any of these metrics, feel free to ask me in the comments or send me an email right away!
Do you know of these important Google Analytics metrics to track? What are some KPIs and numbers that you watch out for on your dashboard? Which is your favorite? Let us talk.
Regularly publishing on your blog seems like a huge deal, often. And we usually forget about them after the first time we promote it. But it is also critical to revamp and update the old posts for improving the SEO ranking and increasing the traffic too.
10 ways to update old posts for higher SEO ranking
Adding relevant updates to your old posts is critical, especially the time sensitive topics like “New Year resolutions” or “Holiday gifts”. These are evergreen posts, but unless you update them with new content the algorithms might ignore them as old posts.
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Instead of churning out content week after week, spend sometime to update old posts and that will help you in improving your SEO ranking and thereby driving more organic traffic. Here are some ways to do just that.
1) Edit your content with relevant updates
Has your opinion or thoughts recently changed about the topic? Or have you learned more on the subject?
Do not hesitate to make the changes in your old posts. Even adding the current year to the heading (H1) might be a good idea for periodical posts.
Linking with time sensitive researches and infographics are other smart ways to update old posts for higher SEO ranking and traffic.
2) Tune up to the current formatting style
With all the fast changes in blogging world happening, keeping up with the recommended formatting style becomes vital.
For example, including a schema and adding relevant H2 tags to your posts will help you get to that spot as featured snippet in Google search page.
Also the uniform layout and styles will keep it easy for your reader’s eyes.
3) Add related posts
One of the easiest ways to keep the readers hooked to your blog is showing them more related content.
A few months ago I started doing this on my recent posts as an attempt to take some traffic to my old, neglected posts. I added a “Similar posts you might like” section before I signed off (or CTA), and there has been a significant decrease in the bounce rates.
You can even add a simple plugin if you are on Self hosted WordPress to do this for you!
4) Fix (or remove) broken links
Adding external links to your posts improves your credibility in the eyes of your readers. But as time passes, those links may become irrelevant or broken.
There are many free sites that can scan your site for broken links (for free!). And once you get the list of broken links on your site, remove and/or update the broken links manually.
Fixing these broken links creates a better user experience as well as shows the search engine and its crawlers that the post is still relevant and updated.
5) Rewriting your meta descriptions and titles
Ensure your older posts have your meta descriptions and titles filled.
With all my enthusiasm to churn out content, I had not bothered to fill those important details for quite a number of posts in my earlier days of blogging.
As a step in improving the SEO I am writing and rewriting the meta description and adding meta title tags to my older posts.
And guess what? The search engines consider this as new content and sends in more traffic!
6) Add in Alt text tags to your images
While updating your meta descriptions and titles, add the alt texts with relevant descriptions (or keywords) of your images.
I have already spoken in depth about the importance of alt texts in my post on Easy steps to SEO for bloggers here. But in short, alt text tags help the search engine crawlers to identify what the image is about.
7) Create Pinterest worthy images
With more and more bloggers shifting to Pinterest for promoting their sites, it has become essential to have a few Pinterest sized images in each posts.
While some might choose to hide a few of these images, they all have to be Pin-able and Pinterest ready.
If you are newly adding these Pinterest sized images, update your old posts first!
8) DO NOT CHANGE THE URL
When you are in the process of updating old posts for higher SEO ranking and traffic, ensure you do not edit the page URL, unless it is absolutely essential.
Editing the URL would lose the valuable traffic and history that the post had gained so far. For this reason, it is better not to have any dates/years (like 2018 resolutions) in your URL.
But if you had to change your URL for some reason, ensure you use a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.
9) Update your affiliate links
If you have joined new affiliates sites or if the links have changed, now is the good time to scan and fix them.
Using a plugin like thirsty affiliates this might be easier to do, in a self hosted WordPress.
10) Promote all over again
Finally, when you have finished all updating your old posts, promote the post like you would promote any new content, for higher SEO ranking and traffic.
Now that your old post is refurbished with updated info, new images and links, it is as good as a new one. And this will drive more traffic from social media as well.
Final word
Once you re-up your old posts keep an eye on its performance and metrics. I am sure there will be a spike in a week or so. And if you schedule some time to update a few of your old posts every week, you will can see a continuous increase in your organic traffic too.
How often do you update old posts? Have you seen any improvement in your organic traffic due to that? What other blogging topics do you want me to discuss? Let us talk.
I love posting bookish photos on my Instagram account. Often, I run into some slump and freeze when I try to come up with captions. Then I realized I can use my favorite quotes for Instagram captions. And that is a life saver, honestly.
Book quotes for Instagram captions
Do you ever feel stumped when you write captions on your bookstagram? Here are some book quotes for Instagram captions that may perfectly say what you want to and keep your readers hooked.
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
Books are a uniquely portable magic.
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
It’s strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.
While this is not exactly the “New year, new me” moment, I just wanted to talk about the 2021 plans for Elgee Writes to give you an idea of what to expect during this year.
What are my 2021 plans?
I also consider this post as a part of my goal setting process that will help me following it more consistently. So fingers crossed, eh?
Reading Plans
Without a reading plan and schedule I am inclined to slide into a reading slump. And that’s why I join up as many reading challenges as I can, just to keep me motivated.
Goodreads Reading Challenge 2020
I have been reading 45 books or so for the past few years. So I think I can safely increase it to 52 in 2021.
I know it doesn’t sound like much when you compare the 100s of books that other bloggers read in a year. But it is definitely a challenge for me to reach this number considering how busy I get around the mid year.
Target: 52
2021 Nonfiction Reader Challenge
I read non fiction books once in a while. But I want to make it official in 2021, and I will participating in the Nonfiction Reader Challenge hosted by Bookdout.
I will probably read more of Self help and essay collections under this category.
Target: Nonfiction Nibbler – Read 6 books, from any category
Books in Translation Reading Challenge 2021
Another reading challenge that I am participating this year would be the Books in Translation, where we read translated books (from any language to any other language, not just English).
I have been wondering why I have not read as many Indian regional literature as I would like to have, and I would be correcting it in 2021.
Target: Conversationalist: 4-6 books
Reading more classics
I have been trying to do this in the past few years but I have not covered a lot. So I think 2021 might be the year that I actually read more classics, including children’s.
Anyone has a good reading list or guide to follow? Please do share.
Blogging plans and actions
After a tumultuous year that broke most of us emotionally and mentally, I just need an action plan to go forward. You know, an attempt to make things more normal. So here comes by blogging plans for 2021.
Blogging content
I have a fairly regular blogging schedule and I hope I don’t have to change it – because it works for me and you guys, based on my statistics.
Sunday – Personal and blog related updates
Monday – Book reviews
Wednesday – Discussion posts related to books, blogging or self development.
Friday – Listicles, quotes and quizzes. An occasional guest post.
I love how far I have come in making the schedule consistent, despite 2020, and I hope it continues.
I will be joining Nicole and Shannon’s Book Blog Discussion Challenge in 2021 as well, and it has become a staple in my yearly challenges. Nicole and Shannon, thanks for hosting it.
Action plan
Do a series on quotes, again
Create a resource page for authors and bloggers
Increasing blog engagement
Just like every other blogger here, I love getting comments and shares on my posts. The more the merrier.
I started the Comment 4 comment challenge in 2019 and it turned out to be a success. And then 2020 happened where we struggled to just float.
Join us to leave no comment un-replied and un-returned!
Action:
Visit blogs I follow at least weekly once.
Reply to all the comments on my blog
Return the comments by visiting their blogs
Learn to care about the follower counts and blog statistics.
Final note
Though it is 2021, we are still under the throes of the pandemic and we are not yet normalcy. I am not going to be trying too hard or be stressing myself with these plans, but using these action plans as guidelines and take it as they come.
Pin me!
Let’s talk
What are your reading and blogging plans like? Do you engage in a yearly planning process? Tell me more about your 2021 plans. Let us chat.
As much as I love Christmas, the week between Christmas and the New Year has always been filled with excitement for me. It is the perfect time for reflecting and recapping the year and then setting new goals. I wanted to share the most popular posts of 2020 in terms of page visits with you all.
Also the internet Gods have proved once again that popular doesn’t necessarily mean the best. It just means Google liked them better or Facebook kept showing them randomly. We will never know why and how.
Elgee Writes’ most popular posts of 2020
I am ranking my most popular posts of 2020 based on the page views garnered during the year, based on the WordPress’s statistics. Let me know if your favorite made the cut.
We book bloggers keep lamenting at how book reviews don’t get much engagement. This post takes a good dive into why that happens to help you understand.
Quite funnily enough, this book review of The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi is one of my most popular post of 2020. Read on to find what made it so popular.
One of the points on my checklist for bloggers is the WordPress follow button. But if you are self hosted there is no direct way to add that button. This post explains how to do that and gain more followers.
If you are content creator and you are on top of your social media profiles without going insane, YOU ARE A ROCKSTAR. But for others, mere mortals like me, here are some tips to balance it out.
Some questions for an author to ask your beta reader when you submit a manuscript for beta reading. These questions ensure you get constructive and honest feedback from them.
This famous book didn’t fare so great for me and this review in particular had a lukewarm response when I initially posted. But when the official Auschwitz Museum responded to my post on Twitter, my page visits shot through the roof overnight.
The factual mistakes & misinterpretations made by Heather Morris in "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" resulted in creating a distorted version of Auschwitz. This is dangerous and disrespectful to history. The story deserves better. #FactCheck review: https://t.co/hioNswY2nT
