By: Cori Widen, Product Marketing Lead at Boosted by Lightricks

Once you get the hang of it, Instagram Stories is an easy (and fun!) feature to help grow your business – but are you getting the most out of your Instagram Stories? We’ve rounded up 9 Instagram Story secrets that every entrepreneur should be aware of to give your Instagram Stories a design boost, increase social media reach and ultimately drive more sales. Keep reading to learn all about the latest Instagram Story updates, secret social media tips, engaging content ideas and more.

1. Check Out The New Font Options
If you’ve ever wished Instagram Stories had a few more design options you are in luck! They’ve recently rolled out several new, beautiful font options. Make sure you’ve downloaded the latest Instagram app update to see the new Instagram fonts and give your Instagram Stories a design boost. If your Instagram account has access to the new fonts, you’ll see ten font options at the bottom once you’ve started typing your text. Not sure where to start with fonts? Here’s ‘5 Ways to Make Your Instagram Stories Stand Out’.

2. Use Fun Elements Like Music
Possibly the easiest way to give your Instagram Stories an immediate boost of personality is to use fun features like music! Instagram offers a huge selection of songs to perfectly fit with all of your Instagram Stories. Tip: If the original audio isn’t great quality in a Story, simply turn ‘sound off’  and add in music to instantly improve your Instagram Stories. Need some more cool Instagram Story content ideas? Check out this article ‘50 Engaging Instagram Story Ideas for Your Brand’.

3. Promote Your Own Content Often
Want to drive more sales for your business? Start promoting yourself more! Every time you post on Instagram, share your own post to your Instagram Stories and encourage your followers to check out your latest post and engage with your content. Tip: You can also re-share old posts you’ve posted in your timeline that are still relevant. This will help boost your engagement rates and help you re-purpose high-quality content. Want to revamp your Instagram content? You’ll want to check out our ‘21 Ideas to Revamp Your Social Media for 2021’.

4. Repost Customer Content
Not only should you be posting your own Instagram posts to your Stories… you should also be featuring your followers’ content as well! Any customer sharing a photo or review of your product or services should get a shout-out. Reposting your followers’ content lets them know you see their posts and tells them you appreciate their support. Also, when your followers see how often you repost their shout-outs, odds are you’ll start to see a lot more posts about your business! Tip: Want to increase DM’s from your customers to drive sales? Here’s ‘8 Easy Ways to Get More Instagram DMs From Customers’.

5. Add Cute GIFs
Okay so you might already be using GIFs in your Instagram Stories but have you discovered the secret to finding the best ones yet? Yes, there is a little trick the most savvy entrepreneurs use to give their social media a quick upgrade. Instead of searching by a term like ‘happy’ or ‘funny’ to find a GIF, try searching the name of a designer who creates GIFs to find all of their best ones. Check out this blog post for tips to find cute GIFs and this blog post to find unique GIFs on Instagram Stories. 

6. Create Story Highlights
Okay, so you might be sick of hearing how important it is to use Instagram Story Highlights but we’re including this Instagram strategy again because it’s one of the best ways to ensure you are getting the most out of Instagram Stories for your business. Instagram Story Highlights offers your business a prime location to feature all of your most important and best quality content for your followers to easily access. Read next: ‘How to Use Instagram Story Highlights Strategically as a Small Business Owner’.

7. Use Hidden Hashtags
We all know how important it is to use hashtags on Instagram posts to increase the reach of your posts but did you know this strategy also applies to Stories? We saved our very favorite Instagram Story secret for entrepreneurs for very last. You can use all of the same hashtags you would use on your Instagram posts on Stories without anyone knowing. Insert hidden hashtags into all of your Instagram Stories by typing out your hashtags, reducing the font size then make the font the same color as the background OR simply hide them behind a GIF or photo.

Instagram Stories can already be a powerful tool to help entrepreneurs grow their business. However, with these secret tips, content ideas and growth strategies in hand, we know your business will get even more out of Instagram Stories than ever before!

Cori Widen is the Product Marketing Lead at Boosted by Lightricks. She has been leading product marketing campaigns and doing qualitative market research in the tech industry for 10 years.