With one billion active monthly users, Instagram is constantly growing and evolving, and this social media platform creates new ways for users and marketers to actively engage and connect with their audiences in a deeper, more meaningful way. A popular and fairly new trend that has emerged on Instagram is the story feature.
According to Statista, approximately 500 million users post Instagram stories every day and about 90% of Instagram users follow business accounts, providing the means and potential of free advertising for marketers. A major integrated piece of the story feature is the use of GIFs and stickers, which offer a creative way to communicate and showcase a brand’s personality and style while helping to boost the reach of that content. Stickers are a fun tool that provide an eye-catching element to a story, enticing people to pause and receive the message, instead of just tapping past or exiting out of the story itself. These stickers create more vibrant stories and allow brand fans who share the stories to promote a company’s content and added branded stickers. Branded stickers can be created for promoting new product launches, organization announcements, employee highlights or awards and even for general brand recognition with a logo.
It has been shown that digital elements with animation invoke a larger emotional connection as opposed to regular static images. This connects, similarly, to the higher engagement seen with videos over written content on social media. According to a Harris Poll survey, 71% of Americans would rather send a digital sticker than a block of text. With statistics like this, it’s no wonder that marketers are leading consumer-facing brands to create their own branded stickers and GIFs for use on social media.
It’s important to start with a detailed strategy first when creating these GIFs and stickers. You need to determine what will not only represent your brand but be something that people will want to use for their personal posts. Next, you need to design your stickers and submit them to the platform for approval before they are published.
Once your stickers and GIFs are published, you will need to implement a plan to use them in a way that will increase visibility on Instagram’s sticker feed which allows other users to use them as well. If implemented properly, an Instagram sticker strategy will help your brand establish credibility, recognition and in turn, help increase overall following and brand awareness.
At MBE Group, we have the tools and the capabilities to develop not only Instagram stickers, but a fully integrated social media marketing strategy for your company. If you’d like to learn more about how Instagram stickers can boost your results, let’s talk!
