Instagram Stories Strategy: How to Make Stories That Benefit Your Business

Want to attract more leads with Instagram?

Curious how a story arc on Instagram Stories can help?

To explore how to use Instagram Stories for business, I interview Tyler J. McCall.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Tyler J. McCall. He's an Instagram marketing expert who's focused on Instagram strategy. His membership community is the Follower to Fan Society. He also co-hosts The Recurrent Revenue podcast.

Tyler shares timesaving tips for repurposing content for Instagram Stories.

You'll also learn how to boost follower engagement by creating Instagram stories with a beginning, middle, and end.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Instagram Stories Strategy
Tyler's Story

Tyler's love of Instagram began when he started a side business selling a room-and-linen spray called Mr. McCall's Fine Fragrances. Tyler made this spray on his kitchen table with essential oils and printed the labels on the copy machine at his full-time workplace. He turned to Instagram as a way to market the spray.

Tyler's marketing background was grounded in the non-profit world. For about 8 years he worked full time doing non-profit marketing management, such as volunteer recruitment, fundraising, sales, and so on. However, in 2014 and 2015, when he began marketing the spray, the influencer age of Instagram was also just beginning.

On Instagram, Tyler was following a ton of different people whose content he loved. Those people tended to be home, lifestyle, and travel bloggers. He communicated with people, built relationships, and commented on others' content.

When Tyler launched his product, he sent direct messages to the people he followed (who had tens or hundreds of thousands of followers) asking if he could send them the spray so they could let him know what they thought. They all said yes. Soon, Tyler was receiving product reviews, and they posted about the spray on their Instagram accounts. (This was before influencers charged for posts.)

For a year, Tyler built the business via online and in-person sales. Toward the end of 2015, he left his full-time job and started doing social media management with a focus on Instagram for other people. Through these initial jobs, he discovered he enjoyed the work and started a small agency with a close friend. They helped local businesses create Instagram content and manage accounts.

After Tyler and his agency partner went their separate ways, he focused on building an Instagram presence for himself, as well as local and national clients. He now teaches his clients how to use Instagram in an intentional way. When you grow the right kind of community, you can grow your business and sell more online.

When Instagram Stories came out in August 2016, Tyler had just gone on Snapchat, which was really hot. The Snap Spectacles came out, and WOW airlines did a cool Snapchat marketing campaign for the whole summer. The airline let five or six influencers take over their Snapchat account and flew them around the world for the whole summer.

Inspired by the WOW campaign, Tyler focused on Snapchat but soon began posting regularly to Instagram Stories. He quickly realized the connections he made and relationships he developed helped his business. Instagram Stories helped him make sales. People joined his mailing list, Facebook group, and programs. He also booked coaching clients.

Today, Tyler is on Instagram Stories virtually every day, creating some kind of content for his followers.

Listen to the show to hear more about how Instagram Stories interrupted Tyler's plan for Snapchat.