An Instagram story takeover is when someone temporarily takes over an account to share in someone else’s Instagram Stories. Typically, brands have employees, influencers, or customers engage in takeovers to share a behind the scenes view of their day as part of their brand’s experience, whether it’s working there, attending a special company sponsored event, or enjoying the brand’s product or service. Takeovers are a great way to share information, events, promotions and news with your audience. However, before you start sharing takeovers on your account, it is crucial to come up with guidelines to help you stay consistent with style, content and formatting. It is important to stay consistent during your takeovers to make sure you are following your brand guidelines, and representing your business in the best way possible.
Style
Keep stories visually consistent by using colors and fonts that are consistent with your brand. We created graphics in Canva to use at the beginning of every takeover to help maintain consistency.
Go into Instagram stories and check out all of the options that are available to you, and choose one with a colour and font that fits with your brand! Stick with it when you create in-app Instagram stories and takeovers to help establish visual consistency. Visual consistency is important to create brand recognition. Some brands like to use multiple fonts in their stories to create depth and added style, so don’t be afraid to get creative with it! The most important part is to stick with whatever fonts you choose. One way to create an engaging takeover is to utilize Instagram stickers. Our favourite ones to use are the Q&A box, quizzes, and polls. You can also use filters, effects, gifs, tags, countdown, time and location stamps. Instagram also recently introduced new gift card, food order, challenge and direct message stickers. By utilizing these tools, you are encouraging your audience to participate and stay engaged throughout the day.
Content
There are so many different ways to highlight your brand through your Instagram takeover, like sharing your favourite products or services, but it’s important to mix it up and share other content from your day to keep it interesting and engaging for viewers.
While it’s great to utilize these tools to create engaging content, it is also important to remember to showcase behind-the-scenes highlights of your workday and what your brand is up to. We like to share our daily to-do lists on our Instagram story takeovers to give our audience an insider’s take on what a day-in-the-life at Red Toque Creative looks like. Another way we highlight what we’re up to is by sharing specific projects or types of work we’re doing on that day, like scheduled messaging or social media event coverage, and giving details on our process or industry tips & tricks.
More content ideas are:
- Share upcoming events or promotions
- Share your behind the scenes view in your position (your work area, etc.)
- Share your favourite spot to go on your lunch break
- Showcase your work essentials, things you couldn’t do your job without
- Share your favourite project you’ve worked on lately
- Highlight some of your favourite products or items that you personally use for your business
- Host a flash giveaway in your stories during your takeover
- Share tools you use during your workday that make your job easier
Overall, Instagram stories are a great way to interact with your followers. Have you tried integrating Instagram takeovers into your story strategy? Check out the downloadable for our Instagram Story Takeover guidelines you can use to create your own: Story Takeover Guidelines Template
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