28 Oct 2025

Create Instagram Stories that Help Your Brand Sell

Time and again, Instagram has successfully established itself as a must-have marketing tool for any business. The more businesses flock the platform, the harder Instagram tries to serve their every need. The latest addition to the already feature-rich platform, Instagram Stories, has proven itself worthy of any business’s attention, and for good reason. The latest data would suggest that over 500 million users view Instagram Stories every day and that one third (⅓) of these views are for Stories that businesses post.

Instagram Stories lets users capture an image or video content. It’s released in a slideshow format and is visible for 24 hours! Many have been retargeting their ad budget, opting to pound on the potential of Instagram Stories to reach more eyeballs. So in this article, we help you do just that—create Instagram Stories that generate more sales for your brand!

Steps to Creating Effective Instagram Stories

The visual-focused platform tickles people’s fascination for the aesthetics and made brands a primary source for these types of content. Instagram users appreciate emotive content; anything that tugs at the heartstrings (and aesthetically-pleasing to boot). Give Instagrammers what they expect to see on the platform and you may just make sales in no time.

Never let the mere 24-hour visibility fool you. The newly minted addition to Instagram Stories is Highlights, which allow users to pin their Stories on their profiles long after it has disappeared.

Here are tips to help you create and publish rich Instagram Stories and inspire action that eventually leads to more sales:

Without further ado, let’s dig in!

Step 1. Start-up Instagram Stories from your Instagram account.

Here’s a general step-by-step guide to setting up and sharing your Instagram Story.

Open your Instagram account and tap on the camera icon on the top left corner of the screen.
Take a photo, record a video for up to 15 seconds, type a message, or do an Instagram live video. You have an additional option to use boomerang, superzoom, rewind, or the hands-free video. Or, if you are more particular about branding, you can always curate your Stories (in a photo or video format) in advance.
Choose from and include creative add-ons, like text, stickers, and doodles (detailed in Step 3).
Click “Send to” when you’re done and share as “Your Story”. You can also opt to share the Story on Facebook!

Now that you know the basics, let Step 2 detail some of the winning Instagram Story formats you can explore.

Step 2. Explore content ideas and settle on what type of IG Story you’re going to publish.

As always, your brand’s immediate needs would define the type of content you release. To determine this, refer back to your brand’s goals at the moment. Since it’ll be up at your page for 24 hours, make sure the Story serves your immediate need. Here are some content ideas you can explore:

Flash Sales, Promos, and Contests
FAQs
Polls and Questions
Behind the Scenes
Review
Tutorials
Product and Event Launches

Flash Sales, Promos, and Contests

One of the major reasons why flash sales, promos, or contests make a ton of money is because of our human tendency to crave good deals. Now, when the additional time-bound urgency kicks in, people will be more likely to make a purchase. What’s great about Instagram Stories is that it has a dedicated spot above the actual feed; it’s one of the first things users see when they open the app. So, you can be assured that the notice of your flash sales or promos wouldn’t get buried in the stream. Starbucks welcomes the return of S’Mores Frappuccino to their menu by releasing the #SmoresLifeContest that promised winners some cool, s’mores-related items!

FAQs

No matter how clear you lay out the ins-and-outs of your business to clients, there are still those who’d be left wondering about certain aspects. And by nature, customers are inquisitive, so publishing FAQs through Instagram Stories can help you touch base with their questions. You can opt to pin these FAQs slides on your own profile as Highlights so people could refer back to it anytime they want. FAQs would not only clarify questions customers may have but can also inspire their engagement.

Polls and Questions

The latest addition of Instagram Stickers excited so many people, including brands who have started using poll and question stickers to crowdsource ideas and get feedback from their followers. The responses from these have a lot of potential utility. For one, you can use these to know your followers’ sentiments towards your brand or services. Furthermore, it gives you insight into what needs changing or upgrading within your brand. Take Erabelle’s Story, for instance. They effectively used the question sticker to ask people about issues they have about their eyebrows, effectively giving their followers an arena to talk freely.

Behind the Scenes

Behind-the-scene videos and images humanise a brand to its customers. However, we don’t really see much of this less-than-glamorous scenes on Instagram. But Stories is actually made with that need in mind; to allow users to post their “less-glamorous” content without destroying their feed. La Belle Couture usually does this as a way to invite their followers into their process.

Reviews

Reviews can boost your followers’ trust and allow them to judge your products and services better. Take Erabelle again for example; they not only posted a user review of their product to their Story, but also gave a shout out their followers. This is a particularly important community management act since this amps an existing customer’s loyalty, which is in itself, a sensible strategy for growing any business. The reviews they post even have a clear call-to-action to inspire user action.

Tutorials

How-to guides and tutorials direct users to bite-sized points you wish to make. Posting tutorials can help teach followers some of the best ways to enjoy your products and services. For example, it’s important for Pho Street to give their customers the best experience ever. So, what they did was publish a 4-part series exhibiting the best way to enjoy Pho!

Product and Event Launches

The primary reason brands have for using Instagram is to promote and market their products and services. However, you have to be careful about bombarding your followers’ feeds with constant product or event launches updates. After all, that’s not really the main content users expect to see on your account. Don’t let this back you into a corner though; choose instead to post these notices and milestones on your Stories! Chinatown Food Street invited people over to the recent The 50 Cents Festival by posting Stories on their Instagram account!

Now that you’ve settled on your Instagram Story’s type, it’s time to optimise it with amazingly crafted add-ons!

Step 3. Optimise and modify your Instagram Stories with amazing add-ons.

Text

Texts, like image captions, help give context. You can add the texts to your Story by tapping anywhere on the edit screen. Type your text and change its mood by choosing from classic, modern, neon, and bold text options.

Stickers

Stickers make a Story more fun! Tap on the Sticker icon to add some essential stickers to your Story. However, the creative aspect is not its only winning feature: some stickers can also help you reach more audience and promote your products better. Here are some stickers that do just that:

Product stickers are seamlessly integrated into Instagram Shopping, one of the latest and Ecommerce-friendly Instagram features. When tapped, users will be able to see product details such as name, price, and description.
Hashtag stickers allow brands to advertise their branded hashtags. This reverts any user to the hashtag’s feed, and can easily help users track certain content related to the hashtag.
Location stickers increase your visibility and discoverability. You’re allowed one location per Story, so be sure to lead users back to a relevant address. When tapped, users will be directed to a feed with content from others who share the same location.
Poll stickers, as mentioned, help crowdsource responses from your followers. Polls have the “yes” or “no” option by default, but you can also style an inquiry based on your brand’s voice. Since answers are calculated in real-time, you’d see poll responses easily.
Question stickers offer you a chance to post open-ended inquiries which is important in getting more detailed responses from users.
Emoji slider stickers let users respond with a slider. These are most often utilised to know how much users like (or dislike) a certain product or service upgrade.

Face filters

The smiley icon on the lower right side opens the face filters which you can opt to use to make your Story more creative.

Image and video filters

Swipe right to overlay the image or video with several filters to enhance the Story’s overall mood.

Step 4. Finally, post and preserve your Instagram Stories!

When you post the usual content on social media, you have to be wary of certain aspects such as the time. This is to catch your followers when they’re most active—when they’re likely to see your content. However, since Instagram Stories has a dedicated portion at the uppermost corner of your followers’ feeds, you can be sure that they won’t miss it, even if you don’t post at the prime hours!

As we mentioned earlier, what’s good with Stories is that you have an option to keep them longer on your profile by utilising Highlights. It’s like a preservation technique of sorts. This lets you keep some of the Instagram Stories you publish so people can refer back to it anytime they need. It’s especially important to Stories that have periodic, recurring value to your brand (like FAQs, New Releases, How-To Guides, etc.).

Increase your sales with Instagram Stories!

Nobody can deny the significant role that Instagram Stories play in increasing brand awareness and generating more sales for brands. This feature is just getting started and it has already garnered much support not only from individuals, but businesses as well.

Impress customers and increase sales! Don’t miss out on this opportunity and board this ship today. The Amber Creative team is here to help!