Benefits Marketing on Instagram Stories 

Incorporating Instagram stories in marketing strategies increase the audience met and improves customer attitude. The Global Giving Team is a nonprofit organization that supports other nonprofits by connecting them to donors and companies. They have supported over 30,000 nonprofit projects and have helped raise more than $607 million since their start. From their experience they have collected marketing tips and claim that “by using the Instagram Stories feature to its full potential…It makes you want to know more. It makes you feel like part of its story” (2019). Other organizations have had success through the use of Instagram Stories because it is an effective way to engage the audience. Three Professors in the Department of Marketing and Market Research in Business Studies at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, Daniel Belanche, Isabel Cenjor, and Alfredo Pérez-Rueda, agree that Instagram is an effective marketing tool, even more than Facebook. Their research “results confirm that the more dynamic social-media formats (i.e. Instagram Stories) enhance users’ attitudes toward an ad more than the more static formats” (2019, p. 16). The tools available to Instagram users allow them to create more dynamic content which is more appealing to users. Instagram stories can be used to not only reach a large number of people but improve customer attitudes and engage the audience. 

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Increasing Credibility of Social Media Presence

Marketing consultants claim that companies who take an authentic or unscripted approach to their digital marketing will increase consumer loyalty. Best-selling authors and professional marketing consultants, Stephen Denny and Paul Leinberger talk about how “reworking the brand to be unscripted and achieving “heroic credibility” by standing by their values” (2020, p. 82). They highlight that an effective way to gain trust is through transparency and vulnerability in an effort to show the customer their true values. Building on that idea, featured in the International Journal of Voluntary Non-profit Organizations, Kerstin Alfes, Amanda Shantz, and Catherine Baily have studied how to increase volunteer engagement. They mention that “volunteers who identify with their voluntary employer’s vision and values are more satisfied and committed with their volunteering work” (2016, p. 601). The research claims that showing volunteers how their work is furthering the company’s vision increases engagement and supports those already involved. Both written works support the idea that credibility and transparency online can support an organization’s values which increases loyalty from both the people who are using the service and those who help make the service possible. 

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Sources: 

Alfes, K., Shantz, A., & Bailey, C. (2016). Enhancing Volunteer Engagement to Achieve Desirable Outcomes: What Can Non-profit Employers Do? Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 27(2), 595–617. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43923195 (Links to an external site.)

 

Belanche, D., Cenjor, I. and Pérez-Rueda, A. (2019), "Instagram Stories versus Facebook Wall: an advertising effectiveness analysis", Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 69-94. https://doi.org/10.1108/SJME-09-2018-0042

 

Heckman, L. (2020). Unfiltered Marketing: 5 Rules To Win Back Trust, Credibility, and Customers in a Digitally Distracted World. Library Journal, 145(10), 82.

 

Instagram marketing tips that nonprofits can start using today. GlobalGiving. (2019, August 13). Retrieved October 18, 2021, from https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/instagram-marketing-tips.