If you’re a photographer, Instagram Stories are an excellent way to connect with your audience and show off your unique personality. The platform has added several tools to help you create more interesting content over the years, and several Instagrammers have come up with new ways to stand out from the crowd.
Are you used to posting the standard photos with a bit of text but don’t add much context? If so, we’re here to help you change things. This article will identify eight unique Instagram Stories ideas that you can use to build rapport with your audience.
1. Out-and-About Stories When on a Photoshoot
If you’ve ever been on a photoshoot before, you’ll know that a huge amount of work goes on beyond picture-taking. From talking directly with clients and models to traveling to and from the location, shoots involve long days and can get pretty exhausting.
But they’re also an excellent opportunity to show your Instagram followers what you get up to when you’re out and about. You can share the preparation phase, along with discussing the aims for your photoshoot and why you’re taking the pictures in the first place.
If you’re taking photos for a client, make sure that they’re happy with you sharing some of the background scenes—and never share disclosed information.
2. Behind the Scenes of Client and Personal Projects
Even if you’re not on a specific photoshoot, Instagram Stories offer an excellent opportunity to highlight the behind-the-scenes for other projects. If you’re preparing for a large client project, for example, you can talk about the phase where you think of new shots and locations.
Instagram Stories is also a cool way to show off any interesting personal projects that you might have going on. You can talk about your big plans and, if you’re selling products, give your followers a sneak peek.
Like the first idea, you’ll need to ensure that you’ve got the green light from suppliers and clients before sharing anything.
3. Links to Your Content Outside of Instagram
In late 2021, Instagram gave all users access to adding links to their Stories; before that, you had to have 10,000 followers or more. As a result of this change, you now have a better opportunity to share any cool work you’re doing away from the platform.
When sharing links, you want to limit the amount of resistance between viewers and the content you want them to access. Thus, you’re fighting a losing battle when you tell users they can copy and paste something you put in a caption.
You can link to all kinds of content outside of Instagram. The tool is useful if you want to grow a photography YouTube channel, for example, while you can also link to your personal website and more.
4. Recaps From Your Latest Big Trip
Travel photography is an enjoyable genre; unsurprisingly, it’s also one of the most popular. You can make your followers feel like they’re traveling with you by updating your Stories during the trip, but you might want to enjoy your surroundings instead and catch up later.
If you want to engage with your audience as a photographer, recapping your trip when you get home is a great way to do so. Once you’ve edited your pictures, you can use Canva or the Instagram app to add text and give your Story a bit of life.
5. Q&A Sessions With Your Followers
As human beings, many of us are naturally curious. Even if you’ve got a small audience, you can guarantee that many of your followers will want to learn more about you on a personal level.
Instagram has a cool feature that allows you to prompt your followers to ask whatever they want. You can reply to the questions that interest you and share them on your Story for everyone else to see. Think of the feature as something like the Q&A network, Ask.fm.
To allow users to ask questions, pick an image or video for your Story. Then, click on the sticker tab and select Questions. You can ask something specific or leave the door open to anything; all you need to do is type out what you want.
Once you’ve completed the above steps, press Done and upload your Story.
6. Explainers for Your Pictures
While many people are drawn to Instagram because they like seeing pretty pictures, users with a genuine interest in photography are often curious to learn more about the creative process. If you’re interested in building your authority as a photographer, sharing your thoughts in this respect will help.
When you publish a picture to Instagram, you can use the Stories feature to share a full breakdown of your thoughts and why you like the image. If you’ve edited it, you can also discuss the specific sliders you used to achieve your desired result.
7. Smartphone Wallpapers for Others to Use
Everyone loves a good screensaver, and many people will choose photos that evoke an emotion in them. Alongside loved ones, individuals may change their screensaver to a picture of their favorite city or somewhere they enjoyed a memorable holiday.
If you’ve got pictures that you’re particularly proud of, share them with your followers and let them use them on their smartphones. All you have to do is open an editing tool and change the dimensions to 9:16 before saving and uploading it to your Stories.
8. Use Videos Alongside Your Photos
The dramatic rise of TikTok has led to many social media platforms—including Instagram—placing a greater emphasis on video content. And if you fancy getting extra creative, you can use videos and photos in your Stories together.
You can use photos on one slide and videos on another, but another option is to incorporate both in the same one. You can use tools like Photoshop or Canva to make your project come to life.
Instagram Stories remain one of the platform’s most popular features and one of the best ways to make yourself accessible to your audience. The tool has had a few years to mature, and you’ve now got plenty of options for sharing engaging posts with your audience.
Our guide has scratched a small part of the surface, but you’ve got plenty of other choices. So, why not experiment and see what kind of interesting content you can create?
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