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If you’re a nutrition professional on Instagram, you’ve probably noticed the Instagram Stories feature.

If you’re new to Stories, they appear on the top of your Instagram home screen. You can create your own by pressing the camera button in the top left corner of your home screen. Below that, you’ll notice users whose profiles appear with a rainbow circle. These are Stories from those you follow for you to view. Stories are only available for 24 hours. Live stories are available while you’re live, but can also be saved in your stories for 24 hours.

Instagram Stories are a great way to include more video content in your marketing strategy, without a professional camera crew. Additionally, Stories are a great place to show your followers a behind the scenes look at your business, while keeping your feed more curated. However, that’s not to say you should post random thoughts; this is still your professional Instagram account! Here, we’re sharing some expert tips on using this great Instagram feature to build your clientele.

Here are 5 Ways to Use Instagram Stories for Your Business

1. Make Sure Your Instagram Stories Have A Purpose

Random Stories will feel random. If you regularly curate your Stories with a storyline or purpose, it will give your followers a reason to seek out your stories. For instance, you can give a tutorial on how you create that perfect avocado rose. Or make it simple, share how you’re craving mac and cheese and show a substitution you use to make it more nutritious.

Remember, they’re called “Stories” for a reason. A good one will have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Take sometime in the first photo or video to introduce what you’re going to show later in the Story. If it’s a recipe, you might want to tell everyone what you’re making before you jump right into listing ingredients.

2. Choose Your Words Wisely

With so many cool, new fonts available to adorn your Stories, remember that your viewers only have a few seconds to look at each photo or video. Avoid adding too much text to any one photo, or they’ll likely get lost. Also, try to place text in a place where it is easy to read.

If you do plan on utilizing text (like we do on our Telehealth Tuesday series), we suggesting adding text in succession, so you keep building on previous text. Here’s an example of what we mean…

3. Vary Your Content Medium

One of the most fun aspects of Instagram Stories is the ability to share multiple types of media. You can share photos, text, videos, boomerangs, and more!

Have fun changing it up. If your mission is to show how you’re living a healthy lifestyle, multiple selfies of you with the same smoothie might feel redundant. However, posting a photo of your smoothie, a video explaining how you make the smoothie, and a boomerang of you sipping on your smoothie, are all different ways to share the same content.

4. Highlight Great Instagram Stories

One of Instagram’s latest feature is the ability to “highlight” your Stories. This means you can save snippets of your Story on your profile page.

Here are some things you may want to highlight:

• “About Me” content
• Your nutrition philosophy
• Your practice speciality
• Your latest blog post

5. Be Authentic

Be true to yourself, your mission, and your audience. Stories are a great place to show behind the scenes action and give your followers a glimpse into your daily life. But remember, your Instagram Stories are public. Sharing an inside joke with a friend may be appropriate for your personal account, but if clients are also seeing it, they likely won’t understand and won’t be interested.

With that said, adding personal touches, like cute things your dog keeps doing, is fine from time to time and won’t alienate your clients. It’s OK if your stories are less curated than your feed; they’re supposed to be more casual!

Looking for more social media tips? Post a comment or connect with us on Instagram.