Instagram Stories long ago surpassed Snapchat at it’s photo-sharing joy, and has found to be a great place to build brand awareness and build your customer base.

Here are a few ways that you can use stories to get people excited about your brand, products, and service.

1. Share the story of your business

Showcase the creation of a product or service, or share something (legal and fun) that your team is working on. These behind the scenes productions humanize your brand and can really get people excited about it. Check out what Union Fare does!

2. Preview live broadcasts

Are you doing a Facebook Live or WebEx demonstration? Use Instagram Stories to tease and generate some excitement or pull attendees from one social media platform to the other.

3. Showcase your stuff in action

Whether it’s demonstrating an application, showing off a recipe, or showcasing an outfit, you can use stories to show what the end result of a product is and help them generate ideas on how to use that stuff! Because Instagram Live can be done spontaneously, you can show authentic, non-scripted demonstrations easily.

4. Brag time

When you support a brand, you get excited that you are a part of their wins. Share relevant milestones (subscriber counts, new products, new revenue, new contracts, new products, etc.) with your base. This helps build connection with your base.

5. Countdowns and giveaways

You can use stories to facilitate ways to get people excited about upcoming giveaways or new launches. Unlike static marketing, the use of countdowns can really get people emotionally excited and build anticipation for new products or services. You could also use stories to give special sales or unique giveaways that give a more “exclusive” feeling.

6. “Takeovers” from influencers or partnerships

If you are working with a promoter or influencer, you can have them generate content to send them over to you to use their voice to target your audience. The influencer can send you pictures and videos that you upload yourself, rather than handing over your account username or password (like with Snapchat). This is a great way to work with someone who already has a following that can help you expand your service or product reach.

7. Create unique content

Odds are, especially for smaller businesses and new entrepreneurs, you don’t have a lot of time to invest in production value for other advertising. Instagram Stories with the use of stickers, paintbrush, and text can be a great place for raw, but still polished content that has a one of a kind feel. Familiarize yourself with the tools, and don’t be afraid to get artsy.

Make Instagram work for you

Instagram is constantly adding new features, so make sure you stay tuned for updates and play around with those features often. For example – Instagram stories can rewind or being hashtagged. Or use the eraser brush to do slow teases or product reveals.

Given that users can now bookmark content as well, you can create demonstrations or examples and give your audience a quick reference to your content. Get learning, check out stories, and start building those unique, intimate, and creative engagements with your consumers.

For a struggling company, sometimes a redesigned logo or the introduction of a new product does the trick. Other times, an entire new brand identity may be the best bet. Of course, it’s important to work to make sure you’ve found the right name for your brand before putting time and resources into making your brand take off and rebranding can be scare.

But if the following list shows us anything, it’s that even some of the biggest players out there realized their name was a roadblock on their path to success.

Here are 10 household name companies that definitely made the right choice in rebranding.

1. Backrub to Google (1997)

You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who isn’t familiar with the Google name and iconic multicolored logo, but for almost a year the search engine was called BackRub. When founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin needed to expand beyond their original Stanford University servers, the chose to swap out the name too. You may know that the name was inspired by the number “googol,” but it was actually a spelling mistake when registering the domain, not a creative choice, that led to its current name.

2. Lucky Goldstar to LG (1995)

The LG name has a long history beginning with the merge of two South Korean companies, Lucky and GoldStar in 1958. The two companies produced hygiene products and consumer electronics, respectively, and operated as Lucky-Goldstar for over thirty years. In order to better compete in the Western market, the company name was shortened to LG, leading to the “Life’s Good” tagline and clever smiling face logo.

3. Brad’s Drink to Pepsi (1898)

For a short five years, the popular soda went by the less catchy name Brad’s Drink. The original name came from inventor Caleb Bradham’s last name, and the current name comes from “pepsin,” the enzyme that helps digest proteins in food. The switch was definitely a good move, but Pepsi sounds a lot cooler when you don’t know where the name comes from.

4. Sound of Music to Best Buy (1983)

In 1983, Sound of Music was a humble chain of seven electronics stores specializing in high fidelity stereos. Today, there are over 1,000 locations nationwide, and stereos are just one of a long list of electronics for sale. As the company grew and their merchandise offered expanded, the switch to Best Buy was a great, necessary transition.

5. Blue Ribbon Sports to Nike (1971)

In one of their first ad campaigns after adopting the new name after the Greek goddess of victory, Nike stated “There is no finish line.” In a direct response to their old name, Nike suggested their bright future ahead and prospective goals. Today, the name and swoosh logo are one of the most recognizable brand identities around the world.

6. Pete’s Super Submarines to Subway (1968)

In 1965, Subway founder Fred DeLuca borrowed $1,000 from his friend Peter Buck. To show his gratitude, DeLuca named his first sandwich shop after Peter. The pair went on to run the shop together, but changed the name after finding little success under the original moniker. Now, Subway is the the largest restaurant operator in the world, with 44,852 restaurants in 112 countries.

7. AuctionWeb to eBay (1997)

This name change came from outside forces, when founder Pierre Omidyar realized media coverage of his auction site frequently referred to it as eBay, the name of his umbrella company. The original eBay Internet housed four sites: AuctionWeb, a travel site, a personal shipper site, and a site about the Ebola virus. Only the first had much success. As a result, Omidyar officially changed the name to the one people already were starting to call it.

8. Phoenix to Firebird to Firefox (2004)

The free, open-source browser went through a series of subtle name changes before finally hitting the jackpot with Firefox. When it first appeared for public testing in September 2002, the name was Phoenix, but less than half a year later a trademark dispute began with BIOS manufacturer Phoenix Technologies. The name was then tweaked slightly to Firebird, another name for the mythical phoenix. More naming disputes took place over the next year, and in February 2004, the name Firefox was finally chosen.

9. Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web to Yahoo (1994)

Another search engine that started at Stanford, co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo were still PhD students when they started what we now know as Yahoo. The root of the original name is obvious, while the current one stands for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”

10. Research in Motion to Blackberry (2013)

Research In Motion was already a success when the name was switched to Blackberry in 2013. Although the first first device to carry the BlackBerry name was the BlackBerry 850, an email pager introduced in 1999, the company didn’t officially the name of its best-known product until 2013 as part of a larger comeback plan. Unfortunately, this case shows that sometimes more than a new name is needed to bring a struggling company back to action.

If you’ve been on Instagram you’ve likely fallen victim to the algorithm’s knack for showing you advertisements for something that seems exactly suited to your tastes. Or, someone you follow on the app tags their post with the name of the brands that make up their cute outfit and you decide to see what else they might offer. I’ve ended up with more than one pair of sneakers this way.

Instagram’s popularity and effectiveness have made it a marketing powerhouse. Over 130 million people look at product tags on the app each month.

Recently, Facebook commissioned a study asking users to explain what their interaction with companies and brands on Instagram was like. A whopping 66% of people said that the used Instagram to interact directly with brands — and 54% of users said they purchased something immediately after seeing an ad in their Instagram feed. Ads that are in the “stories” feature, independent of users’ feeds are especially effective.

After it was acquired by Facebook, Instagram has grown to account for over 19% of the tech-giant’s advertising spending — nearly double what it was in 2018.

Facebook is planning on continuing to capitalize on Instagram. They announced that soon users won’t need to navigate out of their feed to the retailer’s website purchase items, but rather have the ability to buy things in-app.

Instagram will take a cut of these in-app purchases and partner with PayPal to process payments, adding a new revenue stream to the growing platform.

As part of expanding its foray into shopping, Instagram is also partnering with its most popular influencers.

These people will be able to directly sell the products that their sponsors are offering through their accounts, rather than direct them to their sponsor’s account. At the beginning, only major accounts belonging to celebs like Kylie Jenner or Gigi Hadid will have this option, but it seems like after its initial launch more sellers will be to take advantage of the feature.

So, be prepared to have even more sneakers in your future, friends. It looks like those Instagram ads are going to get even more powerful.