How to Plan Your Instagram Stories Takeover

When it comes to Instagram, collaborating is a great way to expand your reach and share unique content that your followers will love. Instagram Story takeovers have become a popular way for brands and influencers to create fun and engaging content in a fresh way. Want to learn how to do it for your brand? We're diving into detail and sharing our process for @planoly's Instagram Stories takeovers, as well as laying out a strategy of how we plan and execute the process. We even have a free downloadable worksheet to help you navigate your future Instagram Story takeovers!

What Is an Instagram Story Takeover?

An Instagram Stories takeover is when someone (usually of influence) takes over your Stories by sharing videos, images, and boomerangs from their point of view. It's common to see influencers and bloggers do takeovers on various brand accounts to show how they use the products, give an exclusive behind the scenes look into their lives, or just give followers a different perspective from a real person. You can send over a list of questions and have them record and save the Stories to send you the content to post yourself. *Planoly Tip: Our Instagram Stories Drafts feature is the perfect tool when storing and planning out IG Story takeovers.

How PLANOLY Does Instagram Story Takeovers

For our feature interviews, we always send over 6-8 questions for the interviewee to answer for an Instagram Story takeover with a mixture of videos, boomerangs, and images. By having a good combination of Stories, you can avoid the redundancy of when someone is just recording themselves and talking to the camera the entire time. It's also important to include substantial questions that are relative to your audience, product, or message you're trying to convey. Here are a few examples of what we generally like to include in our IG Story takeovers:

• Intro Video - Have them introduce themselves & what they do. It's also good to include their personal Instagram handle, and business Instagram handle.

• Workspace or Office Tour - People are visual, so it's always fun to show a behind-the-scenes of where the magic happens.

• Instagram Tips - If we're featuring someone on our IG takeover it's because they are a pro at Instagram! It can be helpful to get different people's insights on how they utilize Instagram for their digital strategies to help inspire our audience.

• Product Questions - If we're featuring someone that works for a brand, we love to ask what their favorite products are. This is a fun way to mix up the content, and it also helps to support their company.

• Expertise Questions - Depending on their area of expertise, we like to get specific and ask questions pertaining to their niche. For instance, if they're in the fashion industry, we'll ask them for fashion tips or what fashion trends they're loving at the moment.

• Inspirational - Whether it be their favorite inspirational quote or a question about how they get inspired/motivated, it's always a good idea to add something that will leave your audience inspired.

• Outro - Finally, we ask them to include an outro video to close it out. They can also remind people to check out their full interview on the blog, which is always helpful for directing more foot traffic back to your website!

How to Style Your Stories Takeover with Our StoriesEdit Templates

While you don't necessarily need to make every Instagram Story into a template, it can be eye-catching to enhance a few images or quotes with our StoriesEdit templates. For example, the Intro or Outro Story would be perfect to make into a template so that you can create an engaging visual and include their Instagram username or CTA to 'See More' to read the full interview. Another fun option would be to add a quote from their interview with a link to their website or blog interview. *Pro Tip: Change the colors to match your brand color palette and to create a consistent visual story. Instagram Story takeovers are an amazing way to increase your brand awareness, engage with your followers, grow your community, and even promote events or products. Whether you're featuring someone else on your own Instagram Stories, or you're doing a takeover on someone else's Instagram, it's a win-win for both parties involved. Remember to make sure your takeovers are always intentional, creative, inspiring, and concise!