My Experience With Instagram Stories

Insta Stories or IG Stories are the new real-life-reel that lets you showcase the moments you wish to share with your IG pals. Moreover, it allows you to doodle, put background music, tag friends, tag brands, use filters, the universal favourite – the boomerang, and a lot, lot more. 

The story signs or symbols appear as circled profiles on top of your account and are probably the main reason for people returning to the app. As they stay for 24 hours only, Instagrammers have formed the fear of missing out on interesting stories of friends and famous personalities they follow. Glad tidings: Like you have ways to preserve your memories, IG also has a feature to preserve stories in the archive. 

Although this (IG Stories) multi-featured, customizable and engaging functionality is short-lived, its use has given some delving experiences to me. Here are some of them:

The Experience of Creativity 

It is said that invention is the mother of necessity, but the world we live in today, I would say creativity is the mother of necessity. The necessity of growing, the necessity of exploring, trying something new, killing boredom, looking at the world in your own way……and it can go on. And that’s what IG stories, at least for me, have done. 

It has been a form of communicating a lot more from what just the picture or boomerang or video says. So, in that 4.7-inch screen, my stories are sometimes a layout of a shortened belief, sometimes the itch of having some fun and sometimes the proclivity of speaking my mind. Thanks to the glow pen, stickers, filters and gifs, they make my IG story picture perfect.

The Experience Of Falling Into My Own Trap

Being a marketer myself, I acknowledge the robotic instinct of being where the customers are and try out all permutations and combinations to make them stay. 

So here I was like any other day, visiting Instagram just to look out for exciting stories and also get an update on what my favourite stars have been up to? And that was the first-ever time I came across a brand whose story was like a virtual store! A cosmetic brand, with shades and shades to lure you. Where my usual stoppage at a story is not more than 3 seconds, I was glued on this one for some good 5 minutes. It was engaging!! 

Exactly the moment when I realized that I was on the other side of the table. Wearing a customer’s shoes, I had fallen into my own trap. It was Sephora, and I had swiped up.

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The Experience of Getting Inspired

IG stories are that virtual form of sharing which fortuitously seed ideas into the followers' minds and inspire them. Be it a basic dance video or taking up a challenge of zero filters / zero make-up pictures, what the IG stories do is that it annihilates any inhibition one may have; mostly to be in front of the camera. This thread of inspiration literally grows outside one's own network and creates an environment of unconditional admiration.

In my list of stories inspired by people I follow, includes some arduous yoga poses, sequences, and even blurting my heart out. 

The Experience of a Conversation Starter

IG stories for me, have gone just beyond a 24-hour showcase of "see what I did" or "see what I saw". They have helped me break the ice once again with friends and acquaintances perhaps whose number I may not even have in my phone contact record. So to say it honestly, IG stories have always been a pleasure. 

Interestingly, each story that has started a conversation for me with my long lost friends have never started with Hi! How are you?....never the usual way. And believe me, those conversations are far more quality conscious and indulging. 

So yes, my stories have reconnected me with many people, with whom I would love to stay in touch with. Starting with Oh! You haven't changed in the last 15 years! to Hey! I live in the building next to yours, I have rekindled certain bonds by just sharing new blooms in my terrace garden or a click of my car's empty fuel signal. 

At The End..

These stories always strike an emotion and perhaps become an important event of one's life or should I say that they rather convert the emptiest of pictures into a ballet. With my staggered usage, I can say that I will be discovering more stories in the future if only the stories don’t find me earlier.