Why LinkedIn Thought Leadership Still Wins in B2B
Learn why LinkedIn still wins for B2B thought leadership and how to leverage its benefits to pursue your business goals.
Instagram Stories: Perfecting "The Hook" and How To Get It Right
Updated November 20, 2025
Instagram Stories represent a real-time content channel that gives your brand daily opportunities to share and connect. This alternative medium drives engagement and offers unique features you can’t find anywhere else, such as interactive stickers, live links, creative tools, Story Highlights, and more.
Instagram Story Statistics
Instagram Stories display for only 24 hours, but their impact on branding and engagement is significant. This channel helps you keep content fresh, audiences interested, and your story moving forward.
Instagram Stories are less curated, allowing your brand to connect on a more authentic level than a strategically designed nine-by-nine grid. Surveys and data show that social media users may even prefer them.
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Meta revealed that more than 500 million people use Stories every day, and approximately 1 billion Stories are shared across all their family of apps every day. Additionally, 58% of people report browsing the brand's website after viewing a Story ad, 50% say they visited other storefront websites to make a purchase, and 31% have walked into a brick-and-mortar store to look for the product in person.
Since most social media users hold their phones vertically 90% of the time, vertical Stories content already aligns with user behavior. ( With data-backed insights like these, leveraging high-quality video content and ads in Instagram Stories as part of your marketing strategy only increases your chances of better engagement and awareness.
10 Seconds: The Impact of The Video Hook
The first 10 seconds of any video must captivate viewers and capture their attention. Without a great hook, the viewer will never get to the end of the video or act on your call to action.
The first Instagram Stories frame and the first 10 seconds of footage are what stop the scroll (or the swipe) and boost engagement. Video content shared in Stories has a maximum length of 60 seconds, but the optimal length for videos is typically 3 to 15 seconds. This isn’t much time to get or keep attention, but with high-quality video content, it is enough.
The longer your video content runs without first establishing a meaningful connection, the lower the chances of conversion. By the same token, too many frames can work against your advertising purposes; however, engagement is still high.
Market research from Rival IQ indicates that 81% of viewers remain engaged through the 4th frame.
Catering To A “Goldfish” Audience
Ever since the early 2000s, when social media platforms rose and were completely integrated into modern society, the average global attention span has suffered significantly. Studies by the American Psychological Association show that in 2004 (coincidentally, the year Facebook launched), the average attention span was 2.5 minutes.
By 2012, it had dropped by half to 75 seconds. Over the following five to six years, the trend continued to decline, and this even affected the way video content is shot and shared. Modern filming practices average four seconds in shot length, but often much less, depending on the type of content.
A few seconds. That’s how long your brand has to hook a viewer and draw them deeper into your brand. With Instagram Stories, the “scroll” feels more interactive to social media users, which can increase reach and create loyal fans of your brand. Use those first few seconds to the utmost advantage.
Not Just For Content Creators
Instagram Stories aren’t just for influencers and content creators. Data from Meta shows that a third of the most viewed Stories are from businesses, and additional surveys reveal that 36% of companies use Instagram Stories for promotion. (Amra & Elma)
With the strong analytics, including reach, engagement, and navigation, Stories content is an excellent advertising interface, and over 4 million advertisers use Stories ads every month
The opportunities for brand promotion and engagement are endless. Here are a few examples of B2B applications for Instagram Stories content:
- Share your brand’s personality and company culture
- Make it interactive with polls, stickers, slides, etc.
- Serialize content and create categorized highlights for easy access and review, like this:
- Send viewers directly to products or landing pages with the swipe up
Content shared in Stories allows you to play to urgency with the 24-hour time limit and generate leads with a mix of content and conversion frames. You can repurpose long-form content (blog, video, podcast, etc.) into the more engaging video Stories format.
Perfecting the hook makes all this possible.
Additional Reading: 'Instagram Reels: Video Ads Beyond TikTok'
Perfecting The Story Hook: Instagram Tips & Insights
What Does The Audience Want To See?
Catering to your target audience increases the potential for creating viral or highly-engaged content. And they want Instagram Stories from brands like yours.
According to Meta, 52% of social media users want Stories that are brief and easy to understand, 50% want to see new products from brands, and 46% want brands to offer tips or advice in Stories.
Video content in Stories has a significant impact on consumers, with 91% stating that video quality affects brand trust (up from 87% in 2024). (Wyzowl) Your job, as a brand, is to focus on delivering quality, value, and connection in Instagram Stories. That’s what they want to see.
Keep It Short
The optimal length for video content in Instagram Stories frames is between 3 seconds and 15 seconds, making the hook even more critical. You only have a few seconds to plan what you will do with it and how it aligns with your marketing objectives.
Be Consistent
According to Rival IQ, the average brand posts 13 times, or once every other day, but the top 25% publish at least 19.8 times per month.
Consistency is key. Finding the “right” number of frames per day for your brand is as important as your overall Stories strategy. Approximately 35% of brand Story activity consists of days with only one frame, while 1-3 frames account for around 60%.
You Can Tell A Story In Stories
Stories frames are interactive. Tell a story. Spark a connection. Draw them into your world and your brand through multiple frames and engaging video content. Story Highlights let you organize your content so you can call out the customer journey directly and make it easy for new audiences to find.
Use Story Tools and Features
Interactive sticker elements, such as links, shoppable posts, questions, and quizzes, can increase reach and engagement. These easy-to-implement features keep the audience in your world and create moments for connection.
Leverage Creativity
Instagram is a creative, informal platform. Let your creativity speak to your followers and make a deeper connection. Here are a few tips to help your brand leverage creativity:
- Don’t take it too seriously; this isn’t LinkedIn
- Show the human side of the brand (the people, the stories, etc.)
- Use only dynamic, high-quality video content
- Incorporate bold fonts and always include captions
- Lean into trending content that aligns with your brand message
10 Instagram Stories Hook Ideas
- “Did you know?”: Reveal a little-known fact or bust a common myth that will add value to your audience.
- “You’ve been doing it all wrong…”: You can share a polarizing opinion while solidifying your position as a thought leader.
- “Don’t do X without Y.” This can create FOMO or reveal a solution they might not have known about.
- “The #1 reason your [entity] is failing at [common solution].”: Establish thought leadership and add value by sharing hard truths.
- “See the X in action.”: Promote a product
- “The hardest part about X that nobody talks about.”: Relate to fears and struggles
- “POV: You finally X and Y happened.”: This is the idea of future-positioning, showing viewers what’s possible.
- “5 lessons I learned from X.”: This reveals your expertise (could be a positive or negative)
- “3 [things] you MUST try in your [niche] business.”: Here, you can recommend top resources, including your own.
- “We stopped X and started Y, and now we’re Z!”: Debunk a common practice, showing the potential results.
Captivate Your Instagram Audience
The first few seconds of Instagram Stories frames and video content are critical. By perfecting the hook and capturing attention within that 24-hour window, you get a real-time opportunity to make an authentic connection and create loyal fans of your brand. Loyal fans are the ones who later become customers.
Torrey Tayenaka is the co-founder and CEO of Sparkhouse, an Orange County-based video production agency. He is often asked to contribute expertise in publications like Entrepreneur, Single Grain, and Forbes. Sparkhouse is known for transforming video marketing and advertising into real conversations. Rather than hitting the consumer over the head with blatant ads, Sparkhouse creates interesting, entertaining, and useful videos that enrich the lives of his clients’ customers. In addition to Sparkhouse, Torrey has also founded the companies Eva Smart Shower, Litehouse, and Forge54.
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