As social media continues to evolve, with new features being added constantly, users are becoming more active and engaged thereon. One feature that has gained traction across multiple platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, are stories.
What is a story?
Stories are short vertical videos or images that appear outside your regular feed. Developers have made stories fun and engaging to use through the addition of music, GIFs, polls and the ability to do live streams.
Why do all platforms have stories?
Stories are by far one of the most popular features on social media platforms today. Stories give the regular joe the opportunity to see life through their favourite celebrity’s eye for 24hrs. Not only is it a glimpse into a brand’s and influencers daily routine but it also allows those brands and influencers to market their product/service in a way that feels authentic to their followers.
What are stories called on various platforms?
A platform like the instant messaging service WhatsApp has its version of stories called a ‘WhatsApp Status’ whereas other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook call them IG and Facebook Stories. On Snapchat however, stories are referred to as ‘Snaps’.
Who else has jumped on the trend?
Senior Director for Linkedin Liz Li, says that we would never have considered having features like these on a platform such as LinkedIn, ‘professional and funny never really came together.’
Li states that in the early stages of releasing this feature they found that people on the platform feel more comfortable knowing that the content will disappear after 24 hours.
Twitter with its whopping 330 million users has introduced fleets. This is the social media giants’ version of stories, Josh Harrison, one of the directors of design says this feature on Twitter does not allow for any likes so people feel less pressure when posting videos and images.
What are the analytics?
Like many businesses and marketing platforms, social media is a numbers game, if you know what works and what doesn’t, you’ll be able to work proficiently. Since stories are mobile-first features, more people access social media via mobile than any other device.
Below are the current percentages of users on each social media platform that make use of stories:
- 76% of Facebook users
- 83% of Instagram users
- 87% of Snapchat users
- 76% of Youtube users
Only 60% of these users view their stories with the audio. This helps develop a framework through the collection of social media data to form patterns that allow marketers to predict the capabilities of their products, by monitoring user’s responses to products and the flow of content provided.
How do brands make use of these?
A business might use stories to update their followers with brand-new trends and special deals that expire in a day or a few hours (Youtube is the only social media platform that allows their stories to run for a maximum of seven days).
Another way to leverage off stories is through the use of Influencer marketing. Instagram stories alone have become an increasingly desirable platform for brands to advertise, with over 1 billion monthly users utilising Instagram stories, who wouldn’t want their product or service on a story? Elevate your business’s brand today with Stories, find out more by contacting us today!