Instagram and Facebook stories; you have probably seen these come on within your feeds or maybe you are putting them to use already. Remember Snapchat? Well, Facebook and Instagram stories are pretty much the same thing. It’s a way where you can put videos, images or just text to show to your users. The posts will last 24 hours until they are gone.
So why should your business be using Facebook and Instagram stories? Carry on reading to find out.
So what are Instagram and Facebook stories and how do I use them?
Facebook and Instagram stories are an interesting way to get current moments across to your platforms followers. If your account is set to private then people who you have accepted to follow you can view, whereas if you aren’t private then anyone who lands on your profile can have a browse through your stories.
It’s very simple to view other peoples stories – you can either head to your homepage and tap on the circle icons at the top of the screen or simply just heading directly to the user’s profile. With stories, the like or comment features don’t work. But you can directly message them through their story.
When you view someone’s story, their content will appear full-screen and will have a timer for up to 10 seconds for each post. The content will play in chronological order from oldest to newest and like we said before will only last for 24 hours.
With putting a story on yourself this is also very simple, just head back to your homepage and in the top left corner, you will see a camera icon. From here you can film live videos, add pictures straight from your camera or camera roll. You can even go live, where people will be viewing you in real-time and can just watch or ask you questions.
Why should I use them?
When you first see Instagram and Facebook stories, it can seem a bit daunting on how to approach them. As a business, these can be ways to increase your engagement over your platforms by just speaking to your users or maybe using imagery. Say you have a new product launching, then you can tell your users all about it, or maybe show images with a few key points for the product.
It’s also a fun way where you can use real-time marketing and show the fun side of your business to your users. With social media comes the pressure of creating quality content to entice customers. But when you use stories you can “let loose” and show your users the personal side to your business, this helps to build a relationship and your users will get more involved with your brand which leads to an increase of brand loyalty.
With stories, you can also repurpose old content, such as blog posts, articles or even photoshoots. We all do it, create lots of content and then we don’t use it anymore. Instead of it going into the archive folder, why not reuse it for your stories. You can create a content plan on what to post each week. You can even do themed weeks, so say your business anniversary is coming up, why not do a week of celebrating your business, showcase the workers and any big clients they have worked with.
Another feature is that when you post to one platform you can set it so it posts to another. Let’s say you have created a graphic and you have posted it on your Instagram story then it will post to your Facebook story as well. This will save you time, as you won’t have to go into both platforms to post the same graphic.
However, within Instagram, you can create highlights, which are small icons that are located on your profile page. You can choose different categories and even add images. When you add a story and instead of it being deleted after 24 hours, you can add it to a highlight and it will stay there forever.
Hopefully, this post has helped you with how to tackle Facebook and Instagram stories. If you have any questions then please don’t hesitate to contact us or take a look into our new blog post all about the fundamentals of social media.
Megan.