As per data cited by the Government, India has a whopping 41 crore Facebook subscribers, and as the widest-reaching social network, Facebook boasts nearly 2.8 billion monthly active users. This has made Facebook and Instagram exciting playfields for social marketers.
Are you someone who has seen Stories on Facebook and Instagram by multiple users and brands but are sceptical about using them when it comes to your marketing plan? Let’s dig deeper into what stories are.
What are Stories on Facebook & Instagram?
With over 500 million daily active users and still growing, this is the best time for brands to create shareable content on Facebook & Instagram Stories.
Why?
Firstly, because Facebook and Instagram stories are the quickest ways for brands to increase their leads, raise brand awareness, and establish a trusting relationship with their audience.
Secondly, these stories are carefully and tactically placed: right at the top of the app to catch the audience’s attention immediately.
Each story stays for 20 seconds, which means you have to grab attention as quickly as possible. Not only that, Facebook and Instagram stories are brief and exist for a maximum of 24 hours. So, even if your audience isn’t online when you post, they’ll still be able to see your story when they log in. Mumbai’s mishmash bakery (https://www.facebook.com/mishmashbakery) and city_artists (https://www.instagram.com/city_artists/ )are great examples of hometown brands that use excellent stories to engage their customers and grow their business.
To make your stories on Facebook & Instagram pop, you can get as creative with a library of fun animated and static stickers. You can add music and GIFs to your story, share an event, your location details, conduct polls, ask questions, tag people and products, and more. In addition, you can add text as closed captioning, edit in B612 ( you need to download this app), draw or apply whimsical and animated effects to your stories to make them bounce, slide, zoom in or out.
The diagram below shows the various features that you can use in a Facebook story.
If you are using Facebook and Instagram stories for business, there are several customisable links and call to action buttons you can choose from and customise them for viewers to interact with.
What kind of stories can you share?
1. Share Behind-the-scenes snippets from events
Share more of your life as an individual or growing business. Showcase the events you were part of as an attendee or as a speaker. For example, Stitch Fix (https://www.instagram.com/stitchfix/ ) had shared an influencer’s “unboxing” video, asking customers to sign up for their fix.
2. Demonstrate Your Expertise
Position yourself as an expert and share tips and short ‘how-to’ series of visuals with text overlay and videos. You can also start a poll and encourage engagement, ask people for their opinions and suggestions.
3. Direct viewers to Bigger Content
You can use Facebook & Instagram stories as teaser content for a bigger future release. Link a small snippet of what you included in a recent blog post or vlog and add a ‘call to action’ to direct your viewers to your desired content.
4. Share promotional offers
This platform is also a great way to unveil exclusive offers for people who see your story. The Banana Republic (https://www.instagram.com/bananarepublic/) posted about “nude necessities for fall” and “it’s here!” to capture attention.
5. Share User-generated Content
Showcasing your customers and their testimonials/ experiences as images or videos in your Facebook/ Instagram stories. The brand HRX (https://www.instagram.com/hrxbrand/ ) does this fantastically and makes its customers feel valued in their yoga apparels and fitness videos.
6. Research the pain points of your TG
You could ask for opinions on ideas for a new product or service, for example, or find out what your audience needs about your product/ service.
How do Facebook & Instagram Stories help marketers?
It’s not just brand awareness that these stories help you with, they can also be great conversation starters and means of engagement. Here are some best practices that can help you-
Final Thoughts
With attractive designs and visuals, a strategic viewing location on Facebook and Instagram page and a huge opportunity to connect to your audiences directly, this is the right time to tap into Facebook and Instagram Stories as a marketing tool for your brand.
Share your thoughts with us on how your business uses stories to drive conversions.