5 Ways To Make Your Social Stories More Effective
Stories are a great way for you to boost your engagement and share more content with your audience. In our collaborative model for social media management, we encourage you to post to your stories because it’s an effective tool to engage your audience and keep your brand front of mind. In this blog, we’ll look at 5 strategies for posting awesome stories that fulfil your KPIs.
Listen to your audience with polls & questions in Meta stories.
Stories are a great way to engage with your audience, but you might notice that they don’t always get as much attention as you like. One significant way to work with the algorithm is to make highly relevant interactive stories. Social listening at scale is an invaluable tool for getting to know your audience and is far less of an investment than focus groups and testing. Pick a product colour that’s your favourite, or ask your audience what they do to make their homes more energy efficient. There are endless opportunities for asking specific questions that not only boost interaction on your story but also give you invaluable information about your audience.
“ Social listening at scale is an invaluable tool for getting to know your audience and far less of an investment than focus groups and testing. “
Original content on Instagram & Facebook stories helps sell your products.
According to Hootsuite, 58% of Facebook users browse a brand’s website for more info after seeing a product or service in a Story. That’s a huge number for businesses to take advantage of. The more engaging your story is, the more engagement you will receive, and the more people will see your content—this is one of the few spaces where there is such an immediately powerful return on your effort.
To make your stories more engaging, start with original content. Original content is anything unique and authentic to your business and involves graphic design, video, or photography. Sharing informal photos and videos of your staff or a new product you just received is the way to reach out and connect with your audience without the rigidity of the ‘feed aesthetic.’
Increase your story engagement with easy optimizations.
There are small ways you can increase your engagement by capitalizing on the various optimizations and add-on features.
• Plan your content but post using the app
• Use location to highlight your store
• Add gifs and stickers that highlight your content
• Join the community with viral stories, music, and stickers.
• Share your customer’s photos and stories (it’s literally free marketing)
• Collaborate with others
• Share your feed posts to stories
• Use tags and mentions to build networks
• Schedule some stories and use the send-time optimization features
Share behind-the-scenes content with your audience to build brand trust.
Allowing your audience to see what happens in the day-to-day of your office, shop, or worksite is a great way to be casual and connected with your audience. Regular posts that feature you trying on products, working on a home, or hyping up your staff create relationships with those who follow you and build brand trust through community. Did you sponsor an event? Find something cute? Love a product you just brought in? Or got a coffee at a neighbouring shop? These are the kinds of casual ways you can connect without the stress of a feed post, and they demonstrate that you are connected to your local community.
Repost photos and videos from your customers.
We mentioned this above, but it deserves its own space because it is so highly effective. What better way to engage your customers than showing them that you’re proud they own or use your product? What better way to affirm those who are wondering about becoming your customer than to demonstrate clear community buy-in? Share your customers, affirm your community, and boost your engagement—no notes.
Stories are a key part of your brand & an effective tool for increasing engagement.
Period. If you’re not taking advantage of marketing opportunities in your stories across platforms, you’re missing out on a chance to engage with your audience, build better brand loyalty, and create a value-centred experience for your customers. Stories are the best way to have informal conversations with your customers or clients and let your value-aligned products and services shine. It’s a place for behind-the-scenes, hot takes, polls, and playfulness; show things you love, show a sneak peek, or give people a look at what it is like to be in your space. Stories are a natural compliment to your feed posts and shop and are another great way to link people to your website or cultivate an email list.
How will you use stories now that you know how effective they are?