Social media has changed a lot in recent times, with Social Stories now playing a big role on many of the most major platforms, including Snapchat and Instagram.
However as businesses, it’s essential to ensure that you use the right version of Stories (Instagram or Snapchat), as every business is unique and every business has its own marketing objectives.
What exactly are Stories?
Social Stories, whether on Instagram or Snapchat, are ways to share your videos and photos with your followers in a more immediate way. These stories, which appear in a slideshow format, disappear after 24 hours and are a great way to avoid cluttering your news feed, overloading your followers with post after post and keeping your social media account fresh. And with 150 million daily active Snapchat users and 300 million daily active Instagram users, as a business you would be foolish to avoid using at least one of these platforms to share your stories.
How do Stories complement your marketing strategy?
Before getting started with Instagram or Snapchat Stories, it’s important to answer the following questions:
- What is your reason for using Stories?
- How do they fit into your business objectives?
- How do they support your marketing goals?
- How do they influence your customer journey?
- How will you measure their success?
- How do you want customers to feel as a result of seeing your Stories?
- What actions do you want your customers to take once they have viewed your Stories?
Both Snapchat and Instagram Stories provide a brilliant opportunity to meet certain business objectives. With its fast-paced nature and 24-hour window, you have regular chances to connect with your audience via fresh, creative content.
How to use Stories: Objective: Brand and Product Awareness
Feature employees in stories using your products in the office or out and about. This offers viewers a chance to relate to your products and determine what it might be like to use them in different settings.
Objective: Demand Generation
Include micro-interviews with influencers using or talking about your products or services. This helps to establish credibility and widen your audience reach via their followers.
Objective: Nurturing Customer Relationships
Showcase “behind-the-scenes” footage to make your customers feel like they are a part of your brand and your community. By featuring Stories that include things like the making of your product, you will be helping customers to feel that they have the inside scoop on your brand.
Objective: Direct response
Use plenty of text overlays—especially for call-to-actions—to make it as easy as possible for users to soak up, retain and take action on your message.
Objective: Purchase
Offer promotion codes exclusively to those who have watched your Stories. This is a great way to make your customers feel happy and rewarded.
In Summary
As you can see, Snapchat and Instagram stories are great news for any brand. They enable you to tell your story from the social media platform that is most suited to your business, and in a way that helps you to achieve your exact marketing goals. Furthermore, there are so many creative ways to reach out to your social media audience and generate fantastic Stories!
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