Social Media Stories – Facebook and Instagram Stories – are akin to slideshows of text, photos, and video assemblies available for up to 24 hours. It first happened on Snapchat, but when Facebook introduced Stories platform, it was a huge hit. In a year, Facebook even reported having 150 million accounts publishing every day on Stories. Later, Stories are embedded in Instagram as well.
But, as a business persona, how are you able to take advantage of this feature?
Storytelling and marketing are like peanut butter and jelly- they are better when they come together. The feature on social media platforms called “Stories” has been by far the most trending storytelling forms for almost everything.
People enjoy using it for fun- they post life updates, they share their routines, they voice out their stand, and many more. Even businesses can make the most use out of it for it is one of the most effective ways to engage with customers.
Advantages of Using Social Media Stories
If you own a business, then using social media stories for marketing is one of the best moves to increase your brand visibility and customer engagement! Still not convinced yet? Well, here are the other advantages if you use social media stories for your business!
Cost-effective marketing tool
You can raise your brand awareness and engage with your customers for free using social media stories! There are editing tools that are readily available, which means that you don’t have to spend on graphic artists. Also, you can use engagement tools such as polls, quizzes, and many more. By using these things, you can get customer insights and leads without having to shell out a single penny!
FOMO or Time-bound marketing strategy
Audiences, such as customers are now more impulsive and responsive. Using social media stories enables you to give up-to-date content. You can also join a conversation instantly a moment something new popped up! Also, did you know that people purchase more on a time-bound basis? For instance, you can notify them of a special sale, like say, a 50% off in all products.
Be relevant right away
Being relevant in a timely manner is important to your customers. That’s why it should be important to you as well. Utilizing social media stories allows you to release trending information about your brand and important updates as quickly as possible!
How to use social media stories to attract customers
The most essential part is answering the question, how to use social media stories to attract customers. After all, the one thing we want is to have more new customers and patrons!
Use Polls
Instagram created an interactive poll feature for their Stories last October of 2019. This added feature is a great help for businesses to engage their audience and get insights from them about all kinds of topics. You can even use this as an A/B testing tool if you want to ask your followers about their preferences for a particular product or service.
With this, you are promoting inclusivity, and when you are already known for it, you can easily gain more new customers who want to be heard!
Add location tags
Nowadays, people usually use their Stories to find local businesses. For example, with Instagram, there are location searches that have a story icon which enables the users to see recently posted stories that have the same location sticker.
This feature will be beneficial if you have a physical store or a business address. Through this, you can get your brand to be discovered locally or even internationally! So, add a location sticker on your stories more often, and you can surely be seen by the people who are checking in that spot!
Incorporate different content formats
According to Facebook, to capture the interests of your customers, you need incorporate different formats than just sticking to one content type only. The study shows a high 75% of driving leads for sales funnels.
Trust us, your customers don’t want to see the same thing all over again, consistency is nice, but, mixed assets are refreshing to the eyes.
Social media stories, when utilized well, can be a really powerful and cost-effective marketing tool. So, if you are looking for ways to attract customers that won’t hurt your pocket, try social media stories!
