Recently Facebook incorporated among its features the possibility of generating short stories, in a picture or video format, that disappear within a day. But, how do the Facebook Stories work and why do they can help in your business?
This is what we will talk about in this post! First, we will learn what a Facebook Story is and what their characteristics are. Then we’ll show you how to create them, and we will give you the best advice so you can make the most as part of your content strategy for your business.
Let’s work!
What is a Facebook Story?
Facebook Stories are a visual content; it can be a picture or a video, whose primary attributes are their brevity and their disappearance from the social network within 24 hours after having been published.
It should be noted that the “Story” was a format initially started on Snapchat that gave this social network a big popularity. That success was possible because of the novelty and to take care of the users and their privacy when the content of the servers is eliminated after 24 hours after having been published.
It was the Facebook inspiration to incorporate the stories as it happened on Instagram before. In this way, the most important social network in the world achieved to add this functionality to provide to its users new and greater possibilities of expressions.
Characteristics of Facebook Stories
Now, let’s learn with more specificity the distinctive qualities of the Facebook Stories:
- Facebook Stories are created through your smartphone camera.
- Content may be a photo taken at the time or from your gallery, or you can create a video up to 20 seconds long.
- The Story is automatically eliminated after 24 hours from its publication
- You can apply many different filters and stickers to your photos and videos.
- You can add numerous reality augmented filters to your videos (the GIF below is an example of this with animated white arrows that overlap the video).
- You have the possibility to add text in your Facebook Story.
- The viewers of your Facebook Story can reply to you a private message through Direct, a platform specifically designed to answer Facebook stories.
- Viewers can react to your story quickly, sending animated emboli to give their opinion.
- You can add location tags to Facebook stories (example. Indicating where your business is located).
- You can know who have seen your story.
What are the benefits of Facebook stories from a marketing point of view?
Now that you already know what Facebook stories are and how they work, we will analyze what is their use to promote your business, from the point of view of marketing.
- First of all and due to its characteristics, Facebook stories are the ideal medium to show everyday scenes of your business, in a more informal or familiar way than a normal post. This can be very useful to humanize your brand and bring it closer to the public, generating identification.
- Secondly and as you can see in the image below, the stories are the first thing that users see when they enter the Social Network since they are fixed at the top of the window of the app. For this reason, they are a very effective way to spread commercials, promotions, news, etc.
- Another benefit offered by Facebook stories from the marketing point of view has to do with the possibility of promoting the location of your business, by being able to add geotags with the specific location of your branch.
- Due to its ease of use, to the numerous stickers and comic filters offers, and the ability to add text, Facebook Stories are the fastest and most effective way to communicate the daily news of your business, example. When you receive new products, day discounts, etc.
- Another great advantage is that you can exactly see who has seen your Facebook stories this allows you to know which users are most interested in your proposals. This gives you the possibility to make special promotions and keep in touch with your audience to attract and retain customers.
In conclusion, sharing Facebook stories gives you the opportunity to communicate to your audience the news of your business in real time and be much closer to your audience.
How to create a Facebook Story?
- From your mobile, enter the page where you want to create the story and click on “Create Story”
- Create your content. For this, you can record a video at the moment (by holding down the round button of the shutter release) or take a picture (touching the shutter only once), and edit it by adding stickers, location tags, and filters.
You can also create only text Stories and choose backgrounds, as shown below.
- Share your story. To do so, you must touch the icon with the + sign that is in the middle of the screen, and press the option “Your story.” By doing so your content is published directly. Along with this you can share your story with specific users via Direct Messenger, or save it on your mobile, as shown below:
That is it! Easy, right? In the following picture you can see some examples of types of augmented reality filters that you can add to your Facebook Stories:
5 Keys to promote your business on your Facebook stories
To get the most out of Facebook stories regarding marketing, we advise you to follow these essential tips:
1- Define the type of content you will share:
The idea is that you incorporate Facebook stories as part of your Social Media strategy. For this, we advise you to define the type of content that you will regularly share in your stories so that they work as a reinforcement and complement of your other communication channels.
2- Multiply the effect of Facebook stories with an influencer
If you need to generate a forceful impact on Facebook, hiring an influencer to promote your business through their stories may be the perfect solution. Click on the following link to learn more about the influencer marketing.
3- Take advantage of opportunities to associate your business with positive trends or emotions
Given that stories allow you to share content in real time, you can use them to link your business to positive events. E.g. If your country’s soccer team has won an important game, you can upload a story telling how the staff of your business celebrates the victory.
4- Follow the annual marketing calendar
In line with the previous point, we advise you to create stories to link your business to all the moments of celebration of the Year: Christmas, Mother’s Day, Easter, child’s Day, Black Friday, etc. The idea is that your business proposal is present throughout the year, using greetings, special offers, etc.
5- Be creative
Don’t limit yourself! The tools that Facebook puts in your hands to create and edit stories are numerous, so put them in the service of the spreading of your business proposal and the transmission of the values of your brand. In this regard, some possibilities are:
- Share photos of your products with a textual description.
- Present your business staff with a video.
- Show your backstage business, as the meeting with distributors, etc.
- Exhibit your business facilities.
- Tell in a video what the benefits of your commercial proposal are.
- Announce special offers and discounts for the day or week.
In summary and as you may have noticed, the possibilities offered by Facebook Stories to promote your business are innumerable, and it is up to you to make the most of them. Follow the advice we offer in this post, and you will get the best results. Then you tell us!
- To learn more about these topics, we recommend the following articles on our blog:
- How to Create an Effective Facebook Page to Sell More
- How to convert your Facebook profile into Fan Page? Step-by-step tutorial
- How to Get More Likes on Facebook Fan Pages and Posts (Part 1)
- Social Media Hack: How to Tag on Facebook and Twitter to Increase the Reach of Your Posts and Tweets
We finish for today! Did you find this article helpful? Did you already know about Facebook Stories as a tool to promote your business? Tell us about your experience! And please, remember to share this blog post with all your contacts. See you next time! 😉