Every week we find yet another social media property launching a new Stories format feature. Pioneered by Snapchat and innovated upon by everyone from Pinterest (Story Pins) to LinkedIn (Stories); we’ve had numerous questions from our publisher friends on whether or not they should add Stories to their web and mobile content arsenal.
Here’s a quick rundown of the top 5 social media properties carrying Stories and their relevance for publishers who wish to be innovative and creative while connecting with their growing audience.
1. Snapchat Stories
The first of its kind Snapchat Stories was aimed at broadening Snapchat’s youth demographic while providing content they’d find valuable.
Enter Publishers.
Starting way back in 2015, Snapchat offered publishers a new format that took publishers a while to adopt but in five quick years, “Stories” has taken the publishing world by storm, going from a handful of partners to over 100 in less than five years.
For example, NBC launched “Stay Tuned” in July 2017, which now attracts between 25 million and 35 million unique viewers every month, two-thirds of which do not read or watch other NBC content, according to Comscore data.
Pro Tip: Use repurposed content for Snapchat stories from your existing social media properties, like Facebook video, for example. See case study on how First Media Publisher made the leap, source: Digiday)
2. Instagram Reels
Snapchat Stories has led to a cottage industry of different social media platforms recognizing and utilizing the Stories format, within their own platform; the largest of which would be Instagram’s very own Reels, which launched in August this year, to mixed reviews.
But what does it mean for publishers?
Taking the Pro Tip we shared under Snapchat stories, the cycle has come full circle for publishers who are now on Snapchat Stories or TikTok and are repurposing that content for Reels, now that it has launched.
Unlike Instagram Stories, which was an easier sell since it involved less creativity and just filters (which is more of where Instagram lives), Reels has a higher bar to entry.
Another challenge with repurposing is that TikTok allows for 60-second videos while Instagram Reels brings it down to 15-second videos that are far more difficult to edit.
3. Pinterest Story Pins
Pinterest is a place for the most creative pinners and creators. Recently, they launched Story Pins, as a new kind of publishing option that lends itself to creators, hobbyists or publishers, to tell the most compelling visual stories with videos, image and text overlay (like other web stories) and voiceover if necessary.
From creators to hobbyists to publishers, our vision is to make Pinterest a platform where anyone can publish great ideas and discover great content. Creators with early access to Story Pins like Coco Bassey, Camille Styles, Shiquita from Unconventional Southern Belle, and Jazmine Ford of Finding Uphoria have already grown their audiences. – Pinterest Blog
4. LinkedIn Stories
With hundreds of millions of professionals on their platform, most recently LinkedIn launched Stories on their platform as well, giving professionals across the globe an easy opportunity to share multimedia stories on what’s happening today.
LinkedIn Stories are a great way to start lightweight conversations related to your work-life. The stories that resonate well are professional in nature, and make it easy for a response – for example, you could share a unique perspective from your work day, ask a question to your network, share insights on timely breaking news, walk through a product demo or teach others a skill. – LinkedIn Blog
From a publishing standpoint, this might be a great way for the professionals on your team to share the latest and greatest updates on your publishing brand to their followers and connections on LinkedIn. Over time, LinkedIn might start offering an easy way to aggregate these stories from the members of your team for your brand page.
From our understanding, this is a great way for your teams to represent your publisher brand, but probably is not the best place to start your publishing brands’ web stories strategies at the moment.
5. Twitter Fleets
Twitter Fleets is Twitter’s own version of the Stories Format that hasn’t launched globally yet, but given the vast prevalence of media brands on Twitter Platform, this might be an exciting new option to use the same web stories content you’re building out.
The composer interface is more bare-bones than what you’d find on rival social networking sites. Twitter says that’s to reflect its product’s text-centric nature. However, users are able to add photos, GIFs and videos to a Fleet, even if fancy editing tools are not available. – TechCrunch
Again, these are early attempts at giving you a web stories wrapper on a platform that’s very media centric, so we’ll definitely be sharing our tips and tricks on Twitter Fleets once it launches globally.
If you’ve any further questions or thoughts on web stories and storytelling across the web, let us know, and we’ll try to answer your questions on Twitter or LinkedIn.
