6 Ways You Can Improve Your Brand’s Social Media Stories

by | Last updated Mar 19, 2024 | Digital Marketing

Read Time: 3 min read

Summary: TL;DR: With over 3.6 billion social media users, engaging audiences through Stories is crucial. Short attention spans mean content must be quick and captivating. Fresh, varied content keeps users interested, while teasing upcoming projects builds anticipation. Augmented reality and GIFs add creativity and appeal. Location filters boost brand awareness, and closed captions enhance inclusivity. Utilize these tips on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat to create compelling Stories that resonate with your audience, drive engagement, and elevate your social media marketing strategy.

With an estimated 3.6 billion users across social media sites, finding ways to grab and maintain attention on social media platforms can be tricky. Fortunately, as more platforms adopt Snapchat’s successful “Story” feature, it’s easier for brands to engage their fans and customers on a daily basis. Keep these helpful social media marketing tips in mind whenever you create stories on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat!

YouTube video

Understand Attention Spans

Short attention spans are modifying how social media users value immediacy and convenience when viewing stories. Because the human attention span lasts for eight seconds, it’s important to create short, interesting content with a stellar hook that captures your audience’s attention in the blink of an eye. Keep the text in your story concise, and make sure to focus on only one idea with the content you produce.

Keep Content Fresh & Engaging

70% of Instagram users watch Stories daily, which means you don’t want to be sharing the same content day in and day out—otherwise, you could lose audience interest over time. Focus on coming up with fresh content ideas or different ways of conveying similar content. For example, if you’re using Instagram Stories to help your audience get to know your company better and create a more personal, engaging experience, you could use Q&A formats, share behind-the-scenes videos, conduct polls, do employee takeovers, and more.

Tease Upcoming Projects

Give your social media audience a glimpse of upcoming projects, product launches, or events! Not only does allowing your audience to be “in-the-know” create interest in your business, but you can also use frequent updates and countdowns to build excitement for the project you eventually launch or unveil.

Use Augmented Reality & GIFs

Experimenting with augmented reality and GIFs are great for social media stories content! Whether you add GIFs to content or use AR camera features, you can capture audience attention in fractions of a second. Businesses have found success in using AR, as it’s an emergent storytelling device that offers brands plenty of opportunities to make stories more unique. Similarly, GIFs can be used add more creativity to content.

Utilize Location Filters

Adding location filters to stories content can serve as an excellent opportunity to boost awareness of your brand online, especially if you’re a local company trying to gain more local customers! Include location tags, filters, or stickers on platforms like Instagram and Facebook to let your audience know where you are. You can also use these filters as a means to find user-generated content that’s been tagged with your location!

Add Closed Captions

Including closed captions on your stories is critical for creating more inclusive and accessible viewing. These captions help your audience understand what’s being shared without needing sound. Maybe someone can’t hear or understand what you’re saying, or someone wants to watch your story but are in a sound-sensitive environment. Closed captions allow them to consume your stories content more easily.

Looking to incorporate stories content into your social media marketing strategy? Hurrdat Marketing can help! Learn more about our social media marketing services today!

Megan Schneider

Author

Megan is a Content Strategist at Hurrdat, where she helps write content for local and national clients. Projects Megan has worked on include paid landing pages, website copy, optimized pillar pages, and blog work. Through her work, Megan conducts competitive analyses, title tag and meta data optimization, and search-engine-optimized keyword research. Megan began her writing career as an Online Reporter at the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s student newspaper, The Gateway.

Megan lives in Omaha, NE, graduated from the University of Nebraska-Omaha with a major in Journalism, and enjoys creating content for her fashion blog, spending time with family, and watching reality TV shows.

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