Understanding story content and its role in marketing
Once you understand story content and its role in marketing you will start to realise how important it is to make full use of it.
As one of the newer tools in marketing story content is often misunderstood. On the one hand, people seem to view it as a simple social media gimmick. On the other, companies tend to invest heavily into story content and marketing strategies that rely heavily on it. So, how useful is story content and can you use it for your marketing efforts. Well, we will use this article to help you understand story content and its role in marketing.
A brief intro to story content
Simply put, story content is content presented through the story format. Essentially, story content can entail any type of content that you deem fit. Written content, interactive content, videos, audio or animations. All this can be a part of a single instance of story content. The main idea is to connect those aspects in a string of stories that help convey information in an engaging way.
Where can you find story content?
Story content is surprisingly widespread, and it is only becoming more so. The first place to look is Google, as they have invested heavily in developing and promoting web stories. Instagram is also an obvious choice as Instagram stories have become a phenomenon in their own right. Most social media platforms promote some form of story content. And, with modern tools like StorifyMe, you can create and post content wherever and whenever you please.
How do companies use story content?
So far, most companies use story content mostly as a gimmick. Sure, some use it for promotion. But they don't put much more thought into it than they would for standard content. Luckily, this has both its pros and cons. The con is that story content is still not widely considered as serious marketing content and is more of a passing trend. But the pro is that competition is relatively low. If you wanted to push your standard content to the first page of Google you would have to tackle months if not years of content creation and SEO management. Meanwhile, if you use story content, you can see the first page of Google within a week or two. Therefore, if you believe that being first is important in marketing, you really need to take a closer look at story content.
Story content and its role in marketing
Using story content in marketing is still an experimental subject. While some marketing managers may claim that they've "cracked the code", it is still unclear what role story content will play. Some predict that the future of online marketing is reliant on story content in its various forms. While others believe that it will play more of a supporting role, helping promote more robust content when need be.
Our belief is that there is one "single role" for story content. Depending on your brand and how you wish to promote it, story content can play a different role. For some brands, story content can be the crux of their marketing, especially if they use the full potential of stores. Meanwhile, some brands can't really rely on story content to push their narrative and may have to resort to other types of content. Your job is to understand your brand and see how it can benefit from web stories.
How to create story content
Luckily, creating story content is easier than ever. You can simply create a social media profile and use their simple interface to create stories. While this can yield you some decent traffic, social media stories tend to be limited. Namely, platforms like Instagram or Facebook don't give you many tools to edit and create stories that you may want to create. Furthermore, even if you do manage to create a decent story, it will only stay active for 24 hours. After that, you either have to reupload it, or it stays off your profile.
On the other hand, tools like StorifyMe allow much more freedom to create the stories that you want. Not only can you seamlessly incorporate various elements but also add interactivity and elegant brand incorporation. Best of all, once you create your stories, you can easily post them wherever you deem fit.
When to use story content
As we mentioned, this is mostly dependant on your brand. In theory, you can use story content to present whatever you like. You can present any type of marketing content in a story format. But, it is important not to go overboard.
Currently, story content is mostly based on short, digestible information that is easy to showcase. Such content benefits greatly from the story format, as it captures the viewer's attention and effective push the information. If your story content becomes too long, it runs the risk of losing the viewers attention. This, as you can imagine, is bad as it not only drives people away from the content they are viewing but also from the content you might create in the future. This can change in the future, once we develop a different relationship to story content. But, as it is now, people expect story content to be short, well-crafted and interesting. So try to make it so.
Conclusion
Seeing as it is still in development, it is hard to precisely explain story content and its role in marketing. So, if you are unsure whether to explore it further and use it for your marketing, there are two things to consider. First, there is no set path. So, if you plan on using story content, you will have to explore and experiment. Second, the competition is relatively low now, but it won't stay that way for long. We wouldn't be surprised that story content becomes a big thing in marketing in a relatively short period. So, if you do plan on using it, get ready to experiment, and try doing so as soon as possible.
