July 23, 2018 •Claire Archer-Davis
While most people will be aware of the most recent changes to Facebook, and how they have been pitched to the general public as positive changes to help people connect better on a personal level, Facebook marketers, however, seem to be having a rough time of things lately.
Switching up your marketing tactics
As Facebook is currently the world’s largest social media channel, it is no wonder that it has attracted so many marketers and brand owners wanting a slice of the action. Facebook marketing has grown over recent years to become a handy tool for raising brand awareness and efficiently targeting their desired demographic.
What many marketers have switched to doing since the last raft of changes, is to target Facebook Groups with niche interests as a way to keep their profile high with their audience. The latest tactic is to look at how they can use Facebook Stories to boost their connections and continue to grow their base of followers.
Understanding the power of stories
There is a great power to be gained from telling a good story. It can hook in and captivate a specific target audience that conventional marketing techniques cannot match. However, precisely what is a ‘Facebook Story’ and how is it so different from other marketing methods that have been proven to work before?
Facebook Stories use an intriguing mix of images and videos that are played in succession. They are perfectly crafted to be accessible through smartphone use and can play across all platforms. Many people think that Facebook Stories was partly inspired by Snapchat that launched its ‘My Story’ feature back in 2014. Facebook has picked up and run with this feature, making a great success.
Fear of Missing Out
Facebook Stories was initially released in 2017 for mobile use and has since spread to be used across all devices. The feature now pulls in an average of 150 million daily users. What is compelling about using this ‘storytelling’ format is that whatever comments you get on your post only have a short life. All of the comments will disappear after 24 hours, so ‘FOMO’ (Fear of Missing Out) really comes in to play here!
Because of the rise in popularity of the storytelling feature, Facebook analysts fully expect that Stories will grow to overtake posts in regular news feeds as the most common way of sharing across all social apps and platforms. Even Facebook’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, has predicted that Stories will surpass regular feeds by as soon as next year!
What does this mean for marketers?
Marketers who want to keep their finger on the pulse will need to track the rise of Facebook Stories to see if the feature really will skyrocket as predicted. The best way to take advantage of this trend is to add your own Facebook story.
As a marketer, you can post a story from your brand page, so this may help to increase the chances of your content getting noticed by your target audience. What is interesting to note is that this feature isn’t being used very much at all by marketers as yet, so this is a clear indication that this feature could be a lucrative target area to focus your posts.
One thing we do know for sure is that Facebook is very keen to grow Stories and this can mean marketers can now develop a brand-new avenue of opportunity to reach out and engage with their target audience. It could also be a very useful tool for reconnecting with those lost customers that are no longer seeing your regular content in their Newsfeed.
There really isn’t anything to lose by pursuing Facebook Stories. It could be time very well spent!