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How To Use Social Media Stories To Boost Engagement

  • By Sujith Kumar
  • 05-05-2021
  • Social Media

Two years ago, we never knew that the internet and social media would take over our lives. Who knew we would look for content on our social media that made us trust and believe in the services and products? Today, social media engagement has turned out to be a party where everyone gathered to communicate, influence, and persuade people.

Back in the day, we used to look for advertisements or content that stood strong for years to come. With the rise of social media marketing, online platforms have created a mobile feature named “Stories” that will allow you to display your content on different platforms that avail the quality for 24 hours.

“Stories” is a feature that became first prominent with the app called Snapchat. Short clips of videos, photos, captions, and the ability to interact with people made the quality highly popular within the young community. It has a short life, precisely 24 hours, and it became a platform to communicate and share personal content. Soon after Snapchat, Instagram came into play with snaps and created “Instagram Stories,” later on, adopted by Facebook and Whatsapp. Android app agency soon began adapting to this vertical feature because it had the most reach in the marketing field. Stories fit perfectly to feed consumers with content.

Why Do Stories Stay?

For modern brands with an online presence, social media marketing management was the catch. Images and videos made by smartphones created more content than just text-based input. Stories make it possible to produce content in a vertical format, creating wider reach and attention. It is much easier to share the content and consume it. This way, it stays in the audience's mind and builds up the urge to see it more often.

Social media is more than just looking popular. You require the right taste of marketing skills to grasp its essence and fire it up to the audience. Some Social Media Marketing Skills you need Right Now will tell you to look from the perspective of the opposite end to generate leads and drive conversion.

Stories made sure that social media marketing is all about engaging with your audience. It is about making connections, interactions and boosting the account engagement to receive a wider reach. The full-screen format, which makes the viewers fully immerse in the content, is a fantastic way to leverage that attraction to grow your business and boost engagement.

Methods to Boost Engagement with Stories

Stories offer a dynamic way to communicate with the audience. To increase followers, keep them entertained, and have them start up a conversation needs a bit of encouragement. With a bit of colour and energy, the following tips will help boost engagement using social media stories.

1. Tell a Story, an Insider Story
As the name suggests, the easiest way to increase social media engagement is to tell a story through “stories.” Posting plain-spoken photos and videos are easy; anyone can do it. To make the content attractive and appealing, a storytelling method can have the audience hooked to the content.

Stories having a life span of 24 hours encourage people to share more personal content. In business pages, they focus on creating behind-the-scenes content. With unscripted and spur-of-the-moment content, it attracts people and creates a flow of stories. You can also highlight the company’s mission and vision, supported by photos and videos. This type of content feels authentic and will resonate with the audience.

2. Leverage the Fear Of Missing Out
Knowing your audience, creating and sharing valuable content can attract the audience, but it can also create FOMO ( Fear Of Missing Out) in those who do not see the stories. In this way, you can leverage stories to generate an increase in engagement in a short time. Fan out sponsored and promotional content. Reach the audience with the subjects to urge them to share them with their peers. Such strategies will generate tremendous excitement, especially during seasonal times.

3. Add Interactive Elements
Adding interactive elements can make your stories engage more with the audience. Several options for interactive features are:

● Question Stickers: Even if you can simply put up a question in your story, the question sticker has added benefits. The recipient can immediately ask a question under the sticker, and they will also get a notification as soon as you reply to the question.
● Poll Stickers: Using poll stickers will help you know your audience’s preferences. They can choose between two options to help you get feedback on your products, services, many more.
● Location Tags: As you add a story, including a location tag can let your audience know more about the place by clicking on the tag.
● Texts: Texts are not always tedious to read and boring. It can enhance your message. Social media platforms also allow you to add colourful texts with exciting fonts.
● Gifs and emojis: Visual elements like gifs and emojis helps to convey the mood or emotion with the minor text.

4. Use of Prompts
In the case of Instagram stories or Snaps, the appropriate use of prompts will hold on to the audience's curiosity and retain viewership through multiple levels. Some commonly used prompts are given below.

● Hold to read: As you add longer text messages to your stories, a prompt of ‘hold to read’ will make the readers have the full content.
● Tap for more: Adding ‘tap for more’ after stating a question or topic for discussion will make the user move on to the next tile.
● Tap to edit: many photographers or editors use this prompt to showcase the unedited and edited version of photos and videos.
● Get ready to: The ‘get ready to’ followed by a relevant text will create anticipation and excitement in the audience’s minds.

5. Use Screenshotable Stories
Screenshotable stories are a great creative way to increase interactivity. Serval type of screenshotted stories will make people participate, which will create a chain of stories as people tag along. Entertainment-based quizzes fill in the blanks or checking boxes that will give you an insight into your audience. A list of favourite films, favourite activities, relatable quotes, etc., with tags of people to participate, will start a chain of stories. Gamifying experience in stories where anyone can win prizes can attract a larger crowd.

6. Direct Messaging
One of the crucial methods to make people interact with the brand is direct messaging. Generating engagement and interacting with your audience is the main plan for a business account. Prompts like DM for paid shoots, receive freebies, download presets, paid partnerships, photoshoots, and many more will get the online crowd to be more interactive and interests in your content.

Let’s Wrap Up

Instagram stories can be a great way to stay in your followers’ feeds when you are not posting extensively in the profile. As you use these tactics, they will spark your creativity and boost engagement in social media. Brands need to grow in their online platforms, and currently, stories are the way to do it. Social media stories make it easier to create content that makes mobile screens the best use. Stories never end and are ever-changing. The end of a story today is the beginning of a story tomorrow.

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