A guide to Facebook stories in 2021

Did you know that Facebook stories have over 500 million active daily viewers and the number just keeps growing? Some may think Facebook is outdated when it comes to social media marketing, but actually, Facebook is one of the top growing locations for news and is a great platform for you to promote your business and brand to different audiences.

You must be wondering, why Facebook?

They are honestly the best opportunity to nurture and grow the engagement of your company. Not to mention the leap in brand trust and visibility. This has a lot to do with where the stories are located. 

The content you post will be right on top. You may be thinking that this is no different from Instagram, well there is a small difference. When users log onto Instagram, they already have a set idea of what’s coming their way, so they tend to avoid or tune out while scrolling through their feeds, but when it comes to Facebook, users are a tad bit more alert because they don’t log in as much as they do on Instagram. 

Another great thing about Facebook stores is that they show a preview image of what’s posted, which builds intrigue. 

Let’s go through how you can navigate posting on Facebook stories.

You need to create content that suits the Facebook audience, so here are some things you should keep in mind. 

You have all the tools you need to create the best content within the app itself, so all you have to do is create! With camera quality that Facebook does deliver on a handful of creative options for your story like stickers, backgrounds, texts, links you’ve got a canvas to create on. 

You should also use custom links for your stories, this way users can swipe up to the links tagged and this increases your click-through rates. 

While you’ve had fun doodling and posting cool content on your stories, you can also check out how it’s performing by turning on the Insights options. 

Using Insights, you’ll be able to view, 

1. The date the story was published.
2. A thumbnail of what your post looked like.
3. The status, if it’s active, means it was posted in the last 24 hours. If it’s ended, it means it was posted before the last 24 hours and is now not visible to the public.
4. The number of people who saw your story.
5. The number of times someone tapped to skip to the next part of your story. 
6. The number of times someone tapped to go back to the previous part of your story.
7. The number of times someone swiped to go past your story.
8. The amount of times someone leaves the stories section to go through the rest of their feed. 

All of these statistics are great when it comes to increasing your engagement because it shows you the areas you can improve and what parts are doing well. 

Now, let’s see how we can best create a good Facebook Strategy.

A lot of people have the question, “does cross-posting with Instagram, lower engagement rates?”. Well no, it does not! So to make things easier on you, you can go to the settings on your Instagram profile, go to linked accounts, add your Facebook account and you’re done! 

Now every story you post on Instagram will get posted on Facebook too. This way you can see how your viewers respond to the cross-posting content on Facebook.

You can also experiment with longer forms of videos, as Facebook has a lower exit rate. You can use it to post in-depth guides, polls, snippets from interviews, etc.

How many times should you post?

There is no rule of thumb when it comes to how many times to post stories. Some brands post every hour, while others just a few times a week. All of this depends on the viewers and what they’d like to see. Using your Facebook Analytics you can easily find out which frequency of posting works best. 

If you see an increase in your exit rate then it means, your audience may be bored of your content. Or if you see an increase in the number of people that stayed till the end, it means they want to see more.

You can also use your Analytics to see when your stories have the most traffic. If you’re just starting, it’s going to take quite a few trials and errors to see what your viewers like best and when they are online as that is your optimal engagement shot. 

Don’t stress out too much on the specifics, as you keep posting you will see how it works and what’s best for your brand, and this way you’ll be easily increasing brand awareness, trust, and visibility in no time.