Why your camera is the new keyboard

If you don’t know what 'stories' are by now, you might actually be living in a cave. It’s fast becoming the default for the majority of social content consumption. The stories blast-off across pretty much all the main platforms; Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger and Facebook now leads the way, sitting proudly at the top of your mobile feed, making the rest of the news feed look somewhat outdated.

Whilst Facebook and Twitter are seeing a downward trend in user-generated text based content, Snapchat is now generating around 10 billion video views daily and over 150 million Instagram users are creating stories each day, too.

So how can your business utilise this feature and benefit from the stories boom? The answer in short form is just document. It’s a lot easier to have the mindset of documenting over creating something. Stories aren’t all about highly polished pieces, more revealing the human, genuine and real side to your business.

You can quite easily document sections within your business. For example, your product creation process. Or if you work in a corporate environment, think about doing a simple question and answer session with the Director, Designer, or member of staff with a specific skill set you think your audience would find interesting.

The quote ‘People buy from people’ couldn’t be more relevant when it comes to stories. Especially as millennials and generation Z are coming through. They have a very different approach when it comes to liking a brand or business and when they hit the big red buy-button. It’s all about trust with these guys and this is something you can gain through the stories feature – by showing them behind the scenes, offering exclusive discounts and proving you’re doing good. Displaying excellent ethics is having a bigger impact on purchasing decisions than ever before.

The stories feature can play a massive part capturing attention and in your overall marketing machine. With social media platforms constantly tweaking and changing their algorithms, it means (if it isn’t delivered in the right way) your standard social content might just disappear without a single bit of engagement. However, with stories right now it’s simple. The more regular you update, the more visible you are.

Finally, if you’re someone that struggles with getting something down in written form, this new digital feature is the one for you. Just make sure you warm your voice up before you rejoice!