What You Need to Know About Social Media Stories in 2021

How familiar are you with Stories on social media? This feature, originally found on Snapchat, is now everywhere in the social media universe; if you’re not familiar, Stories are collections of photos and short videos that are viewable for only a day or so, that a user can manually scroll through or watch in a sequence. They’re usually posted in a vertical format perfect for smartphones, as opposed to horizontal like on YouTube or square like on your Instagram feed.

We’ve written about Stories a few times; last July, we went over Instagram Stories basics, and shared lots of examples of the types of social media content you can create in this format:

They don’t last forever, unless you want them to: How long do you spend composing and filtering your Instagram post so it perfectly fits into the aesthetic of your feed? You don’t have to worry about this with Stories! They only last for 24 hours after you post them, unless you want to save them to your Highlights. You can post more often and and more freely without cluttering anyone’s feeds, and you can try out different creative ideas without having to keep it published forever.

They offer a new way to engage: When you post a Story, you can add a poll, ask a question, add a link that directs to your website... This is a great way to start a conversation directly with your followers and get instant feedback, especially if you're offering a new product or redesigning something.

Stories have changed a lot since last year! You’ve probably started to see this kind of quick-moving content everywhere, from LinkedIn to Twitter, because it’s a short, digestible, casual format that really worked well during the pandemic. Our attention spans can only handle so much right now, after all, so something short, fun, and easy to scroll past is

If you’re not using the Story format yet for your social media marketing, it’s definitely time to start. Here are some quick tips for Stories across different channels, so you can start imagining the possibilities for your own campaigns:

Instagram: Still the Tried and True Classic

These are still the most popular and familiar type of Stories, used by millions of people every single day. In fact, Stories are now the place for your most casual content; deciding to post a photo or a video to your Instagram grid or profile is MUCH higher stakes, since it doesn’t disappear unless you delete it.

Use this great list of hacks from Hootsuite to upgrade your Instagram Story game, and take full advantage of these features if Instagram is one of your main channels that you use to connect with your audience. Instagram loves it when you try out all their stuff!

TikTok: The New Classic

TikTok doesn’t have Stories yet, but they’re coming. TechCrunch just shared that TikTok is trying out Stories as a new feature, and as a way to encourage more users to not just passively watch content but to try posting different kinds of their own original content on the platform. It’s a clearly competitive move, and shows that TikTok is well aware of its power as one of the most influential social media channels right now. If you’re not on TikTok yet… we bet we’ll see you there in 2022.

Reactions to this announcement are pretty entertaining, though, since most other social media companies had to copy TikTok in order to stay competitive. Via Mashable:

Yep, the app that has caused every other social media company to scramble and create short-form video TikTok clones is now copying the last thing those other apps really had going for them.

LinkedIn: Business Casual

LinkedIn has its own Stories feature, which might be a little less popular, but it’s still interesting that they’re going for it. A more professional (and older) audience using LinkedIn to job-hunt and network might not be as familiar with the Story format in general, but that audience is still accessing LinkedIn on their phones, and that means more mobile-friendly content is a good thing.

If your organization is already doing well on LinkedIn through regular posts and recruitment efforts, LinkedIn recommends using the Story format for additional educational content about your offerings, behind-the-scenes content featuring your employees, and opportunities to interact with your audience more through quizzes and polls. Make it easy to follow and more fun than, say, your typical “We’re Hiring!” post.

But don’t expect the latest dance craze to originate on LinkedIn. (Although… you never know!)

Facebook: Who’s Watching These?

Facebook added Stories as a feature in 2017, and as The Verge wrote that year, this was a classic dominance attempt by the company, which had also added Stories to Instagram in 2016 and WhatsApp in 2017:

The move is part of an all-out effort to blunt the momentum of Snapchat, which invented the stories format in 2013, and to ensure Facebook’s continued dominance in an era where photo and video become a primary mode of communication. Its relative success or failure will go a long way in determining who owns the near future of social networking.

As we know now, four years later, the format absolutely did take off, but it’s harder than you’d think to discover how many users are actually watching Facebook Stories versus Instagram Stories, since that data is held pretty close to the chest. When we looked up the stats, we found the same number (500 million users daily) reported for both Facebook and Instagram Stories, which makes us think that the real numbers might not be available. (Let us know if we’re wrong on that!)

Personally, we don’t really look at Facebook Stories very much because we’re mostly on Instagram, but as marketers we say that, if you have a successful audience base on Facebook that’s engaging with your content there regularly, there’s no reason not to post Facebook Stories.

Consider posting the same Story content across multiple channels, like both Instagram and Facebook, or even LinkedIn and Facebook; many, many people cross-pollinate their content across channels like this and it’s totally fine, since your audience will choose where they personally prefer to watch your stuff.

Pinterest: It’s a Thing There, Too

If you’re a Pinterest user, you may have noticed some different types of Pin formats popping up over the past year, and they’ve also embraced Stories; no surprise , right? Story Pins are a way to curate ideas and inspiration straight from Pinterest, or uploaded from your own photos and videos, and present them as a cute slideshow (a story, if you please) with no need to link to another website.

Pinterest has always had its own rules as far as visual aesthetics (make it pretty!) and formatting (make it vertical!), compared to other social media channels, but it’s interesting that they’re willing to try more casual content styles like this versus the highly-curated, highly-stylized content that you typically find on this channel.

Twitter: They Tried It

Twitter did attempt to join the Story party in March of last year with an ephemeral feature called Fleets… but it didn’t exactly take off. Fleets were officially deactivated just a few days ago.

Goodbye, Fleets… we hardly knew ye. But we do wonder what other ways Twitter will try to stay in the game over the next year. If you’re a heavy Twitter user, stay on top of that! Things can change in a blink and you may have to suddenly rethink your strategy.