Has juggling strategies for posting stories on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat made your head spin? Do you wish to know more about how to develop strategies on these sites? Maybe you find one or more of these platforms intimidating. Understanding the similarities between the story functions on these three platforms and their key differences can help you develop strategies for your social media marketing. While your stories shouldn’t be copied and pasted between platforms, you can have significant overlap in types of content and frequency of posts. Let’s start with Instagram.

Instagram Stories

Marketing on Instagram Stories can be intimidating but can open doors to new types of consumer engagement. Neil Patel discusses strategies for using Instagram Stories for marketing in a post on his blog.

Use Instagram Stories to personalize your brand. No consumer wants to engage with a brand that gives the image of being run of the mill, bland, and boring. Use stories to get creative and have some fun making content that your target audience would enjoy. Try to make your audience feel like your company is made up of regular people like them.

You can also use stories to get involved with your target audience by using location tags and polls. This gets people directly engaged. Polls serve a double benefit, as they allow your audience to engage and have a bit of fun with your post while allowing you to do some informal research into the thoughts and feelings of your audience.

Your brand can also use influencers to create engagement. Influencers can take over your social media account for a limited period of time and create the kind of content they want to. This will allow you to further personalize your brand and make it seem more fun.

Finally, you should use links in your stories. These lead consumers to your other content, your website, and more. If you make an engaging post, this is an easy and direct way to get them to where you want them to go next.

Go read the rest of Neil’s tips for Instagram Stories and find more marketing content here.

For more information about Instagram Stories, go read my colleague Taylor’s post about them here.

Facebook Stories

Facebook Stories are much of the same. Facebook owns Instagram, after all. Martina Bretous covers Facebook Stories and marketing strategy in a post for HubSpot’s Blog.

As with Instagram, you should use Facebook Stories to try and create a personalized and entertaining brand image. Martina refers to this as “a look behind the scenes” and “pulling back the curtain.” You should also use polls and other interactive content on Facebook.

You can share user-generated content inside of Stories. This allows you to show and link to another user’s content while sharing your own message. Use this to show how people use your product or service and what they think of your brand. Influencers who post about your brand can also be shared using this method. Instagram has the same feature and can be used in much the same way.

Stories can also be used to promote short-term promotions and giveaways. This is beneficial for two reasons. First, it allows for direct linking to a landing page about the promotion, increasing the likelihood of a conversion on the posting. Second, it goes away after twenty-four hours, keeping old promotional material off of your main page. This strategy also works for Instagram.

There are many similarities between Facebook and Instagram Stories. The biggest difference you need to address is the difference in your audience on each platform. Facebook users tend to be older and view more text-based content, while Instagram users tend to be younger and view more image-based content. While these are not perfect rules, they can help you determine how you want to adapt your strategy to each platform.

You can read the rest of Martina’s insights about Facebook Stories and explore more social media marketing content here.

Snapchat

Snapchat is where stories get a bit different. Because of how Snapchat is designed as a platform, much of your marketing effort will be focused on their stories section. However, there are other marketing opportunities outside of Snapchat Stories. Sarah Aboulhosn discusses marketing strategies on Snapchat in a post on the Sprout Social Blog.

Great content is nothing without followers to view and share it. You can use your other platforms to give users sneak peaks of your Snapchat content and drive them to your Snapchat account. This involves finding users who also use Snapchat and showing them content that would intrigue them enough to begin following your content on Snapchat.

You can also use features on Snapchat Stories that are similar to those on Facebook and Instagram, such as using links to drive to other content or to a landing page on your website, using influencers and brand takeovers, and creating paid ads for stories. These tools do not require a brand-new strategy to implement. You can use similar strategies from Facebook and Instagram, then adapt them to your goals on Snapchat.

The big difference between your strategy on Snapchat versus Facebook and Instagram is that your brand can also create filters that users can add to their photos. This technology can allow you to really get creative and help consumers have fun while interacting with your brand. You can also sponsor your filters to get them out to more people in your target audience.

You can read the rest of Sarah’s tips and other social media marketing strategies here.

Conclusion

While you won’t be just simply copying story content between platforms, you can copy much of your story strategy between platforms. Just don’t forget to adapt content to your audience on that platform. Marketing on social media stories can be intimidating at first but with these tips, you’ll start on the right track!

Resources

Aboulhosn, S. (2020, September 29). How to use Snapchat for business in 2020. Sprout Social. Retrieved October 21, 2021, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/snapchat-marketing-guide/.

Bretous, M. (2021, April 5). How 7 brands use Facebook Stories for Business. HubSpot Blog. Retrieved October 21, 2021, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/examples-of-facebook-stories.

Patel, N. (2021, September 14). The marketer's guide to Instagram stories: Building your brand and generating sales. Neil Patel. Retrieved October 21, 2021, from https://neilpatel.com/blog/marketers-guide-to-instagram-stories/.