Why are stories the must-have for your marketing content strategy?

StorifyMe
StorifyMe
Nov 5 · 4 min read

Today, people consume content like never before. In January 2019, the photo-sharing platform Instagram reported 500 million daily active Stories users worldwide [1]. Facebook, Snapchat and other platforms also allow users to post stories as a sequence of photos and videos.

People are losing patience

Given the rapid growth of technology, and the ability to have everything on-demand, the human attention span is at its lowest ever.

According to a study by Microsoft, the average human being now has an attention span of eight seconds. This is a sharp decrease from 2000 when the average attention span was 12 seconds. Even more shocking, perhaps, is the fact that research from Jampp found that human attention span decreases by 88 percent every year.

Now, as a content marketing strategy is something that should yield returns in the long run, the problem with the human attention span should be carefully evaluated. Here are a quick few facts:

  • People do not have the patience to read your blog post or other lengthy content.
  • Even if they do try to read your content, if it’s long and not to the point, they will just stop reading all your content because of the bad experience.
  • Dynamic and tappable content will keep attention on a high level. Long blog post won't.
How do you prefer to learn about “The Metamorphosis”? Interactive story or a long blog post/book— credit “New York Public Library”

Creating engaging content

There is a lot about engagement and writing engagement content, so there is no point in repeating that here. Instead, let’s focus on the simplest way of crafting engaging content. There are two main things needed for the content that will keep attention: using humor in your content and telling stories.

People are so busy and distracted by other things asking for their attention, that it’s become very hard to stand out. Having said that, if you can tell them a story and get them involved by tapping it will do wonders for your brand.

Content on social networks is not really your content

Posting on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and etc. makes sense, but it should not be your primary content strategy. There are a few reasons why having social networks as primary content strategy platform is wrong:

  • Everything you create belongs to someone else (and Zuckerberg is thankful for that).
  • There is always a risk of getting your social account closed, and that means all your hard work can go away in just a few minutes.
  • Remember MySpace? Platforms come and go, and while Facebook and Instagram won’t be disappearing in the next 5–10 years, you are building a brand that should last even when there is a new cooler social media platform everyone go to.
  • Stories exist for only 24 hours, and then all your effort of designing and creating a highly engaging and interesting story is gone.

These reasons should be more than enough for you to start thinking about hosting stories on your own domain.

Benefits of stories on your own website

As mentioned, having stories on your own website means that with every story you create, your brand increases in value. But that is not all, having stories on your own website means you are improving your SEO score.

With Google hosting stories at the top of their search results, stories are the most exciting SEO opportunity to rank higher and get people to notice you and your brand. You get the opportunity to stand out in Google Search results and rank better than your competitors.

Washington Post stories in Google Search results — great for SEO.

Standing out in Google Search results is a very powerful way to acquire new customers without having to spend tons of money on ads. So how can it be done?

Creating stories

Creating highly engaging stories that customers love, while getting better SEO benefits then with long blog posts full of keywords has never been simpler. With easy to use drag-n-drop editor, creating a story is quick and straightforward.

Easy to use story creator.

Now your customers can actually read your content and engage with your brand. How much did they actually read?

Story insights — measure and improve customer experience and engagement

With Story insights, you can quickly see what is the customer experience. If there is, for example, a huge drop in slide number 3, you will be able to update the slide with content that customers will like better. This is a huge advantage over blogs where customers might drop because of sentence number 17, or because of picture number 2, who knows.

And the best of all, you have full control over how the stories are presented to your customers, whether it’s a widget at the top of the page, or for example a whole page with all your stories. The opportunities are limitless.

Start growing your business with storytelling today!

StorifyMe

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StorifyMe

StorifyMe makes it radically easy to create, publish and measure the impact of your stories.

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