What Are Web Stories And Why You Should Care

Introduction

The web is the truly open and distributed system we have. You need to worry about a few administrative things, such as getting a domain name or hosting. Still, otherwise, nobody stands between you and what you want to tell the world. From the early days of the internet, creators used this open nature to build compelling web experiences for profit and fun.

As user’s expectations about interactions evolved, web developers responded by building genuinely unique web experiences that capture people’s imaginations and delight their users. What digital experiences are people expecting today? In this blog post, we will dive deeper into web stories and applications to market non-fungible tokens.

What are web stories

Web stories are visual stories for the open web. The web story format is accessible and part of the open web. Web stories are available for everyone to create or use on their websites. They are a web-based version of the famous “stories” format, which blends video, audio, images, animation, and text to create visual and immersive experiences on the web.

Web stories, formerly known as AMP Stories, give you the ability to create immersive, interactive experiences for your readers while allowing your content to load faster than using content delivery networks (CDNs). Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) is a web component open-source framework that enables developers to create user-first experiences for the web. The AMP framework allows developers to build web stories with engaging animations and tappable interactions optimized for the mobile viewing experience. This visual format lets you explore and interact with content by tapping through it or swiping from one piece to the next.

Web stories are growing in popularity. Since October 2020, roughly 6,500 new domains have started publishing web stories. Over 20 million web stories have been published online, with about 100,000 new web stories added daily ( youtube.com).

Case studies for web stories are impressive. Bon Appeteach, a healthy comfort food-based recipe blog, has made over 100 web stories. In two months, their pageviews grew by 6X from around 100,000 to over 700,000 ( bonappeteach.com). WordLift, a semantic SEO tool for automating structured data markup, created a web story for its SEO predictions. The results? WordLift boosted traffic on their website by 504% ( wordlift.io). Foo Tokyo, a lifestyle brand focused on luxury products, increased their session duration by over 550% and their page views by 30% using web stories ( firework.tv). Audpop, a video creation platform, saw 1,200% growth in customer engagement and 500% growth in sales by using web stories on their website ( firework.tv). Jumprope, a creator-first blog, used web stories to get 100,000 to 300,000+ page views ( blog.jumprope.com).

Web stories appear on Google Search, Google Discover, and Google Images. They are promoted by Google but are not owned by Google. Web stories are pieces of content that can be shared and embedded across the web without being confined to a closed platform (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn). Web stories give ownership to content creators by empowering them with complete creative expression and allowing them to host their own data on their own servers. Sound familiar to NFTs?

What are NFTs

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are becoming increasingly popular as an alternative method for fans to support their favorite creators. When technology evolves, and new creators begin to adopt it in their workflows, new solutions arise to previous problems. With the recent adoption of NFTs and blockchain technology, we see new crypto-enabled solutions. Creators use NFTS to monetize their creative process, build a community around their work, and incentivize their fans to contribute their capital and time.

NFTs are designed to give you something that can’t be copied: ownership of work. By creating or minting NFTs, creators can retain the copyright and reproduction rights to their content. When you buy an NFT, you hold the right to digital ownership of the NFT itself and the right to exclude others from digital ownership of the NFT. Beyond that, it will depend on whatever terms govern the NFT. I would characterize ownership of NFTs as intangible or incorporeal personal property — an item that cannot be touched or held but has some level of value. It can be bought, sold, gifted, bequeathed, mortgaged, used as collateral, and levied like other personal property.

Creating an NFT is a great way to earn money for doing what you love. It’s one of the best ways to generate active income through primary sales and passive income through secondary sales. And while it’s an appealing prospect for many creators, there comes the point when they realize that NFTs will not market themselves.

Why create web stories

Is it possible to use web stories to promote NFTs? Let’s explore the value of web stories and how they maximize market reach for NFT projects. Web stories are an opportunity to create engaging content that will work across multiple platforms (social media, web, tablet, smartphone). You can tell stories that haven’t been told before.

Web stories are designed to create immersive, full-screen experiences. They are distributed for free and can be used to market products, services, and even NFTs. Web stories help creators take ownership of their content and reduce the reliance on social media platforms for content distribution.

Creators and DAOs can create web stories to spread the word about NFTs and even encourage viewers to purchase them. The second reason is more important: you need video if you want attention from search engines and social media. Therefore, the best stories are designed to attract both visitors and are search engine friendly.

Digital creators are pushing the boundaries of what is possible with digital media. Thanks to NFTs and web stories, they can push creative and technology limits at the same time.

Video-first web stories are the future of NFT storytelling

The impact of video on the web can’t be underestimated. According to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words ( forrester.com). Over 500 million users utilize Instagram stories daily, and 86.6% of Instagram’s users post stories every day ( 99firms.com). People who watch videos stay on sites longer than people who don’t. More importantly, Google favors video content in search results with a ranking boost.

Video is ubiquitous on the internet. Video has emerged as one of the most popular ways for creatives and DAOs to market their work. Yet, few content platforms have tools to help creators monetize their creativity through videos. My goal is to help creators use videos to reach new audiences and expand their fan base; while facilitating collaboration between creators and marketing teams.

Video is the future of storytelling on any platform. With video becoming increasingly important, it’s essential to think about how to create video-based content for various social media platforms. While most platforms monetize stories with advertisements (ads), it’s possible to monetize stories with non-fungible tokens (NFTs). You can generate a lot of traffic with web stories. Still, for most creators and DAOs, the technical hurdle of creating web stories prevents action.

At 🪶 Phoenix Team, we can help! 🪶 Phoenix is a performance-based NFT marketing team that believes creators and DAOs should get paid for creating content. Let us take care of your marketing, so you don’t have to.

Originally published at phoenixteam.io on September 22, 2021.