Life After The Facebook News Feed: Why Facebook Is Shifting To Stories
- Matthew K.
- Dec 15, 2022
- 5 min read
Traditionally Meta, Facebook's parent company has focused on image content on the Facebook news feed. This is your typical Facebook post that you see when scrolling through your news feed page.
Recently though Meta has begun a major shift to video content in the form of Instagram and Facebook stories.
In this post, we will cover 7 reasons why Meta is moving away from its traditional focus on the news feed and towards video content. Then we will dive into how you can take advantage of this change to grow your business.
Everything You Need To Know About Instagram And Facebook Stories
The Facebook and Instagram stories section is located at the top of the Facebook and Instagram news feed and is posted by your Facebook friends.
Stories can be created by both personal Facebook profiles or from Facebook business pages.
They are short, ephemeral videos you can post with text, images, and music.
Images are 5 seconds long, while video content can be up to 20 seconds long.
Stories stay up for 24 hours before they disappear.
What Is Newsfeed On Facebook
The Facebook news feed is a chronological list of stories, videos, and updates from your friends and the pages you follow. It’s what most people think of when they think about the Facebook social media platform.
Where To Find Facebook And Instagram Stories
There are three places you can find stories, Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. The stories that you create will appear on both the desktop version of the Facebook feed and on the Facebook Messenger and Facebook mobile app.
7 Reasons Why Facebook Is Moving Towards The Facebook Story
1) Money - Facebook makes money from ads. By having everything in the Facebook feed the inventory of ad placements they can offer advertisers is lower. By promoting Facebook and Instagram stories to Facebook users they can increase the inventory available for advertisers.
2) Easily Consumable Content – Facebook stories, are limited to 15 seconds or less. This makes it easier for users to consume content quickly without having to scroll through long-form articles and videos on the news feed.
3) Visually Appealing– Stories are more visually appealing than traditional text-based posts on the news feed. With stories and reels, users can include images, post a quick video update that shows a personal glimpse of their lives, and other visuals to capture attention.
4) Increased Engagement – Another reason why Facebook is shifting its focus to stories is that it sees the potential for more engagement than what traditional news feed content offers. Viewers spend 3x more time-consuming content on stories and reels than the traditional news feed.
5) Interactive - It’s also true that more people are using stories as it is a more interactive way to consume content. With stories and reels, viewers can engage with your brand, leave comments, ask questions and even participate in polls. This makes it easier for brands to engage with their audience.
6) Creative Tools - Moreover, Facebook Stories are deeply integrated with the platform’s other features. This includes features such as Instagram integration and a wider selection of camera effects – allowing users to easily share their experiences with their friends and family in an engaging way.
7) Target Your Local Area - Additionally, the ability to add geotags to stories means that they can be used for businesses to reach potential customers in their local area.
How To Take Advantage Of Facebook And Instagram Stories
Instagram stories work. Here are a few ways you can take advantage of stories to reach a wider audience and grow your business.
Create The Right Content For The Right Story Placement
When you create a story for your business, keep in mind the news feed it will show up in.
Will the story be showing up for your Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger friends?
The behaviors of users on each of these platforms are different and your content should be different. To get you started...
Facebook story - Informal content that is not as produced. Produced quickly to track engagement.
Instagram story- Visually appealing content that looks nice and is well-produced.
Messenger story - Business updates, promo offers, and opt-ins.
Create A Story With An Objective In Mind
What is the goal of the content you are creating?
Are you looking to create educational content?
Creating how-to videos?
Demoing your product?
Re-engaging with your existing users? Then seeking to use this post as ad content.
Organic posting of your stories can be a great way to discover content for your ads. To dive into this topic you can read our post on creating organic content before you launch your Facebook ads.
Don't create your stories without a goal figure out what that objective is and set up metrics to track success.
Create Content Faster By Recycling Content And Reach More People With Stories
As a small business owner if you don't have unlimited time and resources creating video content can seem exhausting.
Odds are your competitors have the same problem.
A way around this problem is to recycle existing content and out produce your competitors.
One way you can recycle your content is by changing the intro of your videos.
With this method, if you see low engagement you can remove the post and rearrange the content and repost.
This can save you time and resources as you may already have the content you need to go viral.
Next, if you are using music or a voiceover consider changing the language used or the music to get more engagement.
This has the same effect as changing the order of your content, as both Facebook and friends on Facebook will see this as new content.
Use Facebook And Instagram Creative Tools To Get Started
A core functionality of creating stories is that Facebook provides creative tools to help their users post their stories.
This means that you don't need to hire an army of employees to produce your content but can post on the fly.
If you have posted to your personal Facebook profile then this should look familiar to you.
As Facebook offers the same feature for business Facebook pages as personal profiles.
Below you can see me with my "best friend" Gordon Ramsay. I can select add stickers, text, music, effects, draw, and other users.
Start Creating Video Content With Stories Today
Ultimately, Facebook’s move towards stories is financial as well as engagement based.
Stories provide its user base with an engaging way to share its experiences while also creating opportunities for the company to generate additional revenue.
Whether or not Stories will be successful remains to be seen – but for small businesses, the opportunity exists to create content that Facebook wishes to push and thereby increase their reach.
If you would like to discuss how Facebook stories can help your business grow. Feel free to reach out and book a call.
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