Social Media Stories are Booming: Try These Best Practices

If you want your social media presence to be effective, it needs to be flawless from start to finish. Surprisingly, many brands fail to understand the way different platforms present various types of media. Story dimensions often differ from the usual format you’d use on a given platform. 

At the very minimum, you should understand each platform’s story size, length and file size limitations. Otherwise, your stories will look distorted. Videos might cut off at awkward times, and what looked great on your laptop screen could be illegible on your smartphone. 

When you work with a professional production company, you can rest assured that your creative partner will know each platform’s parameters. However, if you’re going it alone, you’ll need to get familiar with these important details. It might take extra time to reformat content for each individual platform, but the payoff is worth it.

These days, it is all too easy to mindlessly binge-watch a screen. That goes for social media scrolling, too. As a brand, your goal is to break through that passivity to engage potential customers. 

Making your social media stories interactive is the easiest way to get their attention. Platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook offer a number of different interactive features to engage customers. Quizzes, polls and Q&A boxes are a great way to pique their interest. 

There are endless ways to utilize these features. Consider having a brand spokesperson solicit questions, then answer the best ones in a professional video. Use polls to gather information about your followers and their preferences, like “Which 2022 planner style is perfect for your #goals?” You can even let users vote on what kind of content they’d like to see next. The bottom line is, if you make your audience feel like their input is valuable, they’ll be more likely to trust your brand later.

Finally, it’s important to ensure your videos are high quality—even if they’re only 10 seconds long. Your social media stories reflect upon your brand every bit as much as your print ads and TV spots do. Don’t give customers the impression that you cut corners on quality, or they’ll associate that with your products and services.

Few brands realize how much work social media stories are until they try to create one. That’s where the team at Spin Creative comes in. Say hello today, and we can discuss the best way to produce high-quality, professional social media videos that get the engagement you deserve.