In the marketing world, it can seem overwhelming to keep up with all of the latest trends. That’s where SOCi comes in! We’re here to cover industry news and share how you can incorporate it into your localized marketing strategy.

This week, we’ll dive into Facebook and Instagram Stories and how they can benefit your multi-location business. Both types of stories have been on the rise since their creation. Instagram Stories were created back in 2015 and now have 500 million daily active users. Facebook Stories were introduced a little later in 2017 and aren’t going away any time soon with a surprising  500 million active daily users – matching Instagram’s user base! 

With so many active users, it’s critical for multi-location marketers to leverage Stories. Next, we’ll dive deeper into both types of Stories, cover best practices, and review how to analyze performance.

The Numbers – Facebook and Instagram

As mentioned previously, Instagram and Facebook Stories currently have about the same number of daily active users. You may be asking yourself, how do you determine which platform your business should be posting Stories on? Looking at the consumer behavior of your target audiences on the two platforms will help you better understand where you should focus your marketing efforts. 

A look into Instagram’s numbers

• 18-34 years is the most active age group on the platform
• 63 percent of Instagram users log in at least once a day 
• Users will spend an average of 28 minutes a day on the platform

A look into Facebook’s numbers: 

• 25-34 years is the most active age group on the platform 
• 66 percent of Facebook users would be considered daily active users
• Users will spend an average of 58.5 minutes a day on the platform 

When diving a little deeper, 38 percent of Instagram users have said they have become more interested in a brand when looking at Stories. This is a great statistic for multi-location businesses to know. We’ll cover best practices next, but clearly Instagram Stories can add value to a brand. 

Facebook Stories are still relatively new so there are not as many statistics, but we do know that about 25 percent of Facebook users look at Facebook Stories. Knowing this, multi-location marketers should utilize Facebook Stories as another opportunity to reach their target audiences. 

Best Practices for Stories

Both Instagram and Facebook Stories are a great place for marketers to share in-the-moment content. Stories only last for 24 hours, so you can try different types of content to see what works best.

While Stories are important to incorporate into your marketing strategy, don’t forget about newsfeed content too.

• Newsfeed: Ideal for reach, sound is not used, content planned and curated, and it represents your brand
• Stories: Ideal for engagement, the sound is on, in-the-moment content, more casual place to check into your brand, and vertically oriented

Now that you know the difference between the two, how can you start to prepare Stories content for your multi-location business? 

• Test Stories by using some of your existing photos and video content and add text, stickers, change the filter, etc.  
• Start incorporating Stories as part of your content around key events at your properties
• Once comfortable, build a Stories strategy as part of your overall social media plan
• To increase your reach, test sponsored Stories and add the highlight feature on your profile

Now, let’s take a deeper look into the types of content to test in your multi-location business’s Stories: 

• Polls

• • Multi-location businesses could create a poll to see which product type users they prefer.
  • Create a poll asking your audience which event destination they would prefer. 

• Photos or videos from events – both pre-event and real-time

• • If you’re traveling to or hosting an event you can share photos leading up to and at the event. This gives users an inside look at your company. 

• Links to products or event pages

• • For Instagram, you must have more than 10,000 followers to add a link. If you are unable to add a link to your Instagram story, add the link in your bio and reference it in your story instead. 

• Q&A Stickers

• • Instagram is the only platform that has a Q&A feature. To use it select the Q&A sticker and add it to your story. You can customize the sticker to include a question you want your followers to answer or give your followers an opportunity to ask questions that you’ll answer. 

• Giveaways

• • These Stories would typically be more text-heavy. You could highlight steps a user must follow to be entered into the giveaway and announce the winner in a story. 

• User-generated content

• • If a consumer shares a post on Facebook or Instagram using your product or attending your event you can re-share the content in your Stories.

When creating Instagram or Facebook Stories, your multi-location business can also include different types of fonts, stickers, emojis, and music. Using these can help drive engagement. 

Analyzing Your Content 

Similar to organic content on Facebook and Instagram, you can track how your Stories perform on each channel. 

Metrics for Instagram Stories include the number of: 

• Impressions your story receive
• Link clicks
• New followers
• Profile visits 

Metrics for Facebook Stories include: 

• Number of people who have viewed your story 
• A thumbnail of what your story looked like when published 
• Number of times someone exited your story 

Note that metrics on Facebook Stories can only be viewed once you have turned on “Stories Insights” for your page. 

Analyzing your Stories content on Facebook and Instagram helps you understand how your content is performing. If the content is performing well, nice work! If the content isn’t performing as well as you’d like, you then have the insights to make adjustments and try something new. 

Tying Stories Into Localization 

Over the past year, one of the biggest trends we’ve seen across digital marketing is an increased focus in localization across top search and social platforms. In terms of marketing, localization is the process of optimizing your marketing efforts to help drive awareness, engagement, and ultimately sales around specific business locations. 

You may be asking yourself how you can tie localization into your Stories. While Stories increase your brand’s visibility in general, it can also help increase the amount of localized social content that is shared. 

Through Stories, you can share local content around your specific business locations. While you may not want to post on your main brand page about a monthly event that happens at a local business location, you could post it as a story. Localized content can activate a sense of community around your specific business location. 

Start testing Stories for your multi-location business today, and see for yourself how powerful they really are!

If you’re looking for more ways to improve your multi-location business’s marketing strategy, SOCi can help! SOCi allows you to manage your social content, ads, and reviews across 100s or 1,000s of locations in a centralized platform.