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Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Facebook and Instagram Stories 

Facebook and Instagram Stories allow users to share ephemeral moments of their day. The format is incredibly popular: Stories attract over 500 million users every day. Stories appear in vertical mode, so they take over the entire mobile screen, and disappear after 24 hours. 

Stories are a maximum of 20 seconds long per frame on Facebook, and are just 15 seconds long on Instagram. Users can create multiple Stories in a day, which appear together in a slideshow format, creating a visual story. They are a great way of grabbing the attention of your audience on both platforms. Just like Facebook and Instagram videos, they must be fully optimized to be effective and impactful. 

Components of an impactful, optimized Story

Stories are a great way to engage with your audience without having to be as polished as your feed. But you must remember to tell a story. Use a storyboard to fully plan your Story before you even start on the design. Consider what your opening Story will be, what key points you want to get across in multiple Stories, and what your all-important CTA should be. 

Create Story-specific content and consider putting together a style guide detailing the fonts, filters, and GIF types, for example, that your company can use to keep your Story branded and consistent.

It’s important that your Story provides value. Stories can be used to solve a problem for your audience or to give people information they didn’t even know they needed. To earn meaningful clicks, or swipes up, think carefully about the job your brand can do for your audience and always show an authentic side to your brand. 

Native interactive features should be used to add elements to your content, including filters, hashtags, and geolocation tags. Similarly, interactive stickers like Polls, Questions, Countdowns, Quizzes, and the Emoji Slider will further involve your audience and improve engagement. 

Consider showcasing user-generated content by sharing customer and influencer images and videos that have featured your business. And include a CTA at the end to, for example, share a promotion code or encourage users to visit your website. 

Finally, include a link sticker to drive traffic back to your website or a specific URL. This feature is now available to everyone!

Case Study: The Economist and Instagram Stories

The Economist uses regular Instagram Stories to drive more traffic to its news articles on its website. The audience is drawn into each Story with eye-catching visuals and headlines. The Stories feature a link sticker which takes users directly to the article.

Five to seven Stories are handpicked each week to appear in the Weekly Reads Highlight, pinned to their profile. This is updated weekly to ensure the most up-to-date articles and news stories are featured.  

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Alison Battisby

Alison is a Social Media Consultant with Avocado Social, she is a Facebook and Instagram accredited social media expert and founded Avocado Social in 2014 having worked in the social media industry since 2008. Alison has worked with a wide range of brands including Estee Lauder, Tesco, and Pringles. Alison has traveled the world training companies including the BBC, Etsy, Canon, and Cambridge University Press. She offers social media strategy, training, and consultancy at Avocado Social across platforms including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and TikTok. 

Alison Battisby

ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads (Meta)
Alison Battisby Alison Battisby
Presenter

This module focuses on four of the social platforms in the Meta universe – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads – and how they can be leveraged by social media marketers to develop a successful social strategy. The module begins by identifying the value of using mass-appeal social channels in social campaigns. Then it explains how to manage your accounts on these platforms effectively, what content works best on each one, and how often you should post. You’ll learn how to use the key features on each platform to get the most from your social strategy. And you’ll also learn how to set up paid social campaigns on each channel. Finally, the module discusses the newest platform from Meta – Threads- and how the key features in the platform can be effectively leveraged by marketers.