Should social media stories be used by B2B brands?

Customer experience and engagement is crucial when it comes to marketing, and storytelling is the best way to create that interaction with clients using social media platforms.

B2C companies use stories to engage with their customers, but not many B2B companies do and Stories create opportunities to market in a way that hasn’t been utilised by B2B brands in the past.

Social stories are used on social networks like Snap and Facebook, and are a series of videos and photos with text and filters that all work together to tell a story. Stories started in 2013 by snapchat, and then Instagram, Facebook and YouTube followed suite in the last four years.

B2C brands like sports and retail use stories to engage with their customers on a more personal level and is more intimate than simply posting on news feeds.

In a report called “Journalism, Media and Technology Trends” in 2019, the amount of Stories that are posted daily are:

• Instagram- 300million
• Facebook- 150 million
• Snap- 190 million

The benefits of Stories on social media is plain to see, and large companies like CNN, New York Time, Women’s Health Magazine and Washington Post among many other media brands have been using stories for a while.

In the past, Stories have been used by mainly B2C companies, but this unique marketing strategy should also be used by B2B companies.

There are hundreds of millions of people using Facebook, YouTube and more than a billion people use Instagram. Although most of these are filled with personal content, B2B brands can reach a very large audience and catch the attention of potential customers.

If B2B brands use Stories for marketing, then what kind of stories would work and should be created? There are many possibilities including live streaming conferences, sharing events, product launches and product tutorials. The list goes on.

It is important for your stories to be visually appealing and offer useful information. There are a variety of apps available online to help with the creative process, and there are a few guides that can be used to help create stories that are inviting to customers.

Besides social media sites that can be used to create and share stories, there is another web component framework called AMP Stories which was built by Google for the open web. Not only can you use it to build websites, you can use it to build stories and share or embed them on any app or site.

Social networks are the best way for B2B companies to meet their customers. Stories are much better than just using text-based posts or images, and can tell a story (hence the word “stories”), and when time is spent on the production of high-quality stories, it will be highly beneficial for B2B brands to use this marketing strategy.

Because there are no limitations to who can create them, Instagram stories are a good place to begin. Facebook and YouTube are also an excellent platform because millions of potential customers spend time there.