And it was a great start to the day when my wife Jalpa referred me to one of the video on Facebook Stories. After the launch of brand pages, this was one Facebook feature that I was instantly in love with and it was great to see some successful Facebook campaign on the website.
Wondering what is Facebook Stories?
According to Facebook,
Stories celebrates people using Facebook in extraordinary ways.
At Facebook Stories, users from the Facebook Community can submit their experience on how Facebook enabled them to achieve certain goals. These stories are then collated an published on the site as topic of the month.
How it is done?
When a user decides to submit a story, they are taken to the Facebook Stories app asking for certain permissions. Post that the user can submit the actual story in form of either video or image. With the description and place where it happened, the app also allows you to tag people on the story.
Verdict: Fairly easy to do
Pros
It’s great to see Facebook leveraging it users stories to gain traction with businesses and individuals alike. Instead of telling users how they can gain using Facebook using their own voice, they rely on user generated content. I particularly liked how they emphasized on the ‘social’ aspect of social media had got the users to spread the word.
Cons
For reasons unknown, I have not seen Facebook promoting this feature. Maybe I would not have heard about it if Jalpa had not subscribed to Sheryl Sandberg – the COO at Facebook. We have always seen people talk about ‘Likes’ or sharing on ‘Brand Pages’, though never on Stories. This is something that needs to be answered.
Opportunity
Yes, I see it as a big opportunity for brands and individual alike to utilize this feature and appear on Stories.
As Facebook spokesperson Tucker Bounds explains to ABC News:
The project started as a result of our seeing a number of stories coming into the company from different channels, including stories we would read about in the media. We wanted to create a place where we could celebrate great stories.
And it would be great for them to have their story go viral and leverage for business gains.
Your turn
Have you heard or utilized Facebook Stories yet? Now that you have heard it here, will it be part of your Facebook Strategy? Use the comments below and share your views.
