How to Effectively Use Facebook Stories for Your Business?

Facebook Stories are designed to fill the entire phone screen and require images and videos with a resolution of at least 1080 x 1080 pixels. Ratios ranging from 1.91:1 to 9:16 are suitable.

The positioning of text and logos is equally critical. Make sure the graphics have about 14% (250 pixels) of room at the top and bottom. Nobody likes to find out late in the game that their compelling copy is hidden by a call-to-action or profile information.

Facebook stories are brief and sweet for a reason. They are made to keep the audience interested during the whole experience.

A Facebook Story has a video length of 20 seconds and a picture length of five seconds. When it comes to video advertising, Facebook will show Stories for no more than 15 seconds. If they go on for too long, they will be broken up into different Story cards. Facebook will automatically show 1, 2, or 3 cards. To continue watching the commercial, audiences must tap ‘’Keep Watching’’.

When making a Facebook post, you have the choice of selecting from a variety of content formats or uploading an existing photo or video from your gallery.

There are many different tools and formats that you can use to create these stories. These include:

• Gallery – allows you to share pictures and videos from your phone’s gallery.
• Boomerang – animates a flash of images.
• Text – for creating a text-based story.
• Layout – used to arrange various images in separate grids or collages.
• Superzoom – used for zooming in
• Poll – a tool for polling viewers on two choices.

You have two access points for those different story formats: the top row options and the blue camera icon in the bottom right corner. You can also take pictures or film images, boomerangs, or Facebook live videos by clicking the blue camera button.

Now it is time to have some fun with your Facebook story by personalizing it. Facebook has a range of innovative resources to help you make your stories stand out. So, you can experiment with these choices before completing your story. After you have picked an image file or taken a new shot or video, look in the right-hand column for these cool add-ons.

• Stickers bring up a library of cool animated and static stickers that you can use in your stories. You can use music and GIFs in your story, share an event, polls, ask questions, tag people and items, and share your location, among other things.
• Closed captioning or additional information can be applied to the story using text. There are several fonts, colors, patterns, and backgrounds to choose from when customizing the text.
• For a more whimsical touch, draw or apply effects to your stories. As an overlay, draw freehand or use abstract effects.

To make the story more interesting, use animated effects like bounce, slide, and zoom in and out.

The opportunity to share links distinguishes Facebook stories on profiles from Pages. There are many links and buttons that are important for promotions for those using Facebook stories for businesses.

You can select from a few call-to-action buttons and configure them for audiences to communicate with by clicking the link icon on the right sidebar. Encourage people to book right now, call, get directions, shop, and do a variety of other things.

When you are satisfied, choose “Share Now.” That is it – you’ve finished creating and sharing your Facebook post.

Since stories are available 24 hours a day, the "urgency effect" is what makes them so famous. Take advantage of this to produce time-sensitive content that will pique your interest and create a sense of urgency.

Consider using a code to promote a 24-hour sale, sharing early bird coupons, encouraging people to sign up for an event, and more.

Since stories can attract a wide audience, use immersive resources including polling and voting stickers to encourage participation.

Ask questions to the audience or have prompts for them to respond to. If you are making a story for a Facebook Page, do not forget to include personalized links and buttons to increase interaction.

Share related, third-party content that your audience would want to diversify your Facebook content strategy. By pressing the "Share" button next to a post, you can add it to your stories.

Keep a close eye on the performance of your Facebook stories posts. What seems to be gaining further traction? What kinds of posts do people like to interact with the most? Is there a point at which they stop responding if you share so many stories? Why post times seem to be the most popular?

Pay attention to all of this information to fine-tune and polish your Facebook story plan for greater effect.

The most common use of Facebook Stories is to post more of your life as an entrepreneur or small business owner. Allowing people a glimpse into your daily routine will make them feel unique, particularly if you make it clear that you don't share this information elsewhere. Take your crowd with you when you attend or speak at events, or show them what your team does daily to demonstrate their creativity and friendliness.

You can use Facebook Stories to post short how-toss and tips in the form of a set of images with text overlay and/or videos. These are effective at adding value to the audience and putting you as an authority. You could also build a weekly schedule of various themes for each day. To increase participation, invite people to respond and tell you which tips they find most useful.

Using Facebook stories to feature your consumers and their photos or videos with their permission may be a great way to make them feel appreciated, inspire interaction, and indirectly provide social evidence of your products or services.

You may get feedback on proposals for a new product or service, or learn how your audience feels about your business. Perhaps you would like to learn more about them and their way of life. You can see strong interaction if you ask questions that require short one- or two-word responses. The idea that responses are private can inspire people to speak up more than in more accessible formats like Facebook groups.

The majority of people use their phones in a vertical position. While shooting horizontally, landscape-style is appealing but these photographs would not be as quick and easy to see.

People keep their phones vertically 90 % of the time, according to surveys. Let your videos reflect how your clients keep their phones and meet them where they are.

Creating a content calendar is one way to make Facebook Stories a priority for your business. While creating Stories on the fly can be useful for keeping readers up to date on live events, these reports are more likely to contain errors.

You will have more time to brainstorm, develop, and polish content that shines if you plan ahead. It also keeps you responsible in terms of writing consistently.

Only keep in mind that the content should not be rigid. When everybody on the internet is talking about a disaster in the news, focusing on self-promotion may feel a bit out of touch. Do not be afraid to alter your strategy if necessary.

Not everybody has a keen sense of aesthetics. Not to worry; templates will help you articulate the brand's vibe, whether it is minimalistic, futuristic, or a total jumble of concepts.

You can also create advertisements using Facebook's own Story templates, which can be found on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. After making an account in Ads Manager, simply choose a template and customize it as needed.

The future is accessible. You want to make sure the material appeals to a wide range of viewers. Similarly, many people watch Stories in silent mode on their phones. If you do not have captions, they may skip your message.

Facebook currently does not provide auto-generated captions for Stories. If you do not want to put it in manually, there are video editing applications like Clipomatic or Apple Clips that will sync text with your speech.

Stories will do a lot more for the company than just paint a pretty picture. You will encourage readers to visit your blog, buy a product, call you, and more by including a call-to-action (CTA) in your posts.

If you want to monitor brand exposure, scope, or video views, go to Ads Manager and choose to add a website URL, then choose your CTA from the dropdown menu. This will appear at the end of the Story.

"Shop Now," "Contact Us," "Subscribe," "Sign Up," and other call-to-actions are available on Facebook Stories. CTAs are present on all Facebook company Pages, regardless of their number of followers.

It is time to accept the power of Facebook stories for companies that have been trying to achieve organic exposure and connect their audiences on Facebook. This guide will teach you the fundamentals and best practices for using the functionality, and now it is up to you to put in the effort.

This is it for today. I hope you liked reading this blog and that you will be using the tips and tricks explained in the blog to take advantage of Facebook's story feature by producing specialized, interactive content that supports you and your business. There are many social media marketing agencies and social media management service providers that can manage your social media professionally. It allows you to focus on your business without worrying about Social Media. Thank you and Goodbye.