Stories are the Future of Facebook Advertising

Photo Credit: Techjaja

  By LeVi Pham

A Brief History

Snapchat was the pioneer of the Stories format back in 2013. In 2016, Facebook released its Stories clone for Messenger and Instagram, which became a huge success with more than 150 million users just 14 months after launching. Facebook Stories was officially launched in 2017. According to Techcrunch, Stories now have 500 million daily users across Facebook and Messenger, versus just 190 million for Snapchat. In April, COO Sheryl Sandberg announced that 3 million advertisers have bought Story ads across Facebook’s family of apps, which also include WhatsApp and Instagram.

Facebook has begun to prioritize news feed content from users’ friends and family over brands and businesses. As the organic reach of Facebook posts for businesses continue to decrease, the growing popularity of Facebook Stories offers a great opportunity to build brand awareness, engage, and strengthen their relationship with their audience.

4 Reasons Why User-Generated Content (UGC) Should Be Part of Your Marketing Strategy

By: Heather Karbi

“User-generated content” (UGC) is a term used for any content produced by consumers or users of a platform or product. A brand may choose to start a UGC marketing campaign because it essentially allows the public to promote for them, free of charge. Most of us surround ourselves with user-generated content all day long, scrolling through other social media users’ status updates, pictures, thoughts, and opinions about anything and everything. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that consumers enjoy user-generated content -- even when it is used by advertisers, and ultimately for financial gain.

Why is UGC so successful, and why is it a good approach for your next marketing campaign?
Let’s examine:

Consumers trust other consumers more than advertisers


Studies have shown that consumers are attracted to other consumers’ opinions more than they are to typical advertisement. UGC, however, is different from a typical, sales-pitch-type advertisement. Even though it has the same appeal that word-of-mouth does; getting someone else’s raving opinion about a brand entices us more than messaging from the advertiser themselves. Why? Because we know that advertisers have their own biased interests and this makes it harder to trust their opinion. An advertiser likely would never be brutally honest in criticizing their own brand, however, a random consumer might.

Thus, when a random consumer decides to create their own content for a brand, it’s not only intriguing and atypical, but it’s also more trustworthy. In fact, the future of digital marketing will only become more reliant on UGC, as studies reveal that millenials trust UGC marketing 50% more than standard advertisement. Moreover, peers’ social media posts influence nearly 70% of millennials to buy new products. We trust our peers to give us the most honest opinions on a brand, which means that marketers should adjust their strategy with this in mind. UGC campaigns spotlight the consumer’s voice rather than the advertiser’s, and are proven to be much more influential because of this.

Related Article: How to Run a Successful UGC Marketing Campaign

6 Ways to Boost Your SEO Score with Image Optimization

Search Engine Optimization - Improve your ranking today

By: Mayda Alkhaldi

Understanding how to best rank your site on search engines requires more than just learning about optimizing search terms. It is also about the images you post on your site. Did you know that SEO image optimization can really help boost your SEO score? Continue reading to learn more about this valuable digital marketing technique.