# 4 Tips For Successful Stories

- Link: https://chatterblast.com/blog/4-tips-for-successful-stories/
- Published: 2017-08-16T17:36:52-04:00
- Author: chatterblastteam

Within the great wide world of social media, [the stories experiment has long since ended.](http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/08/instagram-stories-copied-snapchat-one-year-ago.html)

The intimate content format, introduced by **Snapchat **and—controversially, some
may say—popularized by **Instagram**, is here to stay, much to the joy of many and
dismay of those who fear change. (I suppose Facebook has adopted the feature as 
well, but we don’t talk about that around here.)

https://twitter.com/dgahk/status/849675979429740544

I love stories. It’s a bizarre, fun, and overall uniquely personalized method of
communication. I find that you can learn a lot about a person based on their own
social media feeds, but even moreso when they’re augmented by stories, either through
Instagram, Snapchat or another preferred platform. And for brands, the opportunities
for crafting creative content is are now much more plentiful.

However, from a content creation perspective, utilizing a stories function—for a
personal account, for a brand, or anywhere in between—comes with its own inherent
best practices. As major social platforms continue to add storytelling tools (think
stickers, lenses and more), there are bound to be some developed do’s and don’ts
for hitting that sweet spot in an effective and stimulating story.

## **Formatting is Key**

Successful brand design lies in consistency. This is doubly true when said design
carries through onto social media. Now, that applies to stories. An audience will
grow familiar with your story content when content deploys a consistent use of design
elements and storytelling features, including text, color scheme, layout and more.

See below for some strong examples of what I mean.

[[

**Whole Foods: **a consistent and fairly elegant, if busy, use of text, highlights
and doodles, all hitting a rhythm with a top-down perspective of its subjects. Nicely
done, Whole Foods.

[[

**Cheerios**: A text-based story, Cheerios’ stays fairly minimal with its design
elements, letting its messaging do a lot of the heavy lifting, and reinforcing the
idea that each story _segment_ is part of an overall piece of communication. Plus,
this is also a great example of introducing engagement into your storytelling.

## **Diversify Your Content**

With consistency in place, it’s just as important to create a diverse range of content
for your audience. That means we really cannot have a vacation story that consists
solely of selfies and Boomerangs in the same way that a clothing brand cannot publish
story content that consists solely of its new sweatshirt line. We need more.

Apparel brand [**Everlane**](http://everlane.com) understands this need. Through
Instagram Stories, Everlane not only hawks its products—kewl basics that kind of
feel near-futurist—but has a clear sense of a need for multiple creative campaigns.
Through this format, Everlane gives behind-the-scenes looks at funsies millennial
basics brand office life, a Random Act of Kindness social campaign, a Transparency
Tuesday campaign, employee spotlights, and more, and they use all of the storytelling
tools at their disposal.

[[

Through Stories, Everlane is offering more than one perspective into its core values
and mission—none of which has a whole lot to do with selling t-shirts, but again,
it’s a perspective that supplements and augments the overall experience of engaging
with Everlane on Instagram. A little different than a story full of socks.

## **Keep it Simple**

Stickers. Doodle tools. Geotags. Emojis. Social platforms continue to add more and
more features to augment the story format, but frankly, good storytelling is not“
a lot of storytelling”.

[**1213 Walnut**](https://www.instagram.com/1213walnut/), a brand-new Center City
apartment building, understands this by taking a small number of storytelling elements
and features and sticking to them without going overboard.

[[

_See what I mean? _

Otherwise, your overall content may begin to drown in ideas and messages, and an
over-reliance on such tools can begin to develop into a habit akin to using a crutch.

## **Don’t Show Us, Well, Nothing**

An important factoid to keep in mind when stories are photo and video-centric, sometime
you can’t rely solely on the features you’re applying to your storytelling. Sometimes
you need to let your imagery itself do the talking especially when paired with some
above tips (diversifying story content in order to develop a rhythm that does **
_not_ **lean heavily on text and stickers in each and every piece especially).

This goes for storytelling on personal accounts as well as through professional 
accounts. See CBM’s own Matthew Ray below, who just flexed his Instagram Story muscle
throughout a trip to Iceland.

[[

_Minimal editing and production. Maximum hot springs. _

Like all strong visual social media content, the image is key, first and foremost.
Extra features and widgets can’t save a low-quality or under-stimulating base image,
after all.

Got any Snapchat/Instagram story tips of your own? [We’re all ears.](http://twitter.com/chatterblast)