You’re familiar with Instagram, Snapchat stories, but have you heard of YouTube stories? Instagram and Snapchat are very different from YouTube and require a very different approach.

This article emphasizes on how to use YouTube stories for boosting your Social Media presence as a brand.

What are YouTube Stories?

YouTube stories first appeared in early 2018 under YouTube Reels, and are similar to the stories on Instagram, Snapchat and other social media platforms.

The feature can be used only by YouTube Channels with a subscriber base of 10,000 subscribers and above. Creators and channel owners can now use Stories to stay in touch with their subscribers by delivering short video content and images to their audience throughout the day.

How long do YouTube Stories last?

YouTube stories are viewable for 7 days unlike the story formats that are adapted by other social media platforms. On other social media platforms, stories are viewable for a time span of 24-hours only.

How viewers can watch YouTube stories?

YouTube stories can be viewed only on the YouTube play app on mobile devices. You can watch the stories through your Subscriptions feed or the channel’s story tab. Also, if you accidentally watch YouTube stories from a channel you haven’t subscribed, there’s an option to directly subscribe to that channel from the story tab of that channel.

How you can create YouTube stories for your channel?

What you must keep in mind is that YouTube stories can be created through the YouTube play app on any mobile devices and not in the Creator Studio. If you are familiar with how Instagram, Snapchat stories work then you won’t have any issue using this new feature provided by YouTube. Like other platforms, while posting your story, you can add music, filters, links, text and stickers.

Performance Metrics

To see how many viewers or fans have viewed your story or commented on your story, just open the story and look at the bottom. Your story could consist of several pictures and video uploads so if you want to view the views or comments on the complete story, just go to the stories tab of your channel page.

YouTube Stories Engagement

You cannot upload high-quality content videos on your channel every day ,so to boost engagement when you cannot upload videos YouTube stories come in handy so the whole point of YouTube stories is engagement and therefore responding to comments on your YouTube story is important. To reply to a comment, just go to the story tab of your channel, open your story, click on the comment tab to open the complete thread and start responding!

YouTube Stories and Marketing Analogy

Now that you have the knowledge of how to upload a YouTube story, it’s important to put them to use.

1. Target New Markets: This is a collaborative process. You can ask some other creator (who’s content doesn’t clash with yours) to make 10- second videos talking about what you do and include the link of your channel or video in their YouTube story and in return you do the same for them. You both would benefit from this.
2. Warm leads: Talk about an issue that people interested in your area of work (here, digital marketing) face and give them solution in the form of a video that exists on your channel (Channel content and stories go hand in hand) or include a call-to-action in your comments section and more advisable to be more and more responsive in the comments section. This would generate a string of viewers who are readily available and get benefitted which in turn will give you a dedicated fan base.
3. Announcements: Your YouTube stories could play a vital part in creating a buzz for the upcoming endeavor for your brand. It could be a product launch, a service updation or a campaign that you’re undertaking. Before the new endeavor just break it on your YouTube stories by talking about it in small video snippets.
4. Community Relationships: When you begin to respond to comments on your YouTube stories you actually start to get an insight of your viewers’ minds and you begin to get enlightened about what they really are looking for. This in turn would create a good, healthy and sustainable community relationships.

Conclusion

In all, YouTube stories play a pivotal role and have gained much more traction since its inception on YouTube Reel.