A blog by Cindy Fleur, strategist at Boomerang Agency
The way in which people communicate with each other has rapidly changed. We’ve shifted from predominantly text-based to image-based, and from static to interactive and dynamic. The emergence of what we know now as “stories” – content that is shown for a limited amount of time and automatically deletes afterwards – was initially introduced to us by Snapchat in the early 2010’s. Since then, a lot has changed. In recent years, the stories feature has been adopted by the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. With the introduction of LinkedIn Stories, professional networking platform LinkedIn has followed suit. The launch of LinkedIn Stories offers brands the opportunity to re-examine current content output and, if appropriate, diversify the channel mix to further tailor content to the needs of sub-target groups. This article will show three ways in which LinkedIn Stories can help companies, both now and in the future.
1. Bringing company culture to life
Stories offer brands an opportunity to take a human-centric approach to communication. Take story takeovers as an example, where a colleague can share fun-facts about your company or give some insight into work processes via ‘making-of’ content. LinkedIn Stories can contribute to a more human and authentic insight into a company culture, and subsequently make it easier to attract new business and top talent.
2. Reimagining thought leadership
Trust is the cornerstone of business and at the end of the day, people want to do business with people and brands they trust. One of the most powerful ways to develop this trust is by using thought leadership to build credibility and expertise. People, however, do not always have the time or inclination to read an entire article. LinkedIn Stories offers a unique opportunity to experiment with thought leadership through short-content formats and provide value in a concise and fleeting way. There are various ways in which you can shape your content, for instance by sharing: industry trends, business insights and key outtakes of already existing long-form content. In that sense, Stories is more of an inspirational tool. It gets the conversation started.
3. Gaining audience insights
LinkedIn Stories are a direct line to your audience, so why not use it as an opportunity to acquire feedback, improve your business and build community? ‘What type of product or services do they like, what do they struggle with and what would they like to know more about?’ Start the conversation and learn more about your audience.
The future of LinkedIn Stories
In sum, LinkedIn Stories – although currently still in the testing phase* – is a feature that has the potential to move communication further away from brand-centric and closer to human-centric. It is still unknown in which way the story feature will develop itself, but there is still room for LinkedIn Stories to grow with regards to fostering a sense of community. Hopefully, functionalities that will further enable interactivity and community building like polls, emoji reactions and ‘ask-me something’-widgets will be added in the future. For now, don’t be afraid to experiment with Stories, try it out and see if it makes sense for you and your business!
Feel free to reach out if you would like to learn more about using LinkedIn Stories, or just want to connect for a digital coffee!
*LinkedIn Stories is not available for all brands / everybody yet, since it’s in a testing phase. Stay on the lookout for further roll-out if you are unable to use the feature at this time!
