Since the past few years, there has been a growing trend of in-app stories on numerous social media mobile platforms that are used for various promotional or advertising purposes. What was initially believed to be just an addition in the overall user experience – has today transformed into something much bigger and profitable than that.
If we talk about the numbers, a report shows that Instagram stories are used by more than 500 million user accounts each day. Moreover, one-third of the most viewed Instagram stories are from business organizations. And according to experts, if the trend goes on like this, within a short time period, Instagram stories content sharing will surpass content sharing via the Instagram feed. Keeping this into consideration, let us dig deep into the world of in-app stories and how they can impact your app.
Here are some of the renowned mobile apps that give you the option to put up stories:
It is imperative to note that any in-app additional feature or modification in the structural architecture of an app is never an easy task to execute. The stories that you see on your social media app, is a product of hundreds and thousands of human resource hours during the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) that includes requirement gathering, design, coding, testing, deployment and maintenance.
Developing and launching an in-app story to your existing or an upcoming mobile app can slow down your entire project and can cost you a lot of unwanted overheads.
We’ve decided to flip-the-switch on this common development barrier and bring in-app stories to your mobile app, in under 1 hour, with a simple and light SDK integration. But first, what are stories!?
An in-app story is a short storytelling element of your app. It is a short-form content that promotes or advertises your product or service to your app users, within the app. This is not user-generated content, this is your app’s content showed to your users in your app. But this doesn’t mean that influencers can’t get involved (more on influencer collaboration later)! With Storyly, you can communicate with your app users with the following features added to your in-app stories:
These stories are viewed by the user of the app based on certain parameters and rules. This includes target audience settings in terms of geographical location (area, city, country, etc.), demographic factors (age, gender, etc.), interests or hobbies, educational background, etc. When a user views an in-app story, they can click on any clickable link within the app that could redirect within the app (deeplinks), for example, to your shopping cart, product page or event page.
Essentially, think of in-app stories as your way to communicate with your users in a familiar, yet fresh way. Through short-form content that is both informative, yet quick and engaging.
In order to take the hassle away from you for your in-app story needs, Storyly brings the story format to your mobile apps in a unique and stylish way. Storyly is a lightweight SDK (Software Development Kit) that allows you to create, integrate or import stories.
Using the stories’ bite-sized structure and mechanism, you can import stories from social media accounts like Instagram, and display them live on your existing mobile app to your users.
Additionally, you can create customized stories that are entirely based on your users’ feed. You can also portray the features and benefits of your products or services to your targeted users. By labelling specific story groups, you can target a particular segment or group of users and only deliver your stories to them instead of the rest of the users that might not be your target customers.
Storyly is the only third-party mobile app that allows you this level of story integration with your app. It has the ability to integrate with recommended engines. Also, you, as an app owner or developer can monitor and assess the performance of your in-app stories via the Storyly dashboard. You can check out our step-by-step guide on how to integrate our Storyly SDK with your mobile app, to get started on delivering in-app stories to your users! Learn how to integrate with:
It is time for a humble brag! We’re going to be taking you through some of our favorite product features and how they can really make your app sing! Starting with two-way communication, enhanced by in-app stories!
Your users don’t just want you to talk-at them, they want to put in their two-cents as well! We have seen the rise of two-way communication marked by apps such as Twitter. The image above is using an ’emoji reaction bar’ to be able to have a dialogue, or two-way communication with their users via app stories. The potential benefits of this is increased loyalty, positive brand recognition, and of course, invaluable user feedback and information.
Instead of showing an ad or a story to all the users or followers of your app, you can select targeted audiences according to their demographics, geographical location and other relevant factors, which are predetermined in your CRM. In this example, the travel app has targeted users based on location, and is giving personalised travel recommendations.
Ahhhh, it looks like Positano in Spiaggia awaits your users near Italy’s Amalfi Coast 😍 😍 😍
App stories are viewed by your existing or potential users who give value to your brand, product or service in particular. If they don’t, it’s pretty easy to mute a story or unfollow an account altogether across any platform. So it is always a good idea to add a bit of personalization in order to convey your message or your product’s benefits to your target audience more effectively. You can also create a personalized feeling through 2-way communication via interactive stories.
The example of the fitness app above is providing their app users with personalized workout plans and recommendations! Pilates anyone?
For those who are addicted to their social media or even any other type of apps, they are the ones who do the heavy-lifting in terms of user engagement. If your brand name is popping up in their 24-hour story time period at least once a day, there is a higher chance of them remembering your product the next time they visit your online store, physical store or retail outlet.
The above image is an example of how a potential tarot and astrology app can differentiate itself among competitors by positioning itself as a premium lifestyle app, through the use of sleek in-app stories.
We love Instagram, and certainly you should continue your trending Instagram account! We think, why stop at Instagram, why not bring those engaging, modern story formats to your own app? It is clear that users love communicating in this style, it makes sense to continue this new communication format with your users in your app. We make this even easier with our Instagram social media import! With a click of a button, you can directly import and start showing your Instagram stories LIVE on your app!
We’re glad you noticed! We think stories are pretty as well, and they’re certainly vertical! However, they’re so much more! Check out some of our favourite Storyly features:
This is not an exam, you’re simply engaging with your users in a communication-loop style.
Why write into words, what can be expressed through emoji? Said the Gen-zer! 🦄 🦄🦄 With our emoji reactions, you can communicate with your users through our emoji slider and emoji reaction bar (below).
What is the purpose of all of these stories? Usually you’ll want to direct your users to a particular page, action or event. To facilitate this, Storyly’s stories can direct users with deeplinks, buttons/CTAs and swipe-up options (below).
Here is something you probably never imagined, a news app with a direct social media import of journalist’s stories. As consumer appetite has moved away from one-to-many communication towards a many-to-many model, you can leverage numerous voices all within your app via stories.
We’ve got some exciting feature’s which we’re busy working on. To give you a sneak preview, here are some of the features on our upcoming product roadmap:
Ok, so this one is going to be big, and is probably the feature we are most pumped about! Live streaming shopping is pegged to be a game-changer for the eCommerce industry, and we want our customers to be able to get the most out of this up-and-coming technology.
The Storyly Creative Studio is where (you guessed it) you can create your in-app stories directly on our dashboard! Stay tuned for our latest updates and new features. 🤫
Hurry, only 08:39 hours left until the ColdPlay Exclusive Tour Tickets go on Sale – said Spotify! Add a sense of urgency and excitement to your app with a countdown timer. Remind your users of when new features will be live or a trending products will go on sale!
A technology and product enthusiast. Passionate about revolutionary technologies and products that can ignite behavior change. As CPO of Storyly, he contemplates mobile technologies with a focus on retention and engagement.
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