Why Instagram expanded Stories into Explore

Instagram decided to highlight Stories and offer them an additional boost. What changes should we expect?

It was two months ago when Instagram decided to launch Stories, or else the best response to Snapchat’s Live Stories. Despite the obvious inspiration from Snapchat, Instagram’s Stories managed to become popular, gaining a loyal number of users.

According to Instagram, more than 100 million people use Stories every day and their impact on the platform leads to new content opportunities, both for users and brands. This brought a shift to Instagram’s perception of content, moving it beyond the users’ feed.

Instagram decided to expand Stories to the Explore section, in an attempt to promote them even more. This brings an additional section where you can discover ephemeral short stories, this time from users all over the world.

Ephemeral curation goes global

The increased use of curated content in every platform leads to further opportunities for publishers and brands to use it more creatively and thus, increase their usage of the platform for their marketing plans.

Moreover, as advertisers flock to Instagram, there will be additional opportunities for brands to highlight their ephemeral content, especially if it’s about the coverage of a popular event.

The rise of ephemeral content turned news coverage and advertising even more direct and authentic, while users have even bigger power to become broadcasters and tell their own stories.

User-generated content becomes even more important and it’s a pleasant challenge for marketers to include it in their strategies.

This makes curation more interesting, provided that a brand is ready to embrace the content that doesn’t last more than 24 hours.1

The power of personalisation

The success of the Explore section on Instagram lies on the personalised results for each user, which ensures that everyone finds them interesting enough to click on them.

This personalisation now also continues with Stories, creating a bigger section of personalised curated content that aims to increase the users’ loyalty towards the platform.

 

It can also lead to a new opportunity for brands to reach their target audience with new types of content, provided that it’s still appealing and relevant for them.

How Stories change Instagram

Instagram has found a new way to promote storytelling, this time lasting less than a day, but still having an equal (or possibly bigger) engagement.

Ephemeral content is trending and users can’t get enough of it, which means that brands should now understand how it works and why it becomes so popular on social media.

As the platform expands Stories, brands and publishers should be ready to embrace the change as soon as possible and find new ways to take advantage of this increasing need for ephemeral content.

  • How can every brand be part of the curation of Stories?
  • What makes each brand special to reach a new audience?
  • Will the future bring advertising to Stories?
  • Can a brand turn ephemeral content into successful branding?

As the questions keep increasing, it’s now time for brands to come up with creative answers to reach a wider audience.

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