How stories work
A story is a full-screen vertical post that sits in a tray at the top of the app and disappears after a day, unless you pin it to a profile highlight. Viewers tap through them in sequence, which makes the format feel like a running commentary rather than a publication. Where the feed shows posts to people the platform thinks will respond, stories are shown mainly to people who already follow you, ordered by how much they interact with your account.
The stickers are the part most businesses underuse: polls, question boxes, quizzes, countdowns and a link sticker where the account has one. They turn a broadcast into a conversation, and every tap is recorded. The reporting is different from the feed too — instead of likes you get views, taps forward, taps back, exits, replies and sticker interactions. A tap back is a compliment. An exit is a verdict.
Why stories matter
They are the dependable way to stay in front of people who already know you. A follower who rarely sees your feed posts will often still open the tray, which makes stories the natural home for the reminders, offers and updates that keep an existing customer warm.
The format is also low-stakes by design. Because it disappears, it can be rough: a phone photo of an order going out, a quick clip of a job in progress, a note about opening hours. That lowers the cost of posting often, which is usually the real barrier for a small team. And the question box is the cheapest research available to a small business — ask what stops people buying and you will have real objections by the evening.
Where stories go wrong
The most common waste is a tray filled with feed reposts. If everything in stories is already on the profile, there is no reason to open it, and the audience learns to skip. Long unstructured chains do similar damage, because viewers exit and the platform notices.
Then there are the avoidable craft errors: text placed where the interface covers it, type too small to read on a phone, a link sticker with no reason to tap it. And the one that costs money — never saving anything to highlights, so a first-time visitor arrives at a profile with nothing to browse, and story replies sitting unanswered in the message inbox when they are the closest thing to a lead the format produces.
How to act on it
Pick a small number of recurring story types and repeat them: work in progress, a customer question answered, this week’s offer, proof of a job finished. Put the point in the first frame, keep each frame to one idea, and use polls and question boxes deliberately rather than as decoration. Answer every reply, since replies land in your inbox and are conversations, not metrics.
Save the useful ones into named highlights so they work as a permanent menu of what you do, and judge performance on exits, link taps and replies rather than views. Stories fit naturally beside short-form video and everyday community management; together they are most of what a working social media programme actually does day to day.