How will web stories transform your marketing?

Web Stories: Definition and History

What is a Web Story?

A Brief History

The web story format is relatively new to the digital world. It first appeared in 2018 under the name "AMP Story." At that time, Google made it an extension of their AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page) technology.

Despite sharing common technological foundations, web stories presented distinct characteristics from AMP technology from the very beginning.

The main difference is that a web story is a complete standalone page that exists independently and is distributed on your website. This might sound technical, but it changes absolutely everything.

Although initially pushed by Google, this technology is open-source—the code is available and usable by everyone without any Google intervention. Furthermore, numerous tools exist for creating your web stories.

What Does a Web Story Look Like?

Discover the Web Story

As you can see, a web story technically resembles what you'd find as stories on social media platforms. The standard format for a web story is mobile portrait orientation, but it's entirely possible to create a desktop version of a web story.

In a web story, you can include elements of various types:

• Text

• Images

• Videos

• GIFs

• Quizzes

• Links

It's therefore a complete web page that can contain any type of content and, while originally designed for mobile, can be perfectly adapted and consumed on desktop.

They typically consist of about a dozen pages and should be self-sufficient. They're not teasers for your other content—they should tell a complete story. However, this doesn't mean you should create 30-page web stories with walls of text. We'll revisit this later in the article.

Pretty cool, right?

Don't worry—we'll dive deeper into the details in the third part of this guide to help you create excellent web stories.

Web Stories: What Are the Advantages of This Format?

We'll primarily discuss the comparative advantages over traditional social media stories. It was indeed the success of Snapchat and Instagram stories that inspired Google.

This format is highly effective for content distribution—it's short, animated, visual, and adapted for mobile consumption (70% of web traffic in 2020).

Once we've outlined these common features, the differences emerge, and they're enormous:

Web Stories Don't Have a Limited Lifespan

Unlike social media stories, a web story doesn't disappear after a limited time. They live like any other page on your website.

Web Stories Belong to You

That's right—you're the full owner of your web story. You distribute the content you want, how you want it. Additionally, you can easily track their performance with tools like Google Analytics.

Web Stories Are Indexable

This is a significant advantage. Your social media posts have a very short lifespan and can only be found on that specific network. Web stories appear in search engines, making them discoverable anywhere on the web and playing a leading role in your SEO strategy.

Web Stories Can Contain Links

Most social media platforms penalize outbound link usage, preferring to keep users within their ecosystem (looking at you, LinkedIn 😔). With web stories, you can easily insert links to other content, other sites—whatever you want. Your story, your rules.

If you prefer video format, we recently hosted a live session with Amélie Favre, where we explained the advantages of web stories and how they can transform your content marketing approach.

Where Can I Find Web Stories?

This is one of the keys to understanding the impact this technology can have: Where can I find web stories?

It's a pertinent question, especially since they're still relatively rare in France at the moment.

A web story will appear:

On Your Website

This seems obvious, but it's important to remember that these aren't ephemeral content pieces. They live on your website and enrich its content.

On the SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Web stories appear directly on search result pages, like Google's, just like any other web page.

In Google Images

Web stories can also be indexed directly in Google Images, which is a significant advantage.

In Google Discover

In late 2020, Google announced the arrival of web stories in Google Discover, which is essentially Google Chrome's mobile news feed. They occupy a prominent position in the feed and in a dedicated carousel. This opens up massive traffic potential. It demonstrates Google's commitment to widely distributing this format.

On Your Social Media

Well yes, why not! You share your articles on these same social media platforms, so why not your web stories?

Web stories are hybrid content that's probably the format with the widest distribution potential on the internet. The last point about social media is particularly interesting. We've conducted numerous tests, and with minimal effort, a web story can serve as the foundation for numerous publications on social media platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Some believe you need to specialize in one channel at a time. This is often a necessity because our resources are limited, but with web stories, you can literally be everywhere, even with limited resources—you just need the right process. The advantage of not depending on a single channel is that we're no longer vulnerable to any algorithm change from that platform.

Who Uses the Web Story Format Today?

Isn't it a bit suspicious that we see so few in France? Well, unfortunately, not really—we can't say we're always the most reactive when it comes to web innovation. There are still companies without real content marketing strategies, and we're approaching 2022.

But in reality, web stories are already widely used by one particular sector: major media outlets. There's an ongoing battle between them on the internet, so they've naturally embraced this technology quickly. I'm thinking of CNN, BBC, Forbes, and Vice.

But their usage is spreading—fast, very fast—with notably Cdiscount, Marmiton, and Meltygroup, which announced in March 2021 the creation of over 1,000 web stories per month starting this year.

Make no mistake, this remains underutilized today, but that won't last, and that's where you have a card to play. Google has a firm intention to favor the distribution of this format, and competition is currently low. Personally, I see this as an opportunity.

If you want to explore and discover all the possibilities offered by web stories, don't hesitate to check out the dedicated web story format website.

How Web Stories Will Transform Your Marketing

Web Stories and SEO

Web stories function like complete pages, making them indexable content that will be referenced. Naturally, they'll improve organic search rankings.

But we can go much further. SEO is a complex subject that has evolved significantly, and today we often orient a good organic search strategy around a pillar content strategy.

This involves a very comprehensive corpus of pages and articles on high-volume subjects that are often competitive. These articles, to be well-positioned, must be high-quality and comprehensive, but they must also be surrounded by other, more specific articles on less competitive searches. This is what we call, broadly speaking, a semantic cluster.

This requires creating many articles—it's very time-consuming and sometimes somewhat complex to create highly detailed articles on more specific subjects. This is where web stories have a role to play.

Use web stories to significantly densify your semantic clusters. This will also allow you to create short formats that are easier to consume, reaching a broader audience.

Is this unclear? Let's take an example.

We have an article about organic search—the goal of this article is to offer a complete guide on the subject to help our future clients understand how it works.

It's a very broad and fairly complex subject, so the article is long and covers numerous concepts like technical SEO, content, authority, performance, etc.

We'll therefore create web stories specifically on each concept. Each web story links back to the global article to expand understanding of the subject, and the article links to each of the web stories.

Voilà—a complete sub-cluster that covers all types of content and will reach people who want very comprehensive content as well as those who prefer very concise, quick-to-consume content.

Does this appeal to you?

Wait until you see what's next.

Web Stories and Social Media

Well yes, when we talk about stories, we immediately think of social media. However, I've clearly specified that it's not the same thing. And I confirm—a web story isn't a story, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do anything on social media with your web stories.

Let's imagine together that flooding the web with your presence is a game:

1. ‍Level 1: You have a high-performing, clear website (yes, that's level 1). ‍
2. Level 2: You initiate a content strategy based on pillar articles to attract and convert your clients. ‍
3. Level 3: You create a social media communication plan to promote your content and attract other readers. ‍
4. Level 4: You create web stories to strengthen your main content and expand your reader base. ‍
5. Level 5: You kill two birds with one stone by adapting your web stories into social media posts. ‍
6. Level 99: You host webinars to explain to the entire world that you're geniuses. Because deep down, you've become digital marketing geniuses. XD

Between level 5 and level 99, there's nothing but consistency and exceeding your objectives.

How to use web stories on social media ?

Web stories consist of multiple pages. These pages can be exported as images in most web story editing tools. So when you create a web story, you can create:

• Classic sharing posts by sharing the web story as content across all social media platforms—it's content like any other. So you have a post topic for Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

But with just a bit more effort, thanks to export features, you have:

• A native LinkedIn carousel

• A native Instagram story

• A native Pinterest story

Sure, we can go further, and for some, this seems "logical" as a tactic. For others, it appears to be practically magic.

In reality, it's relatively simple in operation, but mastering the process from "I have an important blog article" to "I have an article, 5 web stories, 30 Pinterest pins, 10 LinkedIn posts, 30 tweets, and Instagram stories" isn't elementary at all.

However, the impact is massive—you're playing directly in the big leagues.

To help you, don't hesitate to check out our article and its communication plan template!

Creating Google Web Stories: The Complete Guide

Creating a Web Story in 4 Steps

Required Materials: Inspiration, elbow grease, and a web story editing tool.

Time Needed: 2 hours. This varies greatly—a good process allows you to go faster. Initially, it will certainly take longer.

Step 1: Find Your Topic

A web story must have something to tell. It's not a teaser, ad, or collection of completely disconnected pages. The ideal approach is to adapt your blog articles into web stories. In our case, we start with our main articles, which are often long, and create one web story per major section.

Step 2: Create a Script

Even if you're inspired by existing content, you'll need to rework it. A web story must be self-sufficient and, above all, implies a rhythm and format completely different from an article. Each page contains no more text than a tweet. Create a rhythmic script—one idea per page, expressed in minimal words!

Step 3: Illustrate the Web Story

Once your script is finished, it's time to illustrate it. Web stories are a highly visual format—video, photos, GIFs—you should use them to make it enjoyable to read. Videos, like text, should be short—15 seconds on average. Web stories remain a format well-suited to snack content—keep this in mind.

Step 4: Distribute Your Web Story

A web story is great, but it needs to be read. Like any page on your website, it should be accessible from your main pages, ideally from a dedicated page for your web stories accessible from your menu. Don't hesitate to widely distribute them on your social media too!

Best Practices for Creating Stories

To help you create your web stories, here are some best practices for making web stories that perform!

Number of Pages

You can create web stories with 2 pages or 200 pages. But the ideal length seems to be between 10 and 15 pages.

Number of Characters per Page

280 characters max—that's the length of a tweet. It's important to have text because, like a regular page, search engines will base indexing on this text.

A Web Story Isn't a Teaser

Your web story should provide value and be self-sufficient. It can certainly offer complementary content, but it shouldn't simply serve as an introduction to other content.

Alt Tags on Images

Like all images on your website, it's important to fill in the alternative tags for those you use in your web story. This is important for SEO and content accessibility.

Title Tags for Videos

There's no alt tag for videos, but there is a "title" that should also be completed for the same reasons.

Complete Metadata

Like all your pages, you need to complete schema.org data, OGP, Twitter cards, etc. It's technical, but most web story editing tools offer this functionality.

Your Web Stories Should Be Easily Accessible

Directly on your website, it's recommended to dedicate a specific page to them, ideally at your domain root and not on a subdomain. Therefore, prefer "www.mysupersite.com/story/my-story" over "story.mysupersite.com".

Use Videos

Videos work very well in web story format, particularly because they're more engaging than photos. Nevertheless, they should be short—think of them more as clips. 15 seconds is the maximum recommended duration.

Web Story Creation Tools

AMP Code

Web story technology is supported by Google and is based on the same type of code as the AMP format. All documentation is available on the dedicated site. You therefore have the possibility to develop your web story strategy while having total control over its implementation.

The reality is that the main users of web stories aren't developers—they're marketers, content managers, and traffic managers who instantly understood what this format could bring. Not having the necessary technical skills, you'll need something else, and fortunately, there's no shortage of choices.

The WordPress Plugin

WordPress, despite some flaws, remains by far the most used CMS in the world. Google recognized this and created a dedicated, free plugin for creating web stories from WordPress.

You can access it here.

Is it the best tool? Probably not. However, it's a simple, free tool to start your adventure with your first Google web story!

MakeStories

MakeStories is one of the most used tools for creating web stories. It's very comprehensive—you can do absolutely everything without using a single line of code. It's also a very competitive tool with a free offer and paid plans up to $70/month for the most advanced needs.

Among the features, you'll find:

• A hundred fully customizable templates and the ability to create your own web story templates

• Access to image, video, and GIF libraries to accelerate the creation process

• The ability to modify metadata, add attachments, CTAs (call-to-actions), animations, etc.

• Numerous ways to share your stories on social media or extract them as images for whatever purpose (native publication like a LinkedIn carousel, for example)

• The tool also has its own WordPress integration plugin to simplify integration into your WordPress site

A major plus—I've exchanged a lot with their team, which is very responsive and efficient.

To discover them: MakeStories

Join Stories

The only tool created by French people! Join Stories offers all the functionalities needed for creating web stories. Here too, we find:

• Templates that serve as the basis for all your stories. Unlike MakeStories, they're not fully customizable—the idea being to rely on their template to go much faster in creating your stories

• The ability to export a story to make it a native publication on social media

• Numerous integration widgets for your website. This is actually their main strength—offering easy integration, regardless of your CMS and without systematically resorting to a subdomain

Join Stories works with beautiful brands like CDiscount and Marmiton.

To discover them: Join Stories

Storifyme

Another excellent tool for creating web stories efficiently. We really appreciate its ergonomics, and it's the tool that offers the most extensive free plan. This can help you test at minimal cost.

Just like Join Stories and MakeStories, we find:

• Templates to facilitate story creation

• The ability to easily share them

• The ability to export them for reuse as native publications on social media

• Integration widgets

To discover them: Storifyme

Conclusion, the web story format is in its early stages, and we've seen the success and failure of numerous "story" formats in recent years on social media. This format presents unique qualities and there will be a real advantage for early adopters. With our team, we've tested and developed an extremely effective strategy to multiply the effectiveness of your communication and organic search through web stories.

If you want to discuss how to use them effectively and what the right strategy is to maximize their impact while limiting your investment, contact us!