Adodo Consultancy Services Limited

Facebook Stories hasn't yet become an essential element of the on-platform experience, though usage of the option is growing. Sure, Stories are growing faster on Facebook's other properties (Instagram and WhatsApp), but the company still sees Stories, in general, as the future of social interaction, and one which will eventually usurp the News Feed as the main social sharing option. 

And Facebook's keen to work with that trend - whether it's an actual trend or they have to make it one.

Along that line, Facebook has now released a new set of CTA stickers for Pages, which will enable businesses to make more effective use of the option via direct response tools. 

Spotted by user Ahmed Ghanem (and shared by social media expert Matt Navarra) the new buttons mirror the CTA options available in the main header of business Pages. As you can see here, you can now prompt Stories viewers to 'Shop Now', 'Get Directions' or 'Book' directly from the Stories feed.

The option will no doubt be of interest to those businesses considering how they can utilize Stories within their digital marketing process - and whether Facebook Stories is worth the effort. Is it worth the effort? That's hard to say - definitely, if the same option were released on Instagram it would be of more interest, but again, Facebook Stories usage is growing, maybe not at a comparable rate to others, but it is growing all the same.

Back in September, Facebook reported that, combined, Facebook and Messenger Stories (formerly 'Messenger Day') now see 300 million daily active users. That's not so bad - especially when you consider that Instagram Stories, which has been a big success, sees only 100 million more daily actives (400m).

The problem is that Facebook's main app has much broader scale (2.27b MAU), and as such, it's seeing far slower take-up of the option.

Consider it from this perspective - Facebook and Messenger combined now have more than 3.5 billion users, yet only 300 million of them are bothering to check their Stories each day. That's despite its prominent, top of screen placement - in fact, there's not much more Facebook can do to make Stories more present in the app. And yet, fewer than 10% of users checking them out at all. Not a great endorsement of the option.

For comparison, Snapchat has previously reported that 25% of its daily active users post to their Story every day, while on Instagram, 40% of its users engage with Stories daily. Facebook Stories is basically seeing a lot less attention, despite being in a much bigger app.

That's not to say you should ignore Facebook Stories - 300 million DAU is still significant. But it's still unclear as to how relevant the Stories option will be for Facebook users, and whether it will, as Facebook has predicted, become the dominant sharing option in its main app.

But Facebook clearly wants it to become so, and that might actually make it a great option to consider for brands. If Facebook continues to push Stories usage, through in-feed promos and other awareness efforts, that could help boost exposure for your brand Stories content, with less competition currently in the space. And with these new CTA buttons, along with links in Stories (still in testing), the benefits for business promotion may be significant.

It remains to be seen how popular Facebook Stories will become - but even right now, it's a relevant consideration for business promotion.