Five Things You Need to Know About Storify

You’ve been to an event before, be it a concert with friends, family outing to the park or an industry conference. Chances are, you’ve even looked to social media to find a recap of the event. But you’ve probably done so by feverishly searching hash tags and @usernames and then sorting through post after post to find the heart of the story. Well, there’s an app, nay – a platform – for that. We asked Storify co-founder Burt Herman what marketers should know about the platform.

"We're all drowning in media and struggling to find meaning in the noise,” Herman said. “Storify helps you make sense of it all and amplify the voices that matter by collecting media from around the web into stories."

Here are five (more) things you need to know about Storify:

	It’s not a fad. It’s a powerful, story (re-)telling tool. The Storify concept is simple: create a story around an event or topic by curating a collection of social media posts about that topic – by the people that matter to you (or your brand). Instead of turning to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (just to name a few) and pulling a post from here and a tweet from there, Storify lets you search all over the social space within one platform. Utilizing a user-friendly drag and drop interface, users can seamlessly weave together a thorough story about a weeklong event in minutes. And people are doing just that. In 2012, Storify users published more than 500,000 stories that were viewed more than 360 million times (The Next Web).
	Brands can play in the sandbox, too. Last week, Storify rolled out its first ever tool for marketers: Storify Business. The tool was clearly built with brand marketers and agencies in mind. For starters, the introduction of private stories, which can only be accessed via a secure link, could reinvent the way we report on events. Story embeds are also customizable in the tool for businesses, making it much easier to match the look of your Storify to the look of your brand or reporting template. (No more awkward screen shots in that PowerPoint deck!) And finally, newly improved SEO compatibility means your public stories will help brand news rise in search.
	And we’re only scratching the surface of brand potential. Sure, aiding in the reporting process and lifting company news on search engines are two huge reasons to believe in Storify – both now and in the future. But from a more creative perspective, possibilities for digital marketers are almost endless. On the heels of a major (physical) event, canvass your Facebook fans and Twitter followers for user-generated stories and award a prize to the best-told story – or make it the official brand re-telling of the event and share it throughout the social space, giving kudos to the amateur author. Support a product launch by seeding to influencers and track the results via Storify to see who creates the most content across various platforms – that might be someone to keep in mind for future spokesperson work. A little brainstorming might lead your marketing team to a more innovative use of the platform than you thought possible.
	It’s changing the face of breaking news. In December, Storify posted a Year in Review on its website. After a quick perusal of the top 10, it is clear that Storify users have a collective finger on the pulse of what’s trending around the country – and the world. From the U.S. presidential election and Superstorm Sandy to, for better or worse, Gangnam Style, all the stories that had social media users clicking ‘share’ are present on the list. Storify once again proved its breaking news value during the recent aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, as users turned to Storify to cut through the clutter and find the facts. And even more recently, after the stock market plunge that occurred following the hacking of the AP’s Twitter account.
	Traditional journalists are telling their stories here, too. For a journalist working in the digital era, attracting eyeballs to your work is only step one. The next step is turning those readers into sharers. In the social media space, sometimes one piece of content, often the first, benefits from the most virality and often weaves its way back into traditional media as a lesson on how to deliver a message quickly. Storify can help editors to tell not just part of, but the entire story, early on in the process. Take the Washington Post, for example. The publication has only created a little more than 100 stories but has already grown its follower count to more than 2,000 Storify users. And their stories run the gamut from tornado warnings to debates on office temperatures. It can only help marketers that journalists are turning to Storify more consistently. Media monitoring in the social media age can be a daunting undertaking, so a tool that sifts through the junk to tell a clear story could also be implemented as a qualitative piece of the traditional monitoring process. Check out the link in the sidebar for a Storify retelling of celebrity spotting at this year's Coachella Music Festival, courtesy of People magazine.

Hunter Public Relations has a wealth of experience in creating and executing customized social and digital media programs—from Twitter parties and Facebook contests, to webcasts and mobile app development. Our knowledge of social and digital media is both wide and deep—every account staff member at Hunter PR serves on one of our agency’s 10 task forces, each dedicated to a particular facet of social and digital media:

Blogs
Community Managers
Emerging Technologies
Geo-Social
Microblogs
Mobile
Monitoring & Measurement
Online Video
SEO
Social Networks

ADDITIONAL INFO

Storify Retelling of Celebrity Spotting at Coachella

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