What are Google Web Stories and why should influencer marketers use them?

[Dimaeiya333]

Stories offer a unique opportunity for creators to create highly interactive content. And the statistics make it clear that their popularity shows no signs of waning. Perhaps that’s why Google has decided to get into the game by introducing Google Web Stories.


Key points
Google Web Stories are similar to other story content: they allow audiences to access content made up of video, images and text, in a way that tells a story.
Google Web Stories can appear as standalone content or be embedded into existing web pages.
Google offers drag-and-drop plug-in tools that include templates and other customizable elements to help creators build their Google Web Stories in “less than five minutes.”
Last year, Google revealed that there are now 20 million web stories online, with 100,000 new stories added every day. On average, a person views 1.7 Google web stories for every story they open.

The popularity of the story format for social media is stronger than ever. Check out Instagram, the company that developed the most famous proponent of the format, which has racked up some pretty impressive stats :

Over 500 million daily active users of Instagram stories
86.6% of Instagram users post stories
70% of users view stories daily
But the appeal of stories isn’t limited to social media alone. Research conducted by cmo email lists Forrester Consulting in 2019 found that when it comes to editorial content, 64% prefer tappable mobile web stories that feature interactive visuals over scrolling through the article version of the same content . That number rises to 75% when the content is related to the user’s preferred topic.

What are Google Web Stories?
Google Web Stories are an improvement on the format formally known as AMP Stories. Interactive and video-based, they allow creators to share information about a topic in a dynamic way.

They can also include images, text, animations, AdWords, links and calls to action , and audiences can swipe through frames just like they would in an Instagram Story.

Google considers them to be content that can be created in five minutes, so creating them is as easy for users as it is with Instagram stories.

They are also designed to be easily discoverable by the public . Users can add them as individual pages on their website, so they are indexed and appear in relevant search results, or they can be embedded into existing pages , like an embedded YouTube video.