Stories are becoming more and more popular across social media platforms and marketers obviously want to take advantage of it. But are stories more effective with or without sound? In an article called “Do You Really Need Sound in Your Instagram Stories?”, Pamela Bump discusses just this. The article states that Snapchat encourages creators to use audio in their stories, while Facebook does not. But what about Instagram stories?
Bump asked more than 350 consumers the question “How often do you watch Instagram stories with the sound on?”. The graph below shows the results she got.
What does this mean to marketers? Bump says that depending on the content of your story, you do not need to worry too much about whether your story needs sound or not. If you need it to make a better story, go ahead. If you content is more photo/interactive stickers/or text-heavy it is probably engaging enough as it is. A good advice Bump gives is to include either a “sound on” disclaimer or put subtitles in the video if your content requires sound to be understood properly.
Essentially, Bump states “if you want to save money, time, and effort, you can drop sound altogether”. However, she emphasizes how important it is to make sure that your visual content is both appealing and informative so your consumer easily can understand and engage with your story. Bump continues to deep dive into three brands she believes does silent Instagram stories succesfully: Starbucks, Harvard Business Publishing, and HubSpot. If you are interested in learning more about these brands’ Instagram stories and why they are so successful, you can read the full article here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/instagram-story-sound-preferences.
Personally, I often tend to watch stories without sound, at least when I am in public. If I am, for example, commuting to work and forgot my headphones, I would not watch stories with sound on and risk disturbing the people in my surroundings. Especially for advertisements, I am very rarely listening to a whole story if it has audio. I am more likely to engage in a carousel ad with easily understood texts combined with interactive stickers. There are so many ways to make your marketing engaging these days, especially on Instagram. I agree with Bump that focusing on making your visual content engaging and informative without sound could be more effective, cheaper, and also less time consuming. A lot of positives!
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