Google’s Web Stories for WordPress is out of beta and launched to the greater world.
What are Web Stories you ask?
Ultimately, Web Stories, through the WordPress plugin, gives you a WYSIWYG interface that lets you create full-screen content similar to what you would find on Snapchat and Instagram.
Bend it, shape it, flex it, tap it, load it up with stock photos and videos, change your colours, styles and the rest to create the ideal piece of content.
Web Stories are like bite-size teasers for longer form content, the carrot that gets more readers in the door to your blog. They’re already active in Google Discover and content that’s in web story form can also be found at the top of Google Search.
To sweeten the deal for creators, Google have partnered with Unsplash to provide high quality free-to-use photos, and Coverr for video.
Per Google, “The drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to get started in seconds. And for those who want to take full control of their stories, the plugin includes comprehensive visual editing capabilities, a re-envisioned visual media gallery, image masking, gradient editing, saved colors & styles and many more design features.”
7 Benefits of using Web Stories
The Web Stories format puts features and capabilities at your fingertips to engage with your audience via the power of storytelling on the open web. Specifically, you can (via)
- Create beautiful and engaging content easily: Web Stories make the production of stories as easy as possible from a technical perspective.
- Enjoy creative flexibility for editorial freedom and branding: The Web Stories format comes with preset but flexible layout templates, standardized UI controls, and components for sharing and adding follow-on content.
- Share and link your stories on the open web: Web Stories are part of the open web and can be shared and embedded across sites and apps without being confined to a single ecosystem.
- Track and measure your stories: Supports analytics and bookend capabilities for viral sharing and monetization.
- Capture the attention of your readers by offering fast loading times to your stories: Web Stories are lightning fast so that your audience stays engaged and entertained.
- Engage with your readers via immersive storytelling: Web Stories are a new and modern way to reach existing readers.
- Monetize effectively the beautiful and engaging stories you create: Web Stories enable monetization capability for publishers using affiliate links. For advertisers, Stories is a way to reach a unique audience within a new storytelling experience.
Read more here on the developers guide or grab the WordPress plugin here.
In some circles, it’s being referred to as another Google Plus. In others, there’s more surprise that stories – given how we’re digesting things on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and LinkedIn (as of this week) – haven’t been more commonplace.
I’ll be rolling some out on the food front as a trial across October, but if you’re making your own, drop a link below as I’d be curious to see how you get on.
