Let’s not kid ourselves. Telling a compelling story about your business or brand on social media is exceptionally difficult. Social media posts—with their character restrictions and limited screen real estate—are not ideal for expressing brand promises, values, and philosophies with any real detail or emotional impact. This is why many marketers supplement their social media strategies with a content marketing strategy as a means of including long-form content. Thankfully, the major social media platforms recognize that this issue exists, and have taken strides to incorporate content formats that are optimal for telling better brand stories. This article will discuss three such content types:

• Facebook: Instant Articles
• Twitter: Moments
• LinkedIn: Pulse News Articles

Content Types For Every Platform

At first glance, these three content types appear to have very little in common. However, all three content types were once restricted to only verified publishers selected by each platform, but have since opened up to all users. All three formats optimize content for each platform to provide a better reading experience and faster loading speed, as well as offer additional distribution channels so that more followers get to read and enjoy your company’s content.

Facebook Instant Articles

Facebook’s Instant Articles is a mobile publishing format for long-form articles. It enables news publishers to distribute articles on the social network that “load and display as much as 10 times faster than the standard mobile web,” according to Facebook’s own FAQ.

The great part about Instant Articles is that publishers are in complete control of the Instant Articles they post, which can also run on the publisher’s own site without issue. In essence, publishers can use Facebook Instant Articles as an alternative platform to deliver a superior experience for their readers coming from Facebook.

Twitter Moments

The best way to describe Twitter Moments is “Magazines comprised of Tweets.” They are curated stories showcasing important events or stories on Twitter. You can compile any kind of tweets you want, including:

• Text-only
• Images
• Videos
• GIFs

It isn’t limited to just your tweets. You can also add Tweets from any profile page, allowing you to tell a well-rounded story from multiple angles and perspectives.

Not only can any user create their own Moments, but they can actually follow Moments as well. If you follow a moment, any additional tweets or comments related to that tweet will show up on your timeline. This functionality will allow content creators to tell an ongoing story that people can receive updates about.

LinkedIn Pulse Articles

LinkedIn users have had the ability to publish both posts and articles since 2014, with Pulse integration coming soon after. With Pulse, LinkedIn acquired a powerful news aggregator that has earned contributions from the likes of Arianna Huffington and Bill Gates. When you open up your LinkedIn personal page and publish an article, it immediately becomes part of the Pulse content distribution network, potentially reaching hundreds of thousands of new readers.

Facebook Instant Articles and LinkedIn Pulse Articles are similar, in that they each provide a means of sharing long-form content to followers without having to leave the app. These articles can then be shared and interacted with in the same way as an organic post. In each case, the idea is to offer users a better experience when reading this type of content, which is said to improve reach and engagement.

Twitter Moments and LinkedIn Pulse articles also share something in common. Even though Twitter Moments are not optimized for long form content, both content types offer the user an additional distribution channel for their content, appearing on people’s News Feeds that are not necessarily following your profiles.

Ultimately, telling a meaningful and compelling brand story will involve using a combination of different content types. You’ll discover that finding interesting and creative ways to utilize these content types is the real challenge.