Storify was a social curation platform that collects updates from social networks, to create a new story format that is interactive, dynamic and social. It was acquired by Adobe, and has been retired (May 2018).
N/A
Yotpo
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Yotpo, an eCommerce marketing platform, helps brands accelerate direct-to-consumer growth. The single-platform approach integrates data-driven solutions for reviews, loyalty, SMS marketing, and more. The vendor states that brands with Yotpo are empowered to create smarter, higher-converting experiences that spark and sustain customer relationships. Yotpo integrates with everyday tools including Google, Instagram, top eCommerce platforms, and other tools in the tech stack.
I would advise that Storify is easy to use and includes many built-in resources, such as search tools, but that its application can be improved even more by combining it with other tools such as Google News (also accessible in Storify, but using standalone site is easy), Twitter (corporate and 3rd party) search tools and media management / "clipping" services like Vocus
If you need an excellent mechanism to collect and publish customer reviews, Yotpo is the best that we have found. We love the feature set that is provided, even if you are using the basic membership to get started. Where it is really good is the collection and managing of reviews. The email request setup is simple and easy to use. The publishing and commenting on reviews can be managed easily in the backend. It syncs up nicely to our website providers, and we have used it on a few different platforms without any problems. The pricing on it is also very competitive when you price it out against so of the other big-name players in the space.
In today's world, some stories break or even take place on social media. Storify allows journalists to easily curate these conversations about news and shape them into stories.
Storify's interface is easy to use and can be taught in minutes. My college journalism students take to it quickly and love working with it.
Storify can employ any social media that I can think of. If a story is being discussed in the social media world, you can find it in words, photos, videos, etc.
Telling stories through Storify is a creative process that I see becoming more prominent in the future.
Products you create in Storify are easy to embed or use for other purposes.
We like to live-tweet academic conferences and events. We think of it as collaborative note-taking. Storify is a great place to "file" these notes for later reference, but it falls a bit short as a place to go during the live-tweeted event. This is due to the fact that it is slow to refresh, if I add a tweet to the story, it can take up to a few minutes for it to appear for other users viewing that story. So we definitely use Storify in these events, but it's an after thought rather than an integrated part of the live activity.
Storify is not as powerful as other social media platforms when it comes to driving new audiences to our content. Facebook, Twitter, and Google + help us expand our networks. Storify is more functional as an organization tool that we can use to engage our existing network.
Each Storify story seems to exist in a silo. It does not make natural connections between stories that might be emerging around the same interest or topic. In academics for example, we have created Storify stories around the value of a Liberal Arts Education. It turns out that others were doing the same, but we only discovered that by accident; Storify was not connecting the dots for us.
Storify is worth it if you and your organization is creating a lot of social media buzz. If there are less than 15 people that are a part of the social media conversation, you really don't need to use this tool. It's most effective as an organizational storytelling tool, so you need to find a way to get people talking about you before you implement it.
Our organization is very lean and agile and does not have the resources to staff either a Marketing or Customer Service Team member on reviews full time. We know and understand the value of such an individual but are unable to staff a position at this point. This reduces the value of the tool in our eyes.
From the day I first started using it, Storify has always made total sense. It's not the kind of product that forces you grit your teeth a lot or go into cumbersome customer support areas or fumble around forever only to be unhappy with the end result. I have been able to successfully use the product from the beginning
I think the platform back end could be easier and more intuitive, but we are able to get around and accomplish what we need to with minimal training or guidance. Specifically, we had complications with trying to do something as simple as sending ourselves test emails and adjusting image sizes pulling from our product catalog so that the review request email images would be clear.
Live chat is always ready to help. Even when they do not have an immediate answer, we hear back from them within a reasonable time frame. Communication from the account manager is great as well. The team has been very supportive in listening to new ideas, needs, and updates based on real-time on-site data.
Practice makes perfect. The more often any new tool is used, the more comfortable the implementer is with the tool. Also, there is a natural tendency with any new tool, to want to use it a great deal. Identifying proper uses as they relate to your overall marketing goals is key to any decision to use a tool.
I addressed this in an earlier comment, but Storify is truly the best that I have found for displaying things in a narrative form. Other alternatives are more visually pleasing (like Tint, RebelMouse), but don't handle the narrative form so well. Those other platforms also do not display text only social posts quite as well.
I have only used one other service prior to Yotpo (I don't remember what it was) and Yotpo outperforms them. Yotpo is really intuitive and easy to navigate/install from a Shopify user perspective. When Pixel union releases their customer review service I may try it out since they are my theme provider and it may integrate more seamlessly.
My Storify stories ran the gamut of thousands of readers to a few dozen. That was on me as far as how engaging the content was/interest in the topic I came up with, probably the length of the Storify stories as well, and how much my stories were shared by others. Those reader numbers were not unique by the way, and unfortunately counted when I looked at my own story (even though I was logged in and they could tell it was me).
My objectives were to let people in on a narrative story they may have missed and to cement a passing social conversation into something more long-lasting. These Storify stories are now a part of a Tumblr blog and thus can be more easily accessed. Those aren't hard and fast numbers, but Storify helped me reach my objectives nonetheless.
As somewhat of a disclaimer, my use of Storify was not conducted for a client but as a social media experiment so I could interact with some digital transmedia storytelling. Storify was simply one piece of an integrated online persona. That being said, it was easy to track how many people had seen my Storify stories to see which were the most popular.
