Facebook Stories: The Complete Guide

As Facebook is approaching 3 billion monthly active users, this social network is introducing new features that make it better and better. One of the recent upgrades is Facebook stories, which all Instagram users loved but missed on Facebook. Why are these stories important, and can they help you grow your business? Today we’ll talk about how stories on Facebook work and how you can see your old stories on the platform.

And when you’re finished read through our other Facebook guides:

Table of Contents

How Facebook Stories Work

Stories on Facebook are an excellent feature that should become a part of your content strategy. If you’re looking to connect with more people and share your business, using stories is one of the best ways to do so. This feature lets you share photos, videos, snippets of your everyday life, services, products, or anything you can think of. You can also add fun filters, add text, experiment with backgrounds music, and create engaging content.

You can find the stories right above your News Feed at the top of your screen. They are just like Instagram stories and last for 24 hours before disappearing. The good news is that this feature is also available for your Facebook Page, making them an excellent marketing strategy for everyone who wants their products or services seen by as many people as possible. When you want to see other people’s stories, you have to tap on the stories that appear at the top of your screen, just like you do on Instagram. If you want to respond or comment on someone’s story you can do so, but the comment will be sent as a direct message on Facebook Messenger.

But why are stories so popular? First of all, scrolling through story content is so captivating that most users can’t stop and want to be up to do date with everything that’s going on. Next, this feature is a great way to engage your followers, even those who aren’t online, when you share a post. You can share the post on your stories and let it reach your target audience for 24 hours while it’s active. There’s no need to guess ideal posting times when sharing your stories because they will be online for one day, so you can experiment and see when your audience engagement is the highest according to the data you’ll get. This will bring valuable information when planning your content calendar for upcoming posts.

How to See Old Stories on Facebook

Did you know that there is a story archive on Facebook? You can find this option in the Settings menu and adjust whether you want your stories to be saved in the archives or not. This feature is automatically on for every user unless you decide to turn it off. So, all you have to do is open the Settings menu, go to Story Archives and choose whether you want Facebook to store your stories or not. Of course, this only applies to your stories, not the ones your friends have published. It only takes a few simple steps; however, we created detailed guides that will take you through the process when using the Facebook app or the desktop site.

How to View Stories on Facebook App Mobile

If you want to access the archive option via the Facebook app on your phone, here’s what you should do:

First, open the Facebook app and log into your account.
Next, tap on the three-line icon located in the bottom right corner.
Tap on the Settings & Privacy menu, then go to Settings.
Choose Stories, then access the Story Archives option.
If this setting is on, you’ll see all your old stories that you’ve posted before. If you haven’t turned it on, you won’t be able to see your previous Facebook stories. However, you can tap on the toggle bar next to the Save to Archive option and turn it on, and Facebook will save all your stories from that moment forward.

How to View Old Stories on Facebook Desktop

When you want to access the archive story option using Facebook on your PC, then here are the steps to follow:

First, open Facebook on your preferred web browser and log into your account.
Click on your profile picture to visit your Profile Page.
Click on the three-dot button in the right top part of the page, below your cover photo.
Click on Archive, then again on Archive from the left-hand menu.
Choose Story Archive, and you’ll see all the stories you’ve published before. Unfortunately, if the archive setting is turned off, you won’t be able to see your previous stories.

How to View Old Stories of Friends on Facebook

Seeing your friends’ old stories on this social platform is a bit tricky, and it isn’t always possible. When you turn the archive feature on, the old stories are available only for you and not for your friends, which means you don’t have access to their old stories as well. Like Instagram, Facebook offers its users to save their stories in highlights. This means that if other social media users access this folder, they’ll see the older stories as many times they want and whenever they want.

After sharing a story, you can highlight it by tapping on the star icon at the right bottom corner of the picture or video. You can later find all these photos, videos, and animations in the Story Highlights section on your profile or your friends’ profiles that use it.

Stories on Facebook are one of the best ways to engage your audience and expand your business. If you’re looking for organic Facebook like growth, you should try sharing your posts as stories and use this feature to get closer to your followers. Don’t hesitate to share parts of your business on stories to become more interesting to the people who follow you. This includes behind-the-scenes shots, pictures from the production, how the product works, how it looks in real life, various ways they can use it, and much more. Since the stories are active for a day, they won’t only get to the people online when you share them but also reach other people who will log into Facebook later. Although the stories feature has been present for a while, not many people use it for business and growing their audience, which gives you the advantage to be among the first ones to do so.

Conclusion

Facebook is one of the best social media platforms for everyone who wants to grow their business or build an online presence. The network has an estimated 1.93 billion daily users, making it the biggest one globally. As you can already guess, Facebook offers an audience for everyone, and it constantly introduces new features to improve the user experience. For example, stories on Facebook are an excellent feature that will get you closer to your audience and help you build a recognizable brand.

If you’ve been struggling to figure out whether you can check your old stories, we have all the answers. Facebook offers an archive feature that you can turn on and save all your previous stories even after the 24-hour time frame passes. Unfortunately, you’re the only one who can see the stories, and you can’t do this for your friends unless they have a story highlight.