Issuu Stories: a new tool enabling social stories creation on Adobe InDesign, mobile and web

It is a well-known fact that most of us today are reading the majority of our content via mobile. As a result, the way in which we share content has shifted too, with the stories format of social channels rapidly becoming the most popular sharing tool. The question however, particularly if you’re a publisher, is how do you shape content to reflect this trend? It’s a daunting task, but it’s a trend digital content platform Issuu has been keeping a close eye on.

Founded in 2006, Issuu is an online platform that enables creators of publications – from look books to portfolios – to share formatted content digitally. To now consider how it could create a tool to push content on social channels appeared to be a natural step, especially as “transforming content originally made for print into digitally native formats,” has always been its aim, explains Issuu’s senior product manager, Alette Holmberg-Nielsen.

Considering the stories format of social channels allows for a build-up of narrative, it became clear to the Issuu team that “this is the perfect format for the content our customers upload,” says another of Issuu’s senior product managers, Anne-Laure Joliot. Issuu Stories transforms text and visual assets from a publication, including brand-approved marketing assets, in a mere few clicks on one platform for all channels, from site to social media.

Developing Issuu Stories as a helpful product on mobile, web and through its Adobe InDesign extension, users can now easily create high-quality content, simplify workflow and drive more traffic to content with SEO, considering Issuu Stories is integrated with Google-backed AMP technology too. For Adobe’s director of product Anubhav Rohatgi, Issuu Stories is an exciting development, “empowering marketers and brands with the ability to publish on any social platform through InDesign,” he points out.

When developing this tool Issuu consistently kept its users front of mind, building upon its key learning that teams working in this sector are regularly resource-constrained. In turn, Issuu Stories is a straightforward tool and one any member of a team – from designers to social media managers or marketers – should be able to create in just a few clicks. The Issuu team also heavily considered variety when developing the tool too, building upon its knowledge that every publisher embodies a different personality, meaning Issuu Stories should never feel too templated. As Anne puts it: “It was very important for us to allow for each brand to look and feel unique.”

For ultimate ease too, the fact that Issuu Stories is an Adobe InDesign extension makes it "super easy to create a story even if you haven’t used Issuu before.” The team additionally notes that it offers new possibilities to more traditional forms of publications through its ability to appear video-like, enabling publications to “come alive using different animations and pacing,”says Alette. “Those subtleties are ultimately what define the available Issuu Story templates – not just colour or typography as you see it in most other solutions for producing social media assets.”

The resulting tool is an extension that pieces together the personality, information and impact of a publication into a story format, without losing the original joy of its print or PDF iteration. Most of all, if you’ve been thinking about making the leap into sharing your publication in a story format, Issuu Stories can give you that push. As Alette concludes, “Issuu Stories helps any creative to punch above their weight and compete for the attention with the biggest in their industry.”