Storify Aims For Marketers With its New ‘Storify Business’ Plan, Redesigns Free Version Too

Last month, social media curation service Storify revealed its first paid plan, Storify VIP. It sounds like VIP is designed for large media organizations (the first announced customer was the BBC), but today, Storify is announcing that it created a more accessible, less journalism-focused option called Storify Business.

“The new features will broaden our user base beyond journalism to these other types of customers who are reporting on social media for their clients and telling stories about products,” Herman told me.

Storify’s usefulness to journalists is pretty clear — it helps them turn disparate social media updates into a coherent story. (The Denver Post used Storify in its Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Aurora, Colo. shootings.) At the same time, Herman said it can be used by brands, PR agencies, and ad agencies, too.

“Current corporate reporting methods for social media — like pasting screenshots into PowerPoint — are cumbersome and lose links to the original data,” he said. “One of the main new Storify Business features is private stories, which are only visible to others who have the secret story link. Brands and PR and advertising agencies need to record customer sentiment and conversations from social networks to report on what they are doing.”

Herman added that this isn’t a replacement for more algorithmically driven social listening tools, but rather a complement.

In addition to the private sharing feature, Storify Business also includes customized story embeds (so that they can match a company’s branding or the design of its blog) and increased customer support. The company is currently offering introductory pricing of $59 a month (the regular price will be $99).

And even though the company has been expanding its paid options, it’s making improvements for free users too, with the launch of a new design, as well new features that allow users to edit the URL of a story, search Instagram by username or location, and delete items from a saved collection.