Facebook Adds New Features to Creator Studio, Including Stories Highlights and Timeline View for Posts

Facebook’s added some new elements to Creator Studio to mark the new year, including a Stories preview option for video uploads, and a new way to preview how your posted content looks in-stream.

The main addition is Stories highlight clips for video uploads, which takes a 20-second preview segment from your full video to post as a Facebook and/or Instagram Story.

As explained in this prompt, shared by Matt Navarra, the new option enables you to ‘share a video highlight clip to your story’, in order to drive views of your full video clip.

The process, thus far, is fairly basic – Creator Studio will automatically highlight a preview segment from your full video, which you can then move around, though you can’t actually edit or create, as such, you can only choose a segment from your video to use as the preview.

Once you’ve chosen the segment, you’ll then be able to post that clip to your Facebook Story, with a ‘See More’ CTA button at the bottom of the Stories panel to drive people to your main clip.

It could be a handy way to raise more awareness of your uploaded videos, and it’s not overly intrusive as a Stories option, with the short teaser clips leading into the full viewing experience.

Though it is interesting that Facebook’s looking to encourage this type of Stories use, given that Instagram has repeatedly sought to stop people from re-sharing feed posts to Stories, including videos, due, reportedly, to user complaints.

This seems like it’s very similar to sharing feed posts as Stories, but maybe it makes more sense on Facebook, and/or driving more people to view more video content is of more engagement benefit, overall, than the potential impacts on the Stories user experience.

Another new addition for Creator Studio is a timeline view for your published Page posts in the app, providing more transparency as to how your posts look in user feeds.

That adds another element to your Page management options through the app, which remains a key posting tools over third-party platforms due to its capacity to show you exactly how your Facebook and Instagram posts will appear in-stream, enabling enhanced editing and customization options.

As such, Creator Studio remains an important tool for many social media managers, particularly those posting video, and it’s good to see Meta continuing to add new options and enhancements to improve the user experience, and provide more ways to manage your Page posts.

These additions are not game-changers by any stretch, but they do provide more posting options, and it may be worth experimenting with the new Stories video previews to see whether they help drive more eyeballs to your uploads.