Instagram Stories and Must-Know Tips

These days , social media has become the main medium for the work of getting people to know exactly what you do.

It’s about where you go, what you eat, what you drink, who you see, and anything that has the potential to be memorable: these have become the typical working purpose of Instagram.

It’s seconds of glimpses into people’s lives, and you can see these lifestyles in just 24 hours.

Now you have the opportunity to watch the seconds from the lives of others who have a 24-hour lifespan.

Of course, with the increase in all this sharing and usage time, it has become inevitable for brands to return to Instagram and Instagram especially to the Stories section.

The accelerating growth in the last few years has led some brands to use Instagram Stories entirely with the arrival of 2020.

Of course, I wouldn’t mind if I talk about how important this part is for brands and how you can use this part more efficiently and professionally. Isn’t that what I’m here for anyway?

You’ll find everything you need to know about Instagram Stories in this guide.

All the tips on what it is, how it works, and most importantly, how you should use it, will be in this guide.

But first, if you want to hear all the other things about SocialMedia , you can find all the guides here.

If you want to go even further and have a professional social media management , you can contact us and go on a journey with our expert teams.😉

Are you ready to find out what Instagram Stories are below, how to share them with your followers, and how to make sure that the Stories you share are exactly what your audience wants to see?

Lets start then.

What are Instagram Stories?

Instagram Stories are a kind of social sharing tool within Instagram that allows users of this channel to share their photos and videos with specific users followed by the sender of the “Story”.

People who follow the user’s Instagram account will see the stories in the “Story” of the person who posted it.

Sounds too complicated?

I think so, but you already know very well what it is, don’t you? 🙂

Like Snapchat, Instagram Stories are temporary posts, meaning they disappear after 24 hours .

📜But you can always access old Instagram Stories from the Archive section.

Instagram publishes stories from one’s profile and gallery on Instagram separately from photos, videos.

Also in the application there are hidden tools that will make photos and videos inserted into the “Stories” more creative.

From hashtags to hidden features, Instagram Stories is an endless tool.

Instagram Stories Start and Achievements

Of course, society didn’t take Instagram Stories too warmly in the first place. Do you remember?

August Instagram stories started in 2016.

Many people objected to this feature due to different uses of Snapchat.

But the irony is that since then, a total of 250 million Instagram users have shared on Instagram Stories.

They began to share this disappearing, short-lived content.

This job of sharing stories, or looking at shared stories, has on average increased people’s time on Instagram per day by 24 to 32 minutes since Instagram stories came out.

That’s an incredible number when you think about it.

Many brands have already seen the benefits of sharing on this platform and have been successful.

Instagram Stories have contributed immensely to the growth of brands like Teen Vogue, Insider, and Bustle.

Publishers have started to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to their videos and news outside of Instagram, or share sponsored content.

While companies in this period included content that tried to instill brand voice and brand personality that would consume much more than the reduced attention span due to an average technology, publishers began to flock to Instagram to publish the lost entertaining content.

What’s more, Instagram Stories have greatly fueled the growth of Instagram Direct, one-on-one private messaging between users on the app.

Instagram Direct has become one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, with a whopping 375 million users.

Even more impressive, TechCrunch says that one in five Instagram Stories shared by a brand receives a reply as a DM (Direct Message).

It offers brands a direct conversation line to connect with their audiences and learn more about them.

This is very good!

How Long Do Instagram Stories Stay Active?

Instagram Stories will stay on your profile for 24 hours before disappearing, but a video inside a Story can last up to 15 seconds before moving on to the next content.

To add it to your story, you’ll need to split a longer video into 15-second segments. Just like Instagram Stories only stop for 24 hours before they disappear, photos and video also have a time limit when users view and play them.

According to the “Blanket Rule”, the rule that applies to everyone, each video you add to your Instagram Story has a maximum playing time of 15 seconds. For example, if the video you posted is a 30-second video, Instagram allows you to split it into two and share it as two separate stories.

How Do You View Instagram Stories?

Instagram Stories appear at the top of your screen when you’re in the Instagram mobile app.

Because they’re often the first pieces of content users see when they open Instagram (I’m sure I have a lot of friends who log in and just look at stories), these Stories can get a ton of engagement and help you promote your regular Instagram photo gallery to more users.

Of course, not only in this section, but also when you enter a profile, you can easily access these stories.

In addition, if the user has used their shared story as “Featured”, you can also see the stories that are constantly right below their profile information.

How to Share an Instagram Story?

Now that we understand how the Instagram Story section works, it’s time to explore how to post.

Open Instagram and tap the plus icon at the top of your phone.

You can swipe up to browse your gallery and choose to share a photo or video you’ve already taken, or select a camera lens to take a photo or video in the app.

With its latest updates, the Instagram camera has become incredibly diverse.

Now, with the help of special lenses made by users, we can use many different cameras.

Of course, Instagram’s own cameras are also quite successful.

Boomerang, Layout, Superzoom, Hands-Free options help users to use this section more comfortably.

After you choose what you want to share or take a new image, the editing part will come.

In this section, you can add hashtags, tags, gifs, text and many other things to your image.

After editing your photo or video, press the “Your Story” icon below or press the “Next” button to share it to your Story and other friends at the same time.

Anyone can use Instagram Stories very easily, but it takes a few tweaks and tips to make them look like Stories shared by major brands and influencers.

But first, let’s look at the basics of how to share an Instagram Story:

• Open Instagram and tap the camera icon in the top left corner of your phone.
• Using the camera icon to share a story, swipe up on your screen to browse your Gallery and select a photo or video you’ve taken.
• Or choose a camera lens to take photos or videos in the app.
• During the lens selection, there are different types that you can choose according to the situation. As I mentioned before, after choosing a different camera mode, you can also choose one of the camera lenses that Instagram users have prepared.
• After editing your photo or video, tap “Your Story” or the “Next” button to simultaneously share to other friends in your Story.
• You can also save your edited photo or video to your gallery by pressing the “Save” button in the lower left corner.

Instagram Camera Options

I wanted to open a little parenthesis here.

You ask why?

Because I keep saying Instagram camera lenses.

For those who use only one of these, the others may be a mystery. That’s why I decided to take a closer look at all these camera options.

1. Live

If you change your screen to “Live”, you will start broadcasting live on Instagram.

Like Facebook Live, even your friends or those who don’t follow you can join this live stream and leave comments and expressions.

They can even join your live broadcast by sending a request to join the live broadcast.

There are many brands that use this feature. Especially brands that want to receive guests in live broadcasts broadcast live in this way.

After the live stream is over, you will have options to allow the video to disappear, be saved, or share Instagram Stories for another 24 hours.

2. Normal

It’s just a normal lens. This is the lens option that helps you shoot directly without any additional features.

Tapping it once takes a photo and holding it starts recording a video.

Instagram Stories can be 15 seconds long, so you may want to use one of the apps I suggested above to share a longer video, shoot a movie at 15 second intervals, or split your longer clip into 15 second installments.

Because it’s not nice to not be able to share all of what you want.

Let me add one more little note. User-made camera lenses, which we will examine more closely later, also work with this lens.

3. Boomerang

It is a type of lens that converts videos shot up to three seconds into gifs and loops those gifs back and forth.

Frankly, when it first came out, which was five years ago, it has become the most popular option right now, no matter how people call it the camera.

Moreover, after five long years, Instagram has brought new features to the Boomerang camera.

Perhaps the biggest reason for this is the growing success of TikTok within a year.

Posting more creative posts on this channel seems to make Instagram jealous. stay between us 😉

So what are these new features?

Let me tell you right now.

First of all, the old people know, Boomerang was originally a side application of Instagram.

This application, which you can still find in the store, was integrated into the camera after a while and now you can easily access all these new features from here.

After shooting a clip with this camera, three new effects and a crop tool come to the upper left corner of the screen.

From here you can choose one of these editing options.

New Boomerang Features

In addition to the original Boomerang (back and forth loop effect), users can now get creative with “Slowmo”, “Echo” and “Duo” effects, along with a new cropping tool.

• Slowmo: Slows the clip to half speed so a 1 second clip is 2 seconds long
• Echo: Adds a motion blur to every video frame, creating a “double vision” effect
• Duo : Quickly rewinds your video and adds a clunky transition
• Trimming : Boomerang lets you easily trim your clip to decide where the loop starts and stops

4. Superzoom

Superzoom is a video recording lens that zooms closer and closer to the subject on the surface.

But if you want to turn up the volume and hear a dramatic soundtrack to accompany your video, you can use Superzoom for that.

5. Rewind

You can use the rewind lens to rewind a video.

The video obtained after shooting normally on this lens will play backwards.

I’m sure there will be much more fun shapes to come.

6. Slow Mo

You can use this lens to shoot impressive stop-motion videos.

Thanks to this lens, several different still images touching each other in a single continuous video are formed.

A flip book (Flip book is a special small-size book, in which each page of a special book is drawn as a continuation of what was drawn on the previous page, and then, after all the drawings are finished, the pages are turned quickly, making the continuation of the drawn pictures act like an animation. Notebook) think of it like the video version.

Like this example below:

7.  Hands-Free

If you want to set your camera to shoot a video for you, you can use the Hands-Free mode.

To shoot videos like this, first make sure you place your phone in a stable place.

We’ll take a closer look at how this camera is used effectively later.

8.Create

One of the funniest camera lens segments, Create, actually got our hands on it not too long ago.

However, it provides the most entertaining content to be created with the updates it receives constantly.

Moreover, you can interact with your followers by choosing one of the different options in the Create section.

• Writing
• GIF
• Questionnaire
• Questions
• Countdown
• Test

All of the options you see above are seen as the most popular sharing methods that help a brand interact with its followers on social media.

In particular, surveys, countdowns, quizzes, and questions have become one of the easiest ways to direct the account holder brand or person to products and services that engage their followers, excite them, and lead them to new or already owned products and services.

How Should You Use Instagram Stories for Your Brand?

Here we come to the most important part of this guide.

You may use this part very well on your personal page, but for brand accounts, this part requires a little more attention.

What you can share and how you will contribute to your brand should follow a strategy. You don’t want to share a story away from your brand.

Among the things you can share:

• Images of an office event
• Breaking news about your industry
• Images and videos of your products
• Promote a company event.
• One of his company’s blog posts
• News of other companies that follow you or work with you

Knowing how to post to your Instagram Story is one thing, but knowing what to post is another.

For businesses looking to tell their Stories on Instagram, it’s important to know who their ideal followers are and what they want to see on Instagram.

You should also know more or less the personality of your ideal followers so that your posts are something that the target audience can like.

📜Remember, Instagram is a visual platform, but that doesn’t mean you can’t teach or promote something in the process.

Want me to give you a few ideas on using Instagram Stories to attract followers and build a customer base?

1. Post footage of an office event

Sometimes, the best a business can do on Instagram is show people as much as possible or remind them that the brand is human too.

One way to do this is to post a short video of a company function.

Whether it’s an office holiday party or an award-winning banquet, viewing footage and clips from these times is easy and instantly enjoyable for your followers.

This content also shows people that there is a relevant and friendly voice in the market.

In fact, it is such a popular form of sharing that many brands and agencies share it in this way.

Especially advertising agencies use it as a nice way to show their customers and potential customers how good a working environment and a creative team they have.

Or you can do it live from the office.

Of course, these publications will not necessarily show an in-office activity. You can do this broadcast within your followers.

Moreover, it is not for promoting brand products or doing anything else.

2. Show customer satisfaction

Perhaps the thing that e-commerce brands love most is sharing the posts of their satisfied customers from the brand account.

In this way, it creates social proof and tries to ensure that everyone else buys its products with peace of mind.

Of course, if you add a lot of people’s posts to your story and don’t want people to leave without looking at the others in the fifth story, you have to be careful not to post too much.

3. Show your product

Your product may not be the simplest or sexiest product in the eyes of non-industry.

Your Instagram Story is the perfect format to show potential customers how this product is used.

You can post a long video divided into 15-second clips that show users what your product or service does and how it helps your customers.

For example, in the above stories,it was asked to test which of the two newly released products was more liked, but also raised awareness for people who were not aware that this product had been released.

This story allows them to more or less find out which products their target audience likes the most, which gives them a chance to make more profit by changing their products the way consumers like them more.

And it creates a sense of curiosity in people who have not tried this product, making them more likely to buy it to try if they come across this product in a sunday that these people enter.

This story benefits them in every way, as each person who tries it has the potential to become a customer who buys the products more often.

⚠️Don’t forget to resize the video before uploading it to your Instagram Story. The image dimensions of Instagram Stories must be 1920 pixels high and 1080 pixels wide, and the aspect ratio must be 9:16.

4. Promote a company event

Does your organization hold a trade conference or attend a major conference each year?

Use your Instagram Story to promote the event and tell your followers to find you there.

Work with a graphic designer who will show you all the information the activity puzzle will need to find you, or if you’re already working with a professional, tell him or her and he’ll make the perfect visual for you.

For example, you can use the local text options in your Story to add it. Besides, if you’re wondering what to add, let me draw a little roadmap for you:

• Event Name
• Location of the Event
• Dates You Will Attend
• Your Stand Number
• Official Hashtag of the event

Showing people how things work in your company and what you can do in your company will make your followers start to like your company a little more, or at least start to find your company a little more likeable.

5. Share your brand’s contests

Obviously, this is a topic that stands out as a marketing strategy. Because people love contests and sweepstakes.

Moreover, when you share these contests and sweepstakes from stories, which is a high-traffic area, you can definitely see that people’s attention attracts them.

6. Mention other companies that follow you or work with you

As your Instagram followers grow, you’ll eventually get other business accounts that want to follow you.

Whether these accounts are your business partners or just your fans, you might consider calling them out on your Instagram Story.

It’s a passive yet effective way to develop relationships with the users most important to the growth of the business.

Now that you know the basics, we can start reviewing tips and tricks for producing high-quality, clickable Instagram Stories.

11 Tips for Creating an Instagram Story

Now that we’ve taken care of the main parts of the job, it’s time for the finishing part.

You can easily share or even create a story, but what do you need to make it stand out?

In this section, I will explain them to you one by one.

Buckle up, because we’re accelerating.

1. Use Stickers

Once you’ve taken a great photo or video, it’s time to decorate it with fun stickers.

Once you’ve taken a photo or video, you can access them by tapping the smiling sticker icon in the top-right corner of your screen or by swiping up from the bottom of your screen.

Change the size of your stickers.

After adding your story, you can hold two fingers on the sticker and change it to increase or decrease its size.

You can also tap and drag the frame to change its position.

Adjusting the size and position is actually very important.

If the sticker you put is a similar color to the background color , this sticker will not be visible.

Also, if the sticker you put on the picture is too small, it may not attract enough attention, so you may have lost the meaning of putting the sticker.

That’s why you should carefully determine its location and size.

There is a new release almost every day.

Instagram puts many unique stickers available, whether it’s Monday, holiday or season.

In fact, most of these stickers are created by users and uploaded to Gimphy and then to Instagram.

It’s a good idea to check this section daily to add a new and hot sticker to your story.

Instagram releases different stickers, funny and witty stickers day by day.

A few of the new stickers released may be very compatible with the content you want to share, right?

Add location, hashtags, polls and selfie stickers.

Here you can diversify the sharing a little more in this topic.

Hashtags, location tags, and more help a story reach more people, get more engagement, and bring the brand closer to more people.

These include location tags, hashtags, person tags, polls, selfie stickers, regular stickers.

After talking about all these things you can add, I wouldn’t mind if I didn’t tell them what they were, would I?

Location Tags

Wherever you are, write down where you are. You’ll be able to pull a geo-specific tag to show where you’ve been.

When users view your Story, they can tap the location tag and see other photos and Stories that happened in the same place.

Are you asking what’s the use of this? Let me answer right away.

If you are sharing from an event or from a location, you can ask other people to share it here.

So more people use your location and you will have more interaction.

At the same time, when you share a general location, other users who look at the stories in that location may encounter your story and recognize your brand.

Hashtag Stickers

It is very important to publish location stickers and add hashtags with almost the same logic as what they do.

If you add this tag and type a hashtag, your Story will appear in searches for that hashtag, and viewers can click and see who else is using that hashtag.

At the same time, when you share a general location, other users who look at the stories in that location may encounter your story and recognize your brand.

Likewise, you can use the brand’s hashtag pattern, choose a hashtag that is on the agenda, or you can highlight the hashtag of your event so that other people use this hashtag.

Survey Stickers

There are hardly any brands that do not use the survey. From surveys he makes about his own services or products to other questions he asks to interact with his followers, many surveys provide brands with more engagement and intimacy.

How you use it is entirely up to you. Of course, you can show your creativity while preparing these surveys.

One of my favorite story series of Onedio is where they use these polls and let their followers determine the direction of what they shoot and post.

Question Stickers

A similar but very different feature to the survey was added last year. These are the question tags.

Now you can play games with your followers thanks to this tag, which helps you to make tests very easily from the Instagram Stories section.

Ask a question from there and see who gives the correct answer.

Of course, their followers will see it.

Selfie Stickers

Open the Tags menu and tap the camera icon.

It’s that simple. There he will give you a camera and you can take your selfie and add it to your story easily.

Or take a photo of someone else’s face (this will work too).

Then you can use this face to decorate your Instagram Story. It can turn out to be a little creepy, but very memorable and funny.

2. Record Hands-Free Instagram Video

If you’re a frequent video recorder on Instagram, you know you shouldn’t hold your thumb down on the record button as long as you’re recording. This can be tiring when trying out dynamic and interesting videos that require more dexterity.

But did you know that you can record these videos “hands-free”? Of course you didn’t forget what I mentioned above. Let’s see who has read the above, I’m taking a test. 😀

The Hands-Free option, which has the ability to shoot videos without using hands, has taken its place among the camera lens options under the record button, as I said above. Just tap the record button once to start the video, and once you’ve got the footage you want, once again to stop it.

3. Let Viewers Share Their Stories

You can increase engagement and views of your Instagram Story by allowing viewers to share your Story with their friends as Direct Messages.

In this way, you can reach people who are not your followers very easily.

Go to your profile, tap the gear icon and find “Story Settings”.

Hit “Allow Sharing” so viewers can DM your Story with friends to increase audience reach. That’s it!

4. Use the Pen

You can use the pen to add embellishments, symbols or more text to your story.

If you tap the pencil icon in the top right corner of your screen after taking a photo or video, you’ll open different pen options.

From there, you can adjust the thickness of the pen stroke or change the color of the pen you are writing with.

You can even choose a different color from the existing colors by choosing a color from your image.

5. Mention Another Instagram Account in Your Story

Sometimes, sending an Instagram Story to a specific person isn’t enough. You need to give them a description in the photo or video.

In these cases, Instagram lets you tag up to 10 handles directly on your Story’s photo or video.

To mention an Instagram account in your story, take a photo or video, then tap the square “A” icon in the upper-right corner of the screen.

Enter the account you want to tag, starting with the “@” symbol and the first letter of the account.

Scroll through and tap the suggested accounts that appear below your cursor until you find the account you have in mind.

Or open the place where the known tags are and select the account tagging option there.

This will allow you to add a single account directly.

You can tag multiple accounts from the text insertion point.

After you post this Story, the person or account you tagged in the photo or video will receive a notification you took, regardless of whether you sent the Story to them.

6. Make Your Text Interesting

Adding text in Instagram Stories is a pretty simple thing. We’ve all done adding a text before, but even with these texts, you can stand out more.

Customize your colors.

If you’re not happy with the Instagram color palette, create one of the colors from the photo or video you took.

Turn on the text icon and tap the eyedropper icon in the lower left corner of your screen.

Use the eyedropper to sample a color from anywhere in your captured image and use it when typing text or using the pen tool.

Add Shade to the Text of the Story

If you want to add extra drama to your text, add highlighting or shading by rewriting or rewriting your text in a different color. I recommend choosing black or white to accentuate the bright color of your choice.

Then move the text above or below the brighter text to add some drama to your words.

Turn your text into a rainbow

It’s a little tricky, but would you actually try if I told you that you can turn your text into a gradient rainbow? Probably many of you will try. Because who doesn’t love a rainbow?

• Tap the text icon and write your message to add it to your Story. Then highlight your text.
• This is where it gets tricky: Turn your phone sideways to press and hold one finger on the right side of your text, and tap and hold a color with another finger until the color wheel pops up.
• Then slowly drag both fingers from right to left over both the text and the color wheel to create the rainbow text. Go slowly until you create a rainbow.

7. See Who Viewed Your Instagram Story

Snapchat users have always been able to see which of their friends viewed those Stories you shared with the Story visible for 24 hours. You can do the same with Instagram Stories. In the same way.

To see who has viewed your Instagram Story, go to the Instagram homepage on your phone and click the circular icon that displays your Story.

Click “Your Story” from the Instagram home screen and swipe up from the bottom of your open Story. A list of all accounts viewing this content will immediately appear.

Seeing who has viewed your story may be an ego boost for personal Instagrammers, but business users can learn a lot about what their followers are engaging with that way. You can find out what types of photos and videos you should post by looking at which users are viewing which Stories.

8. Center Your Text And Stickers

As you move through the text and stickers in your story, you will see blue lines vertically or horizontally in the frame. These are guide lines you can use to make sure you center everything.

Don’t put your text too high or too low on the screen.

However, make sure you don’t add anything too high or too low in the frame to your story, or it will be cut off when viewers scroll through your story, add things like your Instagram name, and how long before your story has been posted, which can hinder your carefully crafted text.

9. Add Music to Your Story

After adding your story, open the grid that you opened to add other stickers and you will see the Music sticker there.

In order to add the music you want, the search bar and a list of currently popular songs will appear.

After that, you can choose the part of the song you want and choose the lyrics to come in different ways, or add the album cover. 🙂

10. Add Story From Your Phone’s Camera Roll

Great Instagram Stories are not created only through the Instagram app. You can also upload photo and video content from your mobile device’s local camera roll.

To upload a photo or video to use as an Instagram Story, open the Instagram Story’s camera lens and tap the little square icon in the lower left corner of the screen.

Tapping the icon shown above will open your phone’s local media gallery where you can select any photo or video to post as an Instagram Story.

It’s that easy.

Finally

We have come to the end of a guide. Now you probably know how to use Instagram Stories better than most. And believe me, many people are not even aware of some things.

Don’t use the brand’s story without knowing how you use it. Try the steps in this guide instead.

If you know more, write in the comments and I will update this guide. 🙂

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