Instagram is the veritable social media powerhouse with over a billion active subscribers in its pockets. To give you some kind of perspective, 1 in 7 people in the world have an Instagram account.
Instagram has evolved over a period of time, and something that is currently trending is Instagram Stories. Stories are short video clips that only last for 24 hours.
This appeals to the sense of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) from the followers, which means that they are more likely to check it out. There are over 500 million people who post Stories regularly, according to Instagram.
What is an Instagram Story?
Ignoring the fact that they completely lifted it off Snapchat, Instagram Stories offer a lot of advantages when it comes to branding and drawing engagement. There are no limits to the number of Stories that can be shared on Instagram.
You can share a Story with your Instagram feed by clicking the record icon at the bottom – click for a picture and hold for video. You can then edit your video or picture. For still images, you can add several visual elements like animated stickers, doodles, filters, and the like to spice it up.
When it comes to videos, there are a number of effects you can opt for like Boomerang, Stop Motion, and Rewind, to name a few. The latest update even adds music to your video! Using all these tools, you can come up with something unique that is bound to get noticed by your Insta feed.
So where can you find these Stories, you wonder? Click the red circle on anyone’s profile picture, and it displays all their Stories. You can either use the back button or swipe down to navigate away.
Finally, you also have the option of hiding these stories from specific people on your Instagram feed. If you’d like to learn more about it, iDigic has a comprehensive Guide on Instagram Stories which could help you optimize your marketing campaign.
7 Tips and Tricks that help you create better Instagram Stories
There are several things that you can do to make sure that your Instagram Story gets noticed. Here are a few Instagram tips that we’ve found which can improve your success with Stories.
1. Watch the Highlights
While a default Instagram Story lasts only for 24 hours, you can set specific Story content on your feed to last longer.
This is especially useful if you want to increase your audience’s chances of seeing important content. A lot of brands use this feature to accentuate promotions that are valid for longer than a day.
To use this, make sure that you have it activated. You can do this by navigating to Settings, Story Settings, and then click on Save to Archive.
After doing this, go to your bio and click the +New button to add a new highlight. Here you can choose the Stories you want to feature on your highlights section.
2. @Mentions
Instagram Stories allow you to tag other Instagram accounts on your profile. This is easily accomplished by tapping the text bar and typing “@” followed by the username. The username mentioned will be underlined on your Story.
What tagging does is it sends a push message to the inbox of the recipient that you’ve tagged with a preview of the Story. This preview is valid for only 24 hours.
Anyone who has access to view your story can tap the tag and view the tagged profile. You can mention a maximum of 10 people on a single Story. The person you’ve tagged can also add your story to their own story, thus giving it even more visibility.
3. Reshare Posts on Stories
You can also share someone’s post to your Story. This is an excellent method to reshare used content as well as invite collaborators to your account.
This is done when you click the arrow icon and then add to your story. The content will be shared on your Story timeline along with the original account which posted it – they will receive a DM about the repost.
Note that you can only add someone’s post to your story if they have their account set to public and not private.
Likewise, when someone tags your posts on their Story, you’ll get a DM about it as well as the option to repost for the next 24 hours.
4. Getting Polled
Instagram gives you the option of adding polls to your Stories now. Creating a poll is easy, all you need to do is select the Poll sticker and choose from a range of slider stickers.
You can customize the question of the poll as well as 2 options that are available for your followers to choose from. Depending on the choice, the polls will update the percentage numbers in real-time.
This can be a great platform to invite discussion as well as getting your followers engaged. People are also able to see the results update over time as well as talk about the poll in the comments.
Later on, you can also share the results on your next story, even if some people choose not to participate in the poll.
5. Using the Color Wheel
This is one of the few Instagram tips that a lot of people overlook. You can customize the color of your stories to give it a solid color as well as transparency options to make it more transparent.
You can play around with these settings to get the most out of your Story. You can even edit colors in the image.
If there is a specific color you want to use, you can pick it up from the image by holding on the color wheel and then clicking on the part of the image you want to grab the color from.
6. Sticker Crazy
Stickers on Stories have a lot of customizable options to them, which some people are not aware of. You can cycle through sticker variations when you tap the sticker.
The weather sticker is a good example – it changes into several different variations. You can also add animated stickers like GIFs which can liven up the Story.
In the case of videos, you can pin stickers to good effect on Stories. You can pin stickers to the video where it will stay stationary or alternatively, pin it to an object on the video giving this a feeling of augmented reality.
7. Adding Multiple Images To Your Instagram Story
More than a few people aren’t aware that they can add multiple photos to an Instagram Story. All you need to do is swipe to your Stories and then click the top right icon which will allow you to add up to 10 images to your Story.
You can even customize how each photo or video will look. If you’re done with everything, then you can go ahead and publish it.
Adding multiple images to your Story can give viewers a much more fulfilling experience and you should definitely make the most of it.
Summing it up
These are a list of the most popular Instagram Stories tips that you can use to get noticed. Tweaking your Stories gives you a much better chance of appealing to your followers and sometimes even drawing in more followers if the Story was creative and funny.
Brands have been known to get really creative with Stories. For example, Nike had a brand campaign on Instagram Stories about an overweight guy and subject was about his progress at losing weight. It went viral, and because of the short lifespan of the content, word got around really quickly.
There are several avenues that you can use to become successful on Instagram, and Stories are something that can give your account a huge boost when used right. Comment and let us know about your experiences with Instagram Stories.
