There are 500 million daily users of Instagram Stories from different age ranges, countries and languages, so if you haven’t been using Stories yet, you’re at risk of being left behind. Now, let’s look at getting started with Stories.
What are Stories?
Instagram Stories are ephemeral content, such as vertical images, gifs and videos, that last 24 hours in addition to the original grid format and live in the Stories row at the top of your feed when you open the app. You can share your Stories will all your followers or choose a few (or even just one).
Download your Instagram Checklist here.
You can view someone’s Story by tapping on their profile photo and you can tap to go back and forward in a profile’s story or swipe to go onto the next profile’s Story. Another thing to keep in mind is that all comments that you make on a Story go to Direct Messages, not public comments.
What are the features of Instagram Stories?
Instagram Stories gives you the added capability of being able to overlay text, images and even music on top of your own content. Some of the features you use while getting started with Stories include:
- Stickers: Location, Timestamp, Temperature, GIFs, Music, Mentions, Feelings, Polls, and other visual graphics
- Frame formats: Superzoom, Focus, Rewind, Hands-free
- Stickers: Hashtags, GIFs, Music, Emoji Polls, Questions, Quizzes, Countdowns, Temperatures, Donation Links, Shopping/Buy Now stickers for brands
- Augmented Reality Filters
- Drawing Tools
- Texts/Fonts
- Highlights
Why use Instagram Stories?
It’s time to start considering using Instagram Stories if:
- You are targeting a younger audience – the key demographic of Instagram is 18-34 year olds
- Your goal is to grow your audience – using hashtags, mentions and locations in your stories can help potential followers to find you, engage with you and re-share your content
- You want to boost your engagement – Instagram Stories has a whole host of interactive features, such as polls, quiz, chat functions and much more to play with and to connect with your audience
How to post a Story
- Tap on the camera icon in the top left of your screen or swipe right from anywhere in Feed.
- Then tap the circle at the bottom of the screen to take a photo, or tap and hold to record a video. To choose a photo or video from your phone’s library or gallery, swipe up anywhere on the screen.
- You can tap the icons at the top of the screen to draw, add text or a sticker to your photo or video. To remove text or a sticker, drag and drop it onto the bin at the bottom of the screen.
- When you’re ready to share, tap Your Story in the bottom left.
Making the most of Instagram Stories
When you are uploading your Stories, don’t forget to add as much detail as you can such as:
- Mentions – Who are you with?
- Locations – Where are you?
- Hashtags – What would people search for to find your content?
The added bonus of using hashtags and locations is that your Story could be featured in the Location’s or Hashtag’s Story so that even more people can find and engage with your content.
Other things to try
In Instagram Stories, you have a plethora of ways to interact with your followers:
- Ask for responses to a query – You could try asking a question and have your audience respond with long-form answers
- Run a quiz – Send a question but give your audience multiple choice answers to choose from
- Post a poll – Simply post a query with two possible answers. When they respond they will see the percentage of users that chose either option
- Hold a Q&A session – Give you audience a chance to ask you the questions for a change
- Go live – Like all other Instagram Stories excluding Highlights, Live Streams last for 24 hours in your Stories. In a Live stream, your viewers can see exactly what you’re videoing, and they can also send messages that appear on the screen to you and all of the other viewers watching the Live feed
You can also try to schedule Stories using a 3rd party app – such as Later.com – or simply by choosing a day/days of the week that you will post and stick to it. This allows your followers to know what to expect each week and also helps with content creation.
Download your Instagram Checklist here.
