We are again happy to welcome our regular and new readers to the pages of our blog dedicated to promotion on social networks. And now, the New Year's bustle is over, the dishes are washed, the products are eaten, the Christmas trees are taken out, the toys rest peacefully in their boxes and wait for the coming year. And it’s time for us to return to harsh working days again, telling our readers about recent innovations in the vast social networks. And, of course, we could not pass by such a wonderful innovation as a story on Instagram.
If you post a photo or video in your story, it will appear in the following places. In your profile: A colorful circle appears around your profile and people can print to name their story. In the feed: your profile picture is displayed in the line at the top of your subscribers' channels, and you can click to view your story. There are general messages in the feed next to you: When you split the message, a colored ring appears in the ribbon around your profile picture.
- Photos and videos from your story do not appear in your profile grid.
- People can follow your story.
Although this innovation appeared on the network in early August 2016, it is gaining popularity right now when Instagram users have fully managed to taste it. In this article we will talk about Instagram policy in the field of history, we list the main features of this option. We also express our opinion on how Instagram story can be useful in promoting your account and other commercial activities. In the following, read about the technical aspects of working with stories, in which we will answer most of the most common user questions that arise when working. For example, how to make a story on Instagram and what settings and design options exist here.
If you added a hashtag, location, or location sticker to your story, it may also appear. To find out who saw your message, open it and wipe it on the screen. You can see the number and names of people who saw all the photos or videos in their message.
Only you know who saw your message. You can share a photo or video from your story as posts in the feed. Photos and videos that you submit in the feed are displayed in the form of a grid of your profile and have the same visibility as other posts you posted.
What are Instagram Stories?
First of all, it is worth explaining what a story in Instagram is for those who have not yet fully realized this interesting, in our opinion, option.
Instatgram history is a separate branch of publications, which has nothing in common with a common tape and does not intersect with it in any way. It’s like a parallel channel with the main communication channel with its subscribers, where you can post standard photos and videos for Instagram. Subscribers can watch or not watch the history of the account owner and this also does not affect the overall status of the work processes in the profile.
To share the story in a direct message. Stories that you share in a direct message have the same visibility settings as other posts you posted. By setting up, you can choose who can view and share your story. If someone shares a story with you, you will see it in your direct inbox. If the original story disappears from the application, it is no longer available in your message flow.
Click a profile picture to watch live video. All people who watch the video can see your Like or your comment. When choosing a screen, you can also hide comments and likes. When starting a live video, please note that the person who shared the video and all other people who watch the video can see that you watched the video in live.
One of the main characteristics of stories at Instagam is the relatively short lifetime of publications - all materials in this feed are deleted after 24 hours.
Who may be interested in stories
Over time, Instagram developed a behavior trend expressed in certain unwritten rules for posting content. Users who need to maintain their profile in an active state, which is especially important for commercial activities, need to upload photos and videos with a certain frequency and in accordance with the publication schedule. This approach allows you to quickly adapt subscribers to changes in the feed without loading them too large quantity information. And, of course, not letting them get bored, with too few updates. In addition, each photo or video material is prepared properly in a thematic and technical direction to match the overall atmosphere within the account. If any of our readers are interested in the details of the correct updating of content on Instagram, you can get acquainted with them in one of. The information is quite relevant - to date, no changes in this direction have occurred.
Instagram Stories
If someone shares a story that you have not yet seen, a colorful ring is displayed around the profile picture. Stories appear side by side in the feed. To view a specific person’s story, tap their profile image at the top of the feed, in their profile or next to the post shared by the person in the feed.
Publish long videos
When you look at the top of the History Stories, they automatically scroll from one person to another. You can tap the screen to go to the next photo or video, or swipe left or right to switch between different people’s stories.
As for the storylines, Instagram gave its fans the opportunity to separately post materials on a more free basis, we can say - ignoring the unwritten laws adopted for the general publication stream. In addition, there are some tools that are not in the standard set. For example, directly on the photo, you can draw with markers, place stickers or plain text. It is worth noting that some kind of abundance of such tools is not observed here, however, it is quite enough for a quick whip.
Stories are displayed in mobile network at the top of the feed and on desktops to the right of the feed. Press or select any story to view it, or use the arrow keys to go to the next screen or story. It even allows you to watch stories taken more than 24 hours ago.
The same can be used for search capabilities. The problem is that this can lead to a frightening effect on people who will share more intimate stories. This feature may not be available to you at this time. Ads in History can only be displayed with the addresses “reach”, “video calls”, “conversions”, “application installations” or “traffic”.
Thus, each Instagram user can, without thinking about how this will affect the main feed, post content at least every minute, highlighting some moments of his activity. For those who lead a fairly active lifestyle or want to conduct a detailed report of an individual event, Instagram stories are the best way to do this.
You can upload photos or videos that are then displayed between people's posts. When you’re ready, click on “Review Changes” to post your changes. Open Create Ad. . But what about marketers and business owners?
View via mobile app
Marketing is not about what you do, but about the stories you tell. - Seth Godin, best-selling author and entrepreneur. Stories can be used to peep into your business behind the scenes, show your audience the process of creating your content, and more! Real-time marketing: real-time marketing is about telling the target audience what is happening in your business when it happens. Stories are a great way to increase your visibility. . Define the purpose of each story you publish.
Story features
To finally understand the advantages and disadvantages of stories on Instagram, or as they are officially called stories, we’ll try to consider their similarities and differences from the main content in the service’s work stream:
Useful option
In general, Instagram storytelling is an interesting and useful option that allows you to keep your main feed from clogging up with not-so-important posts from everyday life. Indeed, this is how the service itself positions the innovation. Presumably, activity in the "historical" feed should be expected only to those users who can brag of the number of subscribers from two hundred. Although this number can be considered quite arbitrary.
- Does history add value to your business?
- Does your audience want to see what you post?
- What is your ultimate goal?
What is a story without a beginning, middle and end? When planning your content, be sure to tell the whole story. Recommended Action Step: Use a storyboard with sticky notes if you cannot outline the story in your head. This is good news for you because it means you can make every video clip perfect before publishing it online.
Since Instagram story is a relatively new option and it can be said that initially it is still more test, over time, it acquires more and more opportunities that are formed on the basis of observations of the reaction of users of the system. Let's see what changes have occurred on Instagram stories over the past few months.
Start your story with something captivating or exciting attention, and then create a point or goal for your story. Creating excitement makes it difficult for viewers to look away. Recommended Action Step: Start your video with an aesthetically pleasing subject or visual image, and then go into the frame so that your story looks like a well-planned movie.
Styles and Alignment
The best way to get your audience’s attention is to provide them with unique content that they’ve never seen. Recommended action step. But don't forget to add your own creative twist. Publishing what you ate this morning may not be relevant to your audience.
Boomerang
The native Instagram service and a separate Boomerang application, announced back in October 2015, almost immediately became an integral part of Stories. Those of our readers who are not yet familiar with the Boomerang from Instagram, we will tell you that this is a way to create a looped video. In other words, this is an opportunity to create endless reproduction of the same short video in a couple of tapes without a visible transition between its completion and the start of repeat playback.
The point is to publish content that your audience finds useful and valuable. Go live before dropping a new line of products when you're off-screen at a photo shoot, or when you think your followers see what happens when it happens.
Adding a selfie to a story
Recommended action step. It is funny and effective method Get the attention of your audience by giving them something new to look at. If the goal of your story is to attract viewers to drive traffic to your site, ask them to visit your site.
Doesn’t resemble anything? In an era when graphic elements were just beginning to be introduced into web-technologies, and the speed of the Internet and browsers still very poorly supported the ability to transfer and process video content in order to somehow enliven the content of the page, the technology of Gif-animations was invented. The basis of this technology is a sequential change of ordinary pictures (frames), when after showing the last image, the first appeared again.
Tip 11: Publish Exclusive Stories
Try not to seem bossy or desperate when asking viewers to do something. Recommended action: try using this template: Thanks for watching friends! This is a great way to draw the attention of your followers to the daily viewing of your story!
Saving content on all social media platforms can be time-consuming and difficult, especially because each piece of content that you publish must be unique. Schedule content ahead of time to make your life a lot easier.
Today, "gifs" are almost out of fashion, their place is firmly occupied by Flash and ordinary video. However, in some cases, as in the case of Instagram Stories, everything new is well forgotten old. Boomerang is nothing more than a service for producing animated animations, however, the authors of the service categorically do not want Boomerang's results to be called "gifs." They simply call it - boomerang. Very informative and painfully unique ...
Tip 14: use stickers when they think
Recommended action step: mark or indicate who you can. However, using context, it can actually be removed from history. Make sure you use stickers when they make sense in the context of the story. For example, for businesses with a physical location, a location sticker is used.
Tip 15: Use Your Color Picker
Recommended Action Choose a color palette that matches the color scheme of your brand. Use the color palette in your stories to let viewers know when it's your brand! Use text and marketers to illustrate points, draw on your images and more!
Instagram Stories
Since November 2016, Instagram stories have become available references to other users. To do this, just in the typing mode, enter the name with the previous “@” sign. The system will automatically translate this text into a link, by clicking on it you can get to the page of the person who was noted in history. In addition, the corresponding user will receive a corresponding message in Direct.
Recommended action: change the font size and tip of the pen or the type of marker you use to change appearance your stories. Determine how much time you need to tell your story. Small queues of content are more appealing to your followers. It is no secret that the more you publish, the more your followers will be.
Remember that you shouldn’t spam your subscribers with irrelevant content, but focus on publishing unique, fun and useful content that will support your audience. Be sure to pay particular attention to the stories that are saved, as this analyst shows the content that your audience loves the most. Take the time to brainstorm with your team about what content you can publish in your story.
It should be emphasized that the references to this day are still test in nature and may not be available to all users.
How to use Instagram history
Like any free innovations in the space of social services, Instagram stories are actively considered by users in terms of interest in making a profit. Unfortunately, stories, due to their social “inferiority”, are unlikely to boast a wide range of opportunities to attract the target audience. Although it is still possible to extract some commercial benefits from them.
Get the newsletter everyone is talking about
They are only 24 hours, so if you want to get results from them, they will be better. They collect a huge amount of views and can be incredibly influential. To get these results, you need to know how to use them. In addition to having a ton of users watching your content, there are a few more benefits. One of the greatest of these advantages is that your story will occupy the entire screen of the user, and in today's work, if you have a full screen, you have full attention.
Let's try to list the main conditions that will definitely benefit business accounts:
Since Instagram storytelling is a very short-term phenomenon, they can be used to inform about promotions, sweepstakes, sales and other processes that are time-limited.
Create a storybook
At any time there is an additional medium or a new way to reach the target audience, use it. You never know that your audience will respond to the majority, and the more they see your content, the better. You can upload several different individual stories one after another to create one larger, mostly seamless story. This is beneficial for two reasons. It is powerful, and it is unforgettable, and having multiple images or videos combined to tell a great story can give you great results.
- Nothing prevents every day from updating stories, consistently introducing their potential buyers into the course of things of some process. For example, if you plan to open a new section in a chain store, you can highlight the progress of work. This approach works pretty well for the public. As practice shows, by the beginning of the opening a foundation will be prepared from the first target visitors.
- In one of our past articles, we talked about the fact that even the most eminent brand does not disdain to unveil some moments from their "backstage" life. This attracts attention and brings its share of confidence. Before publishing an official photo in a common tape, in stories you can show how preparations were made for creating this photo, for example.
- Instagram story cannot be commented on and cannot be liked. But here you can see those subscribers who showed a separate interest in viewing it. In terms of lead generation, it makes sense to pay closer attention to these people.
- In any case, stories are a way to interest users with additional semi-official information. Good content in this stream, if you approach it wisely, will revitalize the profile, give it uniqueness and make subscribers “stir”.
Promotion with Instagram Storis
As we noted above, activity on Instagram Stories is possible under certain conditions. Of course, you can increase the performance of such meters by free methods, or you can save time and physical effort by investing a small amount of money.
Another is that users are sometimes inclined to quickly scroll stories from brands, but if you have several separate stories that make up a larger one, you are more likely to get attention than if you had 4 stories in which each there was nothing to do with others.
Take full advantage of your potential.
You definitely do not need to use every feature in every story, but you must use the different story features to enhance your content. Mix it with text overlay to quickly dial your point and emoji to resonate with your audience. Use filters and draw your content using the drawing functions.
One of our new services is by attracting new subscribers, the main purpose of which is the obligatory viewing of stories.
A very good promotion option if screenshots with views are planned to be placed in the general profile stream.
We really hope that this article on history has been informative and useful to our readers. In our next article we will talk about and answer some questions about this area. Stay tuned for updates on our website, leave comments on articles. We wish you only productive promotion!
Story creation
To proceed to the publication of stories, you need to swipe your finger from the left to the right of the screen on home page Instagram (where you read your feed). To take a photo or shoot a video, you need to click on the circle at the bottom of the screen, and by swiping down you can open the media selection window from your library. There is another way to create a story: select the tab of your account (where your photos are displayed) and click on + next to the profile photo.
Shooting modes
Instagram Stories supports five shooting modes.
The selection of filters in Instagram Stories is small, but, as a rule, it is enough. Filters can be swapped left or right.
Format of supported photos and videos
Instagram Stories photos and videos are vertical. Horizontal media files are truncated during import. To select the desired area of \u200b\u200bthe photo for publication in the story, you can use cropping in a standard photo editor. The maximum video length is 15 seconds. Remember that a longer video will be shorter during import. You can upload to the history only those pictures and videos that were shot in the last 24 hours.
Masks
Another borrowing Instagram Stories from Snapchat. To go to the masks, you need to tap on the icon to the right of the camera change icon.
Stickers
To attach a sticker to the story, you need to click on the corresponding icon after shooting or simply swipe up on the screen.
Stickers for location, temperature, and time
In the first line of the sticker selection screen, you can choose to add to the geodata history, the current temperature in the place where you are, and the time of publication.
Adding a selfie to a story
On the next line of the sticker selection screen is the camera icon. Choosing such a sticker will allow you to take a selfie and embed it in the story. Moreover, the borders of the photo can be either blurred or underlined with a white frame. Using this function, you can create fun collages or express your opinion about what is depicted in the story using a joyful or judgmental grimace.
Resize Sticker
To make the sticker larger or smaller, use two fingers. After choosing a “sticker”, pinch your fingers together to make it smaller, or spread it apart to make it bigger.
Attaching a sticker to a video element
Select any of the stickers, click on it and hold your finger for a couple of seconds. You will see a time slider. Select a second with the element to which you want to attach the sticker, set the desired location and size of the “sticker” and click “Attach”. Now the sticker will be attached to the selected video object.
Adding Hashtags
To assign a hashtag to the story, you can use the creation of a label in the text, but it’s easier to choose the appropriate sticker. Tap on it to change the hashtag display style. When your friends see the tag, they will be able to go to publications marked with the same tag with one click.
Quick sticker selection
In order not to scroll the screen every time in search of your favorite sticker, swipe right when choosing. You will see a list of recently used “stickers”. There is a separate group of stickers that fall especially well on portraits. To go to them, swipe left.
Removing Stickers
To remove a sticker that was accidentally added, click on it and hold your finger. The icon will appear at the bottom of the screen. trash can, there you need to move the extra “sticker”.
Painting
To proceed to drawing, click on the corresponding icon between the sticker and text icons in the history editing window.
Types of brushes
The user has four brushes.
- Plain brush. The same basic brush from any graphics editor.
- Marker. It differs in the shape of the brush and the degree of transparency.
- Brush with a "neon" stroke. It looks like an ordinary brush, but with a choice of stroke color. The main color remains white.
- Rainbow brush. One brush - seven colors.
An eraser selection is also available.
Brush size
The size of the brush is adjusted using a special slider, which opens by pressing the icon with three dots in the lower left part of the screen.
Color selection
Also, when drawing, a choice of brush colors is available: they are located at the bottom. You can move between the three standard palettes by swiping left or right. To select your color, hold your finger on one of the circles.
Pouring
To fill the frame space with one color, select a brush, press and hold your finger anywhere on the screen. After filling, you can open part of the photo or video using the eraser.
Text
To start typing, select the “Aa” icon to the right of the drawing icon.
Styles and Alignment
To adjust the color and size of the text, you need to perform the same actions as when drawing with a brush. The scale of the written can also be changed with two fingers.
When typing, a button with indentation adjustment appears in the upper left corner. You can place the inscription on the left, right or in the middle. The second function button for typing is the letter A in the box. By clicking on it, you can switch between the three styles of displaying the inscription.
3D text effect
To give the text a volume effect, create two identical labels, but in different colors. Place them almost on top of each other, with a slight shift: you get 3D text.
User Tag
To mark a user in your story, type the @ symbol when creating a caption. Start typing your nickname and Instagram will suggest options from among your friends. In approximately the same way, you can attach hashtags: use the # symbol for this.
Other
Saving Stories
Click on the three dots in the upper right when you’re in your instagram profile. To automatically save your stories, go to the story settings and move the “Save Published Photos” slider to the active position.
Adding Music to Instagram Stories
There is no feature to add musical accompaniment to a video in Instagram Stories. But there is still a way to add audio to the story. Many could notice that the music playing on your smartphone does not interrupt when viewing other people's stories. The same thing works when creating a video: just turn on the song in the streaming service or, for example, in the social network “VKontakte” and start shooting the story.
Video rotation
You can avoid trimming the edges of the video when publishing to the story using special applications that rotate the video 90 degrees.
Publication of old photos and videos in the history
If you are late with the publication and 24 hours have passed since shooting, a little trick will help you upload a photo or video. Just forward the desired pictures or videos to yourself on WhatsApp and save. There is an easier way - using special applications.
Publish long videos
To publish videos longer than 15 seconds in history, use any video editor. You can delete some segments, divide the roller into several parts or increase its speed. For users of iOS devices App store offers an application that automatically divides a long video into several 15-second segments.
