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Clifford Chi
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GIFs are fun, digestible, and, most importantly, relatable -- which is why everybody loves them and shares them on social media so much.
Additionally, since Instagram is the top social media platform for visual content, your followers expect your brand to post more compelling content than just the photos of your company’s complimentary lunch each week.
Your audience want to feel something when they scroll through Instagram, and GIFs can forge that emotional connection with them.
Below, we’ll show you how to post a GIF on Instagram -- with a series of GIFs -- and share some of the social network’s best GIF apps.
Here’s a series of GIFs that will show you exactly how to post a GIF on Instagram:
Download and open GIPHY.You can find GIPHY in the Apple and Google Play app stores.
It will drop down to a screen with all the platforms you can share the GIF on.
This is where GIPHY will give you one or two notifications asking if it can access your photos and open Instagram -- hit "OK" or "Allow".
GIPHY has the world’s largest library of animated GIFs and stickers.
Free on IOS and Android
4.7/5.0 Rating
On Giphy Cam, you can record your own GIFs and add filters or special FX to them.
Free on IOS and Android
4.8/5.0 Rating
ImgPlay lets you turn your own videos, live photos, photos, and burst photos into GIFs or videos. You can also add captions and filters to your GIF, edit its frame sector and order, and control its frame speed and direction.
Free on IOS and Android
4.7/5.0 Rating
With GIF Maker, you can convert your photos or videos into GIFs, Boomerangs, and memes.
Free on IOS and Android
4.6/5.0 Rating
Momento lets you use your live photos and videos to create GIFs and stop motion videos. You can also add augmented reality, filters, music, stickers, effects, text, and zoom to them.
Free on IOS and Android
4.6/5.0 Rating
Apple featured Songclip on their “New Apps We Love List” last year.
And it was included for good reason. The app has a licensed music library full of modern and classic hits that you can add to their collection of GIFs or your own created GIF. But if you don’t feel like making your own GIF-music combination, you can just select and send one of their trending Songclips to your friends.
Free on IOS
4.8/5.0 Rating
Topics: Instagram Marketing
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If you’re using Slack at work, you already know how much everybody loves GIFs — short animated images that are most frequently used for reactions to something else being posted. Indeed, there seems to be a perfect GIF for everything.
Moreover, using GIFs is a fun and easy way to break up your content or even explain how to do something. If we say that a picture is worth a thousand words, then GIFs should be really invaluable.
GIF (graphical interchange format) was developed back in 1987 and is just another image format, like PNG or JPG, but that does support animation. Unlike videos, GIFs are also lightweight and perfect for sharing in messengers or on social media.
Instagram, in particular, would be a great place to share GIFs, since they are quickly digestible and tend to attract attention right away. Unfortunately, you can’t just upload GIFs on Instagram from your camera roll like you’d do on Facebook or Twitter.
So can you post GIFs on Instagram? Yes and no. While Instagram GIF posting isn’t directly supported, there are a few workarounds you can use, just like everywhere else — mostly by using third-party apps or turning your GIFs into short videos.
Let’s see how to post a GIF on Instagram exactly and which apps you should use to do it.
Finding the perfect GIF might seem difficult at first, but not when you use GIPHY. GIPHY is the largest collection of GIFs in the world, with a powerful engine to search for the exact GIF you need. Another benefit of GIPHY is its absolute integration with all the most popular apps in the world, including Instagram. In fact, sharing through GIPHY is the easiest way to upload GIFs on Instagram.
Here’s how to do it on Mac
You might be wondering what’s the best way to quickly upload GIFs on Instagram from your Mac? Use Grids!
Grids is one of the quickest and most straightforward ways to upload photos, videos, and even stories to Instagram using your Mac. This app is super fast and superior to the web version of Instagram you can access on Mac. Just upload your GIF in the best quality, edit on the spot, add all the necessary captions, and you’re done!
You can also use GIPHY for Instagram GIFs on your phone:
Your GIF will be uploaded automatically.
Sometimes, what you’re looking for in a GIF is not necessarily a funny reaction to something, but rather a useful piece of content, such as a walkthrough, a guide, a summary, etc. In this case, you might want to create your own GIF and then post it to Instagram.
The best and the fastest way to create GIFs on Mac is by using Gifox.
Gifox is a lightweight app that lives in your menu bar and extends the functionality of Mac’s native screenshot-taking tool by adding GIFs to it. By default, you can either define a GIF-taking area or use an app window. Record your video as usual, and Gifox will automatically translate it into a GIF. Doing so with keyboard shortcuts takes mere seconds — Gifox is really good at adapting to your workflow.
Once your GIF is ready, you can move on to the second step, which is converting your GIF into a short MP4 video. To do that, you need a fast and reliable media converter, such as Permute.
Permute is an essential app for your Mac, allowing you to convert any media format into any other, whether it’s images, audio, video, photos, etc. What’s more, the app is able to predict the likeliest conversions and preset them accordingly. It’s really that simple.
To convert GIF into MP4 with Permute:
Now you know how to post Instagram GIFs to your feed. But is it possible to do the same Stories? Yes it is, and there are some other options here as well.
You can, for example, use Instagram’s native Boomerang feature to create GIF-like short animations for your Stories. Boomerangs are really 10 photos stitched together that are sped up and played back and forth.
Here’s how to do that:
Make sure there’s some action going on! Alternatively, you can use GIPHY again to post premade GIFs to Stories, similar to the process described above:
If you want to use a GIPHY app on your phone instead, it’s just as simple as sharing a GIF to your feed:
Finally, there’s one more option of how to post a GIF on Instagram Stories, and that’s through animated stickers that are also sourced from GIPHY.
To do that:
If you can share Instagram GIFs with the world, why can’t you send one privately in your DMs? Well, in fact, you can — by using the same sticker functionality from above:
What’s great is that you can also do it on Mac, if you have IM+.
IM+ is just one of those apps that saves us hours a day by aggregating all the conversations and DMs from all social networks in one place. You can use Instagram, Slack, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and more in a single app window. To keep yourself from being distracted, just set work and personal limits, so you don’t get the notifications you don’t expect. Now you can stay connected and send over messages and share files of any format with ease.
As you can see, you don’t have to be boring on Instagram — GIFs make every conversation, post, and Story so much more fun. And sharing them doesn’t take any extra time if you post with Grids, create them with Gifox, convert formats with Permute, and DM them with IM+.
Best of all, Grids, Gifox, Permute, and IM+ are available to you absolutely free for seven days through the trial of Setapp, a platform with more than 220 top-of-the-line Mac apps that make your daily workflow so much more productive. Try every Setapp app today at no cost and find your new daily favorites!
Beautiful gifs on Instagram are an opportunity to add emotions to stories, make the content more vivid and varied.
For example, for commercial accounts, a GIF is a good way to emphasize and stand out from other users.
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There are two ways to add gifs to Instagram stories: the first is as a separate element, the second is as a separate story. Let's analyze each of the options.
Gif for Instagram stories as an additional element
This is the old and familiar way to insert a gif into Instagram stories:
Make a new story.
At the top of the screen, click on the smiley sticker, then "GIF".
Choose any GIF you like and place it in the desired part of stories.
The most popular GIFs are located in the Trending section. You can also search for gifs by keywords in both English and Russian.
But the issue on Instagram is sometimes different, therefore we recommend that you enter the names of gifs alternately in two languages. For example: first enter “love” into the search, and then “love”, so the probability of finding a suitable GIF increases.
GIFs can be enlarged or reduced in size, as well as flipped by clicking on the animation. If you don't like the gif, you can delete it. To do this, drag it down the screen and move it to the urn icon that appears. Instagram allows you to add any number of gifs to one story. Everything is limited only by common sense and aesthetic vision of the author of stories.
Gif on Instagram as a standalone stories
Recently, Instagram has added another option to add GIFs as standalone stories. This option is relevant when you want to place only a gif or use it as a background for text.
Go to the stories section and select Create.
Next, find "GIF" and enter the desired gif into the search.
Unfortunately, it cannot be reduced, it completely fills the stories screen. But this version of the gif can be used for a beautiful animated background. To do this, select a neutral background (ideally, so that no transitions are visible, or find a vertical GIF). Add text or other GIFs in the standard way.
You can place a gif that is not in the standard list, for example, your own brand logo, using the GIPHY service. To do this, install the application on your smartphone.
Select the appropriate gif in the "Explore" section or search for the one you need. Click on the gif you like, then on the paper airplane icon.
If you want to post the gif directly to your stories or Instagram feed, click on the paper airplane, then on the Instagram icon. If as an additional element in stories, then click on the paper airplane and save it through the icon in the upper right corner.
Next, open Instagram and create a new story. Go to your camera roll and copy the gif. Go back to stories and click "Add sticker". In this option, we recommend looking for gifs with a transparent background, so it will look more aesthetically pleasing and will not stand out from the general content. Also in GIPHY you can create and upload your own GIF, especially for commercial accounts:
Made with GIPHY
Animated stories always attract attention, but the audience reacts to them differently, it all depends on the niche of the account and subscribers. Therefore, always study the statistics of stories in order to predict user behavior and thereby increase coverage.
GIFs must be used appropriately. Place it so that it complements the content, and does not take all the attention to itself. Therefore, we have made a small selection of ideas and beautiful GIFs on Instagram that will tell you how you can skillfully use them in your stories.
To announce a post, repost it in stories and add a GIF "New post", "Tap/Click here", "Fresh content" or just place a clicking hand. Thus, you will suggest the necessary action to the subscriber and motivate them to interact with the content. You can simply post some ready-made entries in the form of "Good morning" or, for example, "Friday". So you just convey the mood and communicate with the audience at the same time.
GIFs on Instagram can also bring photos to life by adding sparkle, snow or rain. Or supplement a photo with food or coffee with smoke / steam. This is a small element, but it adds so much charm to the photo, makes it lively and sets the mood.
Gifs on topics will add zest to an ordinary photo. For example, with the help of a GIF, you can create an effect of surprise by adding a GIF in the form of a shark to a regular photo from the sea or by placing a dinosaur in the jungle.
To make your stories unusual, choose interesting and beautiful GIFs on Instagram.
At the same time, do not forget to observe a sense of proportion - do not add 10 gifs per story and do not use animation in each story. Do not forget about readability - animation should emphasize, focus attention, and not interfere with the study of content. For example, if you highlight a word in the text by adding a sparkle gif to it, that's good. If you highlight the entire text with glitter, it becomes unreadable, and the user is most likely to quickly flip through such stories.
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Contents
For more original author's content, adding your GIFs to Instagram stories will be a great solution!
In 2018, Instagram teamed up with GIPHY to integrate GIF animations into Stories. Each user can add unusual, expressive animations to photo or video content in stories.
Attaching a GIF to Stories is easy! Step by step:
GIFs make stories brighter, reveal text content more. We suggest ideas for diversity in Stories:
Adding a GIF to your story is a nice way to visually highlight the details you need in the content. Add “arrow”, “follow the link in the description”, “turn on the sound” stickers, and other cues to get the audience to respond to the call to action.
Attach pointers to take viewers back to a previous story or forward to the next.
You only have a few seconds to grab attention, so make the most of it!
And here we told you step by step: how to attach a link to Stories.
There is an option to create completely unique content! Add GIFs to the right place in the story so that they pop up in time. This will highlight the story and hook subscribers!
Add the GIF in the right place. Press and hold it until you see a small bar at the bottom that will allow you to change the spawn time.
If you don't like something, hold the gif again and change the order. Animations will appear at the right moment and will be a good addition to a photo or video.
To attract traffic to the site, you can use not only the link in the profile description, but also the story functions! Swiping is allowed for accounts with an audience of more than 10,000.
To encourage viewers to switch, there are already a bunch of options for arrows, “Swipe up” inscriptions and other emoji gifs.
Find creative ways to highlight your call to action and get more clicks, you'll see!
GIFs in Instagram stories are a good option to focus viewers' attention on certain words in the text. So no one misses important information.
Use the keywords "shine", "stars", "radiance" to find the necessary GIFs for highlighting text.
If you're looking for commonly used words or phrases, GIPHY has a wide range of word animations to add to stories.
Hundreds of vibrant colors to choose from! Try searching for different keywords to find an unusual gif.
Also for Stories: How the prediction game for Stories increases reach.
Bring your photo content to life by attaching an animated sticker to your story.
While your GIF shouldn't detract from the content, adding animation to your photo is an easy way to get your audience interested.
Adding stickers to your Instagram Stories can be fun, but use them wisely. Add GIFs to your stories when they fit the content.
Attaching more than three stickers will detract from the point and may cause viewers to leave your Story. Make sure the content of your stories aligns with your brand and strategy.
The useful effect of GIFs in Instagram Stories is that they can turn ordinary photos into unique stories!
This is a really great strategy. Today, with so many companies creating quality content, it's getting harder to grab people's attention, especially when it comes to product photos.
Add-on to your strategy: Catch me game for Stories Instagram.
The GIPHY library offers thousands of animated items such as sunglasses, beards, hats, horns and more to keep you entertained.
While spam should be avoided, stories are a convenient place to relax in front of viewers.
The benefits of GIFs in Instagram Stories are that there are so many of them! The GIPHY archive is full of flashing arrows, dancing figures and moving emojis. It is truly endless, giving marketers countless choices.
While it's great to add gifs to entertain your followers, you can replace the call to action with them without breaking the point of the content. Adding GIFs to your stories is a great addition to your Instagram business.
Instagram continues to release new features that will showcase the uniqueness of the brand. With a few simple tricks and a little creativity, you can add GIFs to keep up with the latest 2021 trends and keep your audience watching your content.
Companies actively began to add their branded animations. They are the perfect way to add a bit of personality, not to mention they increase brand awareness and help you get more followers.
Just remember, when using GIFs in Instagram Stories, it's best to take a "less but better" approach.
Since GIFs are small moving images, adding too many will be annoying and cause viewers to exit the story.
As with anything you post on social media, it's important to choose stickers that add to the content, rather than diminish it altogether. Use GIFs in stories only when appropriate
After all, there is no wrong way to use animations. But if you're trying to improve your account's story stats, try following the creative ideas we've shared.
By creating branded GIF stickers for Instagram, you will increase brand awareness. It also encourages your followers to post content about you.
The advantage is that not many brands have created their own animations. It's actually easy to do, step by step:
All Instagram animations are in the Giphy library, so create a company account on the Giphy platform and apply for brand verification.
This will not take long, but due to some restrictions, small businesses may be denied an application.
Gifi does not allow digital artists to add commercial works for brands to personal accounts. Therefore, if you create GIFs for a brand for Instagram, then the working option is to apply for authorship.
Once verified, you will be given permission to collaborate with artists to create branded stickers. You just need to upload these stickers to your Giphy account.
How to create a company channel on the platform: open Giphy, click "Log In" on the main page and then select "Join Giphy".
The "Join as an artist or brand" alert will appear at the bottom of the screen. Click and make your choice on the next page. Specify personal data, contacts and write a few words about the business.
When you're done with registration, click "Apply Now" and that's it! On the next page, there will be a message that Giphy has seen your submission. You will receive a confirmation e-mail.
While you are waiting for platform approval, create a new account. If you set your profile to public, people can find your account and see information about you, including your company name, website, about you section, and links to other social media accounts.
Giphy collects full analytics from uploaded GIFs, which is useful for assessing progress as well as how popular your stickers are.
As soon as you receive your registration confirmation by email, add the newly created stickers.
To convert a gif file to a sticker, turn off the display of the background layer and export it in the same way. Consideration should be given to getting brand followers (and other Instagrammers) to use these stickers in their content.
If you no longer have an empty account, but with an active audience that already marks you in publications, tell them about your online novelty.
And all this functionality is provided by the platform for free.
You don't need to spend extra money to go viral on Instagram.
When creating a new gif animation for Instagram, think about how users will use it: how will your stickers improve other people's stories?
Specify descriptive tags so that the added animations are included in the search. On each animation, specify 5-10 tags. You should also mark the animations with your logo so that they are easy to find.
Consider high-volume words when writing tags for new stickers so that they appear in high-volume search results. For example, the words love, laughter, food, kiss and others.
Once you've added branded stickers, they should be available when someone searches for the tags you've signed up or from your brand profile. You should also check out the new stickers in stories.
Open the Giphy archive, find your stickers by the specified words. This should pull up one or more of your animations.
