How to do a gif on instagram


How To Create GIFs For Instagram Stories

GIFs on Instagram Stories are seriously trending, but did you know that you can create Instagram Stories GIFs for your brand, too?

Beyond just being a ton of fun, businesses can also use Instagram Stories GIFs to draw attention to important elements in your Instagram Stories, like a call-to-action or the swipe-up button.

But if you create your own branded GIFs for Instagram Stories, you’ll be able to increase brand awareness, encourage people to post from live events, or just make your own stories match your brand.

Here’s how to create Instagram Stories GIFs for your brand in 3 easy steps:

There a lot of creative ways to use Instagram Stories GIFs, and businesses are quickly jumping on this hot new Instagram trend. But…not many brands have made the leap to create their own.

We came up with the idea to create a series of Instagram Stories GIFs to help businesses drive traffic and sales through stories, with fun stickers like “swipe up,” “shop now,” “new post”, etc.

All you have to do is search “Later” when you’re adding a GIF, and you’ll find them all there!

Once we found out how easy it was to create your own Instagram Stories GIFs, not only did we know we had to do it, but we also had to share how we did it! 

The good news is, it’s super easy to do, and we’ll show you the exact steps in this post.

**How to Create Instagram Stories GIFs:

#1: Become a Verified Brand on Giphy**

Instagram Stories GIFs are powered by Giphy, so you will need to create a Giphy brand channel and apply to get it verified (FYI, your channel doesn’t necessarily have to be verified to be available via Giphy’s public API).

The good news is that this process is pretty quick, but the bad news is that because of the verification restriction, small businesses may not get approved.

Also, according to Giphy, they don’t allow artists to upload commercial work for brands (including GIFs) to their own profiles, so if you want to create your own Instagram Stories GIFs, really your only option is to apply for review.

That being said, once you’ve been verified, you’re totally allowed to work with Giphy artists to create Instagram GIF stickers for your brand! You just have to upload those GIFs to your own channel.

To create a brand channel, simply open Giphy, click on “Log In” in the top right corner of the homepage, and then select “Join Giphy” on the following page.

At the bottom, you should see a button to “Join as an Artist or Brand.” Click it and then make your selection on the following page.  

Next, you’ll be prompted to submit your details, including your contact info and information about your business.

When you’re done, hit “Apply Now” and that’s it! You should see a message on the following page that Giphy has received your application and that they’ll be in contact shortly. You’ll also receive an email from Giphy with the same information.

While you’re waiting to be approved, you can start building out your profile. If you set your account to public, people will be able to search for your brand and see info about you, including your name, website, an about you section, and links to your social profiles.

(You can view the Later Giphy page here as an example).

Brand accounts on Giphy come with an analytics dashboard with all kinds of stats on the GIFs you create, which is really helpful for measuring the impact of your Instagram Stories strategy as well as how popular your GIF stickers are. 

It’s kind of shocking just how successful our stickers are so far, and we haven’t even promoted them! In the matter of a week, they’ve already earned over 16 million views from people using them in their posts, proving that making your own Instagram Stories GIFs could actually be a great strategy for your business.

**How to Create Instagram Stories GIFs:

Step #2 Upload Your GIFs to Giphy**

Once you’re approved, it’s time to create and upload your wonderful GIFs to Giphy!

This is where you need to pay attention: in order for your GIFs to appear on Instagram Stories, they must be uploaded as a sticker and not as a regular GIF.

Unlike regular GIFs, GIF stickers are animated GIFs laid on a transparent background or layer (alpha channel). As Giphy puts it, “Think a cut-out or die-cut, but animated.”

You can turn a GIF into a GIF sticker easily by just turning off the background layer of your canvas, and exporting the same way.

Giphy also offers style advice on how to create a great sticker. “A good sticker is simple, eye-catching, and fun. Because [they’re] shared at a fairly small size, it’s important to keep them visually sharp and well defined.”

“Also, since stickers have transparent backgrounds, they can “interact” with things…design stickers that can *peek* around things,” Giphy says.

Something else to keep in mind is how you want your followers (and other users) to use your Instagram Stories GIF stickers. If you have a brand with a following that already tags you in user-generated content or stories on Instagram, those people would probably also love to add a fun branded sticker to their post too!

For example, since a ton of people like to post on Instagram Stories while watching The Bachelorette, ABC created a series of branded GIFs featuring their star, Becca. There’s the branded logo, but there’s also her signature catch phrases and various facial reactions.

Did we mention that all of this is…free? You don’t need a big TV show budget to create a viral moment on Instagram.

When designing GIFs for Instagram Stories, it’s important to think about how users are most likely to use them: in what ways will your GIFs add to or enhance people’s Instagram Stories?

As for technical specs, Giphy states the following about creating GIF stickers:

  • Upload your stickers as GIF files (APNG files are currently not supported)

  • Stickers must be exported with at least 20% transparent pixels, no white or opaque color backgrounds.

  • Size: 500-600px with an even-numbered height and width.

  • There is no maximum file size, our server will automatically resize the sticker on upload.

  • RGB color mode is mandatory.

  • Set to loop Forever upon exporting.

Once you’ve covered these points, you’re ready to upload to Giphy!

Don’t forget to add descriptive tags! This is how your stickers will show up in searches on Instagram Stories. Each sticker should have at least 5-10 relevant tags, and it’s especially important to tag your stickers with your brand to make them easy to find!

In addition to tagging our GIFs with phrases like “link in bio,” we also made sure to tag them with “Later” so our followers can easily find all our GIFs in one place.

According to Giphy, the most popular searches across their API are love, happy, heart, dance, cat, sad, dog, cry, birthday, kiss, party, lol, and food. You should consider these terms when creating and tagging your stickers to make sure they appear in the results for the most popular searches.

**How to Create Instagram Stories GIFS:

Step #3 Test on Instagram and Spread the Word!**

Once you’ve uploaded your GIF stickers to Giphy, they should be available when someone searches for the tags you use, or from your brand profile on Giphy! 

You should also test your new GIF stickers out on Instagram Stories! Simply take a photo or video, tap the Sticker button and open the GIF option.

Next, search for your GIF stickers by typing out one or more of the tags you used. This should pull up one or more of your GIFs.

And voilà, your GIF stickers are all ready to go! If you’re planning a special launch, you might want to upload them in advance, we found that our GIFs took about a week for all of them to show up under the search term “Later” on Instagram. 

Wondering how you can use custom Instagram Stories GIFs? If you’re hosting a live event, that’s the perfect opportunity to encourage sharing and build brand awareness. Just take a cue from Girlboss, who created their own for their conference, Girlboss Rally:

Also, don’t forget to spread the word about your new stickers! A great strategy is to share a story (or several stories) showing your new GIF stickers in action, and let your viewers know where and how they can use your GIFs in their own stories. 

It’s time to take your stories seriously – watch our free Instagram Stories for Business course today!

How to upload GIF to Instagram easily

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

  1. Visit giphy.com 
  2. Search for the GIF you like and open it
  3. Pick Share from the menu 
  4. Select Instagram
  5. Include your email and send yourself the results MP4 of your GIF
  6. Download the MP4 on your Mac
  7. Post the MP4 of the GIF to Instagram

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: 

  1. Download the GIPHY app
  2. Find the GIF you like
  3. Press the paper-plane icon next to the GIF to share it
  4. Select Instagram
  5. Choose Feed

Your GIF will be uploaded automatically. 

How to post your own GIF to Instagram

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: 

  1. Launch Permute
  2. Click the plus (+) icon at the bottom and find your GIF
  3. Use the dropdown menu at the top to select MP4 format
  4. Hit the play icon to run the conversion

How to add GIFs on Instagram Stories

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: 

  1. Tap on the camera icon to start a new Story
  2. Press the boomerang icon (looks like a symbol of infinity)
  3. Film your Boomerang. Make sure there’s some action going on! 
  4. Hit Your Stories to post your Boomerang

Alternatively, you can use GIPHY again to post premade GIFs to Stories, similar to the process described above: 

  1. Visit giphy.com 
  2. Find the GIF you like
  3. Click Share ➙ Instagram
  4. Email yourself the MP4 version of the GIF
  5. Use Grids to post your GIF to Stories

If you want to use a GIPHY app on your phone instead, it’s just as simple as sharing a GIF to your feed: 

  1. Launch GIPHY
  2. Look for the GIF you like
  3. Tap the share icon 
  4. Pick Instagram
  5. In the Instagram app, select Stories

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: 

  1. Start creating an Instagram Story as usual
  2. Press the sticker icon
  3. Browse or search for a GIF you like
  4. Choose a GIF you’d like to use
  5. Change its size if needed
  6. Tap Your Stories to post

How to upload GIFs to your Instagram DMs

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: 

  1. Open your Instagram DMs
  2. Find a conversation to send a GIF to
  3. Press the plus (+) icon
  4. Tap on the sticker icon
  5. Find the perfect sticker through GIPHY
  6. Tap on the sticker to send

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!

how to add — LiveDune Blog

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.

We have products that help automate social media

Learn more

and improve accounts with analytics

accounts with deep analytics

How to add gifs to Instagram stories


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.

How to add a gif that is not on Instagram


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.

Ideas for using gifs in stories


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 simply 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.

Conclusion


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.

Only important news in the monthly newsletter

By clicking on the button, you agree to the processing of personal data.

What's new in SMM?

Subscribe now and get 9 ways to promote on Instagram for free

Popular articles

≈ 14 min to read statistics and formation of hypotheses.

#instagram 05.04.2019

What is UGC in social networks and why does a brand need it

How UGC in social networks helps to attract new customers and maintain the loyalty of existing ones without spending huge amounts of money.

≈ 11 min to read 11/29/2018

Let’s bring everyone to clean water: how to check Instagram account for cheating

A detailed guide on checking a blogger’s account for cheating followers and likes, which will help you choose “clean accounts” and not drain your budget.

≈ 7 min to read 11/26/2018

How to add an Instagram account to Dashboard

Instructions on how to link your Instagram account to the LiveDune service and what to do if problems arise.

LiveDune marketing products - 7 days free

Our products help you optimize your social media experience and improve your accounts with the help of deep analytics

Analyze your own and others' accounts by 50+ metrics in 6 social networks.

Account statistics

Message processing optimization: operators, statistics, tags, etc.

Direct Instagram

Automatic reports for 6 social networks. Upload to PDF, Excel, Google Slides.

Reports

Monitoring the progress of KPI for Instagram accounts.

Audit of Instagram accounts with clear conclusions and advice.

Express audit

We will help you to select "pure" bloggers for effective cooperation.

Check bloggers

Instagram story | Create a GIF - Marketing on vc.

ru

How to make an Instagram story attractive.
How to create a GIF for an Instagram story for free.
Step-by-step instructions for creating a GIF with your face or product.

3760 views

Hello! In touch ABNORMAL COPYWRITER NASTYA.

The days of one-dimensional stories are over. The people want to be interesting. This article will help you decorate your Instagram stories and grab the attention of your followers.

What is a GIF on Instagram

GIF - (gif - picture) is an image format where frames change. In simple words - animation .

GIFs are most often used in Instagram stories. They have already downloaded an insane amount. Here is one of the options:

ABNORMAL COPYWRITER NASTYA @anastasiacolis

Thus, an ordinary story became interesting and rosy. But the above example is typical. Now personal GIFs are attracting attention.

How to create your own GIF for Instagram Stories

Forget about complex instructions in Photoshop and do everything online, for free and without registration .

Step 1. Record and save Instagram history.

We write down boomerang, which will become GIF . And save it on film. I took a motion selfie and applied a mask. The photo shows where to click to save the story to the camera roll.

ABNORMAL COPYWRITER NASTYA @anastasiacolis

Step 2. Find the site "unscreen" on the Internet.

Attached here - Remove Video Background - Unscreen
Follow the link from your phone.

Step 3. Upload our boomerang to the site: "upload clip" button .

Boomerang upload to https://www.unscreen.com/ @anastasiacolis

Step 4. Click "media library".

Boomerang upload to https://www. unscreen.com/ @anastasiacolis

Step 5. Select the boomerang and click "done" at the top right.

Boomerang upload to https://www.unscreen.com/ @anastasiacolis

Step 6. At the bottom right, click "select".

Boomerang upload to https://www.unscreen.com/ @anastasiacolis

Step 7. Save GIF: click "download".

Saving a gif from https://www.unscreen.com/ @anastasiacolis

Step 8. Next - "download".

Saving GIFs from https://www.unscreen.com/ @anastasiacolis

Step 9. At the top right, click on the down arrow.

Saving GIFs from https://www.unscreen.com/ @anastasiacolis

Step 10. Click on our GIF.

Saving a gif from https://www.unscreen.com/ @anastasiacolis

Step 11. At the top right, click on the icon.

Saving GIFs from https://www. unscreen.com/ @anastasiacolis

Step 12. Click "save image".

Saving GIFs from https://www.unscreen.com/ @anastasiacolis

Congratulations! You have saved your gif to your camera roll.

If something was not clear - see the video below.

Create a GIF for an Instagram Story. @anastasiacolis

How to attach a GIF to Instagram Stories

Step 1. Go to Instagram, take or upload a finished photo to which we will attach a GIF.

Step 2. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen or click on the sticker icon.

ABNORMAL COPYWRITER NASTYA @anastasiacolis

Step 3. Minimize Instagram and go to the phone's camera roll.

Step 4. Open the GIF and click on the icon at the bottom left.

Choose a gif from your phone's camera roll. @anastasiacolis

Step 5.


Learn more