How to make an instagram story 2020

Instagram Stories: Everything you need to know

Instagram Stories have become a staple on the social media app since the feature's launch in 2016. Instead of posting carefully curated photos that will stay on your feed indefinitely (unless you delete them), Stories lets you post several images that play like a slideshow and disappear at the end of the day.

You can upload photos, videos, text or posts from other accounts to your Story. Since Stories don't show up on your main grid of photos, they're perfect for an image or message you want to share with your followers without having to commit to making a full, captioned post. 

Stories function as an alternative way to see the most current activity from the people you follow (though you can now bring back chronological feeds). Stories are placed in a horizontal line directly above your feed: If someone you follow has posted a Story in the past 24 hours, their profile image will appear with a colored circle around it. Tap the image, and you'll see that account's Story. Keep tapping, and you'll see all of the day's Stories posted by accounts you follow.

Navigating through Stories is simple. While browsing the Stories of your friends, swipe right to go to the previous one, left to go to the next one and tap to skip the current photo or video. If you want to linger on one photo, you can pause a story by tapping and pressing the screen. To start the story again, just lift your finger. This also works for video. You can swipe up on a Story to react to it, or you can simply press the heart on the bottom right corner to Like it. 

Here's everything you need to know about Instagram Stories.

Making an Insta Story is a lot like Snapchat

Stories are temporary videos, photos or text that are strung together to form a slideshow gallery that, well, tells a story.

You can save your photo, send it to friends or add it to your Story.

Screenshot by Mary King/CNET

There are a few ways you can start an Instagram Story: You can swipe right or hit the blue plus sign on your profile picture, or go to the top right side of the screen and hit the plus sign there. Once you've done one of these, follow the steps below. 

1. Tap the circle button at the bottom of the screen to take photos or tap and hold to record a video. To add photos or videos from your gallery, swipe up on the screen or tap the photo icon in the lower-left side of the screen.

2. Edit the photos or videos with text (the Aa button) or add a drawing (the button with three dots).

3. Tap Done to save your Story.

4. Tap the Your Story button to share it to your Story, or the Close Friends button to share with a customized list of accounts.

I used the color picker (a little eyedropper that shows up next to the color options) to make the text and star match other colors found in the photo.

Screenshot/Mary King

If you click the Arrow icon, you can shoot your image or video to one of your friends at the same time as it posts to your Story. Just tick the bubble by Your Story, then Message and the person you want to share with. The image will disappear after your friend sees it.

Repeat these steps if you want to add more than one photo or video to your Story. Each photo you add within a 24-hour period will be placed in your Story.

You can select up to 10 photos at a time from your gallery or use the multi-capture feature (Go to the camera screen, hit the downward carrot on the left). 

After you share your new Story, a colorful circle will appear around your profile photo to let your followers know you've posted new content. Your profile picture will also pop up at the top of your followers' Feeds. All they need to do is tap your face to see your Story.

If you have a habit of adding things to your social media accounts that you later regret, good news! Stories can be removed. Tap on the three dots at the bottom right of the photo or video you'd like to delete and hit Delete.

Boomerangs, hands-free and live video, oh my!

Aside from regular photography and videography, Instagram provides several options to mix things up on your Story.

Boomerangs

Boomerangs are fun, short videos that play forward and backward. 

1. To start a Boomerang, swipe right from your feed. This will take you to the Stories camera. 

2. Select Boomerang on the left.

3. Tap record to shoot a short burst of photos.

Hands-free

No need to press and hold to make a video anymore. The Hands-Free option in the left menu lets you record a video without, well, hands. 

1. Swipe right from your feed to open the Stories camera.

2. Hit the downward carrot on the left. 

3. Tap the Hands-Free button.

Live video

You can make live videos in your Stories, too. It works a lot like Facebook's live video feature. 

1. Swipe right from your feed to open the Stories camera.

2. Scroll among the options on the bottom and select the Live option.

3. Options on the left let you title your Live video, schedule it and set it to public or private.

When you go live, a Live tag will pop up on your Instagram Stories bubble to alert followers. 

Spice up your shots with filters, stickers, GIFs and text

One of the best things about Snapchat is the ability to add fun and flair to your photos. Instagram Stories have a bevy of customization features, too. After shooting a photo or video, swipe across it to add a filter. You can choose from options like Lagos, Los Angeles and Abu Dhabi.

If you see someone else using a filter on their Story and you want to give it a try, tap the name of the filter (below their username). A menu will pop up allowing you to try it instantly or save it for later.

Stories also let you add augmented reality filters to your pictures, just like Snapchat. Here's how to try them out. 

1. Go to the Stories camera. 

2. On the bottom, scroll across the different filter options. (Scroll to the end and tap the magnifying glass to browse even more effects.)

3. Tap the filters to try them on.

4. When you find a filter you like, snap a photo or take a video. These filters also work on Instagram Live. 

Add entertaining filters to your photos and videos.

Screenshot/Mary King

Once you've picked your filter, add some stickers. You'll find a stickers button with a smiley face on it in the top right corner next to the text tool. Tap the button, and you'll be able to jazz up your Story with customizable stickers. Some options include the weather, the day of the week, holidays, quizzes and polls. Once you add a sticker, you can add another, move it around and resize it. 

You can also make your own stickers from images in your gallery. Here's how:

1. Take a photo or video, then tap the stickers button.

2. Scroll until you find a circular icon showing your most recent camera roll photo.

3. Tap that icon, and select one of your images to use as a custom sticker.

4. Once the custom sticker is on your story, tap the sticker and it will transform into shapes like hearts and stars. 

Hashtag stickers are another customization option. Just tap on the sticker that says Hashtag and customize it with your own hashtag. Other people will be able to tap on the sticker and find other photos with the same hashtag. You can also add a hashtag to regular text on your Story and it will be clickable, too.

If you want a sticker for something specific -- like, say, cats -- search "cat" and you'll be presented with both emoji options and gifs. To add a GIF sticker to your post, go to the sticker option and tap on the GIF icon. A library of the moving photos will open, provided by Giphy. When you find one that you like, just add it like you would any other sticker. Searching the word "Effects" will get you sparkles, hearts and other fun additions for your subject's environment.

Once you have your stickers added, go crazy with some snappy text. To add text simply tap on the text icon in the upper right side of the screen and tap on your color of choice. If the colors just aren't right, don't despair. Swipe left on the color palette to reveal more options, or tap the eyedropper icon to pick a color from the image.

Don't want to share a photo at all and just need a blank canvas for text? Go to the Story camera and hit the Aa button on the left. Tap the colorful button on the bottom right to change the color of the canvas.

Swipe through the icons on the bottom to see options for gifs, countdown widgets, quizzes, question prompts your followers can answer, and more.  

The results may be frightening.

Instagram

Tag your friends and followers

When adding text to a Story, all you have to do is include the @ symbol followed by the username to tag someone. The tag is a live link to the person's profile and you can tag up to 10 people.

Share Stories with Direct messaging

You can share other people's Stories by tapping the Direct icon (it looks like a flying paper airplane) on the bottom right of the Stories' screen, choose the friend you want to share with, write a message and tap Send.

When you get a Story sent to you, it will come to your Direct inbox. Be quick, though. When the story disappears after 24 hours, you won't be able to look at it.

If you don't want people to share your Stories, just turn off the sharing ability. Go to your Story camera > Settings icon > Story and toggle Allow Sharing to Messages off.

Flipping through Stories is pretty easy

Navigating through Stories is super simple. While browsing the Stories of your friends, swipe right to go to the previous one, left to go to the next one and tap to skip a photo or video.

If you want to linger on one photo, you can pause a story by tapping and holding your finger on the photo. To start the story again, just lift your finger. This also works for video.

Banish annoying people

If you cringe every time you see a certain someone's Story in the lineup, you can mute it. Simply tap and hold on that person's Story icon when it appears in your Story lineup. A window will pop up that will give you the option to mute this person's stories.

Muting doesn't hide the Story totally. It just moves it to the last of the lineup and it won't automatically open while you're playing Stories. You'll need to manually unmute people to get their stories back in the normal mix. Just tap and hold on that person's Story icon and tap the unmute option.

You can also choose who gets to see your Stories and who doesn't. Want to prevent your parents from seeing that epic Friday night out, for example?

1. Go to your Story camera.

2. Tap the Settings icon.

3. Choose Story.

4. Tap Hide My Story From. Select your parents (or whoever else you want) from the list and tap Done. They will still be able to see your posts and profile, but they won't see your Story.

You can prevent certain people from sending you messages from your Story, too. In your Story settings, select an option from the Allow message replies list. You can choose Your followers, Followers you follow back or just Off to prevent anyone from commenting.

Curious to see who's looking at your story? Open your story and swipe up on the screen. At the bottom of the screen will be a view counter and the names of the people who viewed it, plus a heart next to the people who Liked it. Only you can see this information.

Your Stories don't have to disappear forever

If you've become attached to your Story and don't want it to lose it forever, you can download it to your phone. Open your Story and tap the More icon bottom right of the photo or video. Then tap Save.

You can easily save your Stories to your camera roll, automatically, too. Go to your Story camera, find your Story settings and slide the Save story to Camera Roll option on. Every time you create a Story, the videos and images will be automatically saved to your camera roll on your phone.

If you decide you want everyone to see your photos or videos more permanently, you can add them to your profile grid. Simply open your Story, tap the three dots at the bottom right of the photo or video and tap Share as Post. The photo or video will appear in your profile grid. Just beware, whoever can see your profile grid will be able to see the photo or video. It will no longer have special protections that you can add to Stories.

Looking for more Instagram tips? Check out these six hidden features on Instagram's in-app photo editor.

How to create an Instagram Story

Instagram Stories let users post temporary updates to their profile that disappear after a day.

Snap a pic at a cool restaurant? Add it to your Story. Hanging inside watching movies on a rainy day? Add it to your Story. Take a really shaky video at a concert with incomprehensible audio? Add it to your Story *forces a smile.* That's the kind of content we love to see *forced smile intensifies.*

Many people use Stories to post minor updates to their day or life that they don't necessarily feel the need to commemorate with a permanent post. Followers can view the Story to check in, see what's up, and then be on their way.

There's probably a million other reasons people use Insta Stories. We could try to list them all, but you probably just want to know how to make one, right? So without further ado...

There are a bunch of different ways you can start. All will get you to the same place.

1. From the home page (where your feed is), tap your profile picture in the top left where it says "Your Story" with a little plus sign next to it.

Tap "Your Story" to create a Story. Also, enjoy the Cats of Instagram post Credit: screenshot: instagram

OR

2. From the home page, tap the "+" icon at the top (to the left of the heart icon).

OR

3. From your profile page, tap the "+" icon in the top right corner, then select "Story" in the menu that pops up.

You can also get to your Story from your profile page. Credit: screenshot: instagram

OR

4. From the home page, simply swipe across your screen from left to right.

Any of those options should get you to your camera feed. Just make sure "Story" is selected at the bottom.

This is where you ultimately want to be to create your Story. Credit: screenshot: instagram

Now that you're here, this where the fun begins. You have access to a multitude of tools and features you can play around with to create your story. We'll give you the most important three steps and some basic info about the features in between. You'll have to play around with everything to create the specific Story you want.

1. Generally, you'd start by snapping a pic or a video.

But you don't have to. You can scroll across the bottom to pick out a fun filter. You could also tap any of the features on the left to start. Here's a quick guide on what they can do.

Tools will help you create the kind of Story you want. Credit: screenshot: instagram

Create

• Add text with a background

• Create a special occasion/shoutout post for someone (birthday, anniversary, etc. )

• Add a GIF

Example of a "shoutout" post Credit: screenshot: instagram

Boomerang

Layout

Example of the Layout feature Credit: screenshot: instagram

Hands-Free

Multi-Capture

Level

2. Once you have your picture or video, use the features at the top to edit it.

Use these tools to edit/customize your Story pics and vids. Credit: screenshot: instagram

Symbols from left to right:

Save

Add music

• Search for a song you want on your Story

• Choose which 15-second segment of the song you want

• Include lyrics in different fonts/colors or display the album artwork

Add music and show everybody what you're listening to. Credit: screenshot: instagram

Add stickers

Draw/paint:

We may have messed around a bit with the free-draw feature. Credit: screenshot: instagram

Add text

• Type custom text to overlay on your Story

• Apply background

• Use different colors

• Center or align however you want

3. Once your masterpiece is ready, tap "Your Story" in the bottom left corner, and your content will be uploaded to your story!

You can also choose to send it directly to somebody you follow. But otherwise, it's up on your Story for your followers to view for the next 24 hours.

The story is live! At least until I delete it in about five minutes. Credit: screenshot: instagram

How to make stories on Instagram* – sdelano.media

Life is always in full swing on the Internet, and especially on Instagram*. And the busiest place on Instagram* is stories. This is a separate feed of photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours from the moment they are uploaded.

One of the most popular storytelling formats - it helps to establish an online presence without overloading the main feed. In Stories, you can upload tons of vacation shots, broadcast live from festivals, report or conduct polls. If you haven’t done anything like this yet, but would like to, our beginner’s guide will come in handy.

You can access the story photo editor by swiping your Instagram feed* to the right. There are two ways to upload a photo:
- use photos from the phone's gallery - click on the thumbnail of the last photo taken by the phone, it is located in the lower left corner of the screen;
- take a picture directly in the application - for this, the developers have come up with several modes.

Instagram Stories shooting modes*

Regular photo . This mode is enabled first by default. One press takes a photo, a long press switches to a 15-second video mode. You can apply a filter on a photo with some romantic name like Tokyo or Rio De Janeiro - swipe right or left on the photo to apply effects

To send a photo to the feed, click the "Your Story" button at the bottom center of the frame. The "Save" button at the bottom left uploads the photo from Instagram* to your phone along with all the changes you made in the editor: pictures, text and stickers - this photo can, for example, be placed in the main Instagram feed*, from where nothing disappears, or send to friends. The "Recipients" button helps to organize the list of recipients of the frame, if you do not want to share it with everyone in a row - then the application will send the photo to Direct only to the selected ones.

Tooltip : Stories privacy can also be adjusted in the settings (cog icon in the upper left corner of the screen).

If you have selected a photo from the gallery and it was taken more than a day ago, you will see a sticker with the date in large print on it. To remove it, hold the date with your finger - a trash can will appear where you can drag this sticker.

Screen text . Sometimes there is too much text in the story for a short note on the photo - all the letters can be put on separate screens. In this case, there is a "Text" mode. You can change the background color (the colored ball to the left of the main button) and the font. The font settings are hidden behind a button at the top center. The background for the text can also be a photograph — to do this, click on the camera icon in the lower right. To make a colored background appear under the text, click on the icon with the letter "A" and stars in the upper left corner of the screen.

Prompt : You can select this mode to tell what's going on in the photo or video you upload next.

Live . In this mode, the video will be immediately broadcast to the Stories feed. You can invite people to watch your live broadcast, but even after it ends, the video will be available for another 24 hours if you click the corresponding button after the broadcast ends.

Tip : This mode is great for filming at public events, but mobile internet in such places tends to be poor. Provide yourself with a backup link, such as stable Wi-Fi from a friendly cafe next door.

Boomerang . Boomerang is a two-second looped video that captures a single movement. Swings, fountains, flowing hair, printing presses - they will all be happy to play in your creative boomerangs.

Superzoom . Allows you to shoot a three-second video with an increase in some part of the frame and accompanying music. There are several options for superzoom: drama, TV show, pendulum and disco beat. To select one of these options, you need to successively click on the icon with the treble clef.

Hint : to keep the music from disappearing from the video, you need to follow the sound speaker indicator in the upper left corner of the frame - there should not be a cross.

Reverse shooting . You shoot the video as usual, and Instagram* shows it in reverse order.

Hint : It is especially cool with those movements that in the usual version you will not see in the reverse - squeezing paste out of a tube, blowing soap bubbles or jumping into the water from a cliff.

Hands free . In this mode, pressing will start a 15-second recording, and you do not have to hold the record button with your finger. It will come in handy, for example, if you need to record your incendiary full-length dance on video.

Masks, stickers and text on photos

Instagram Stories* opens up new possibilities for selfie lovers: you can apply virtual make-up, fan coloring or bunny ears to your photo or video. To turn on the front camera, click on the icon of two arrows in a circle, and then the adjacent button with a smiley. A set of masks will appear below - have fun! A single press will take a photo, and a long press of the button will record a video.

You can easily add a geotag, local temperature and time, a hashtag, your companion's Instagram* account to your photo. To access these buttons, tap the square smiley icon at the top of the screen.

You can also choose stickers or gifs there.

The Poll button lets you ask a two-choice question, while the moving emoji button invites your readers to rate it.

To add text to the photo, click the "A" icon at the top of the screen. In this editor, you can change the font and background under the text - the buttons are located at the top, and the color palette is at the bottom.

By the way, you can write something in another editor designed for drawing. It is activated by the pencil icon at the top of the screen. The slider on the side will help you adjust the thickness of the brush, and you can choose the type of brush on the top line: a simple pencil, a marker, a neon brush, and something like graffiti spray. There is also an eraser and an "Undo" button with an arrow.

Drawing is a very useful tool to help mask parts of a photo that don't need to be disclosed.

Stories video

The maximum video length for Stories is 15 seconds. If your story doesn't fit within these limits, use the CutStory app, which will cut your long video into the desired segments. To add music to a video, you can use the Storybeat app - you can select a song from your library and attach it to a video or photo slideshow. But sometimes you would like to use a video clip without any sounds at all - in this case, click the speaker and cross icon at the top of the screen when preparing the video for uploading to stories.

The main thing to remember for a beginner is to press all the buttons in a row, even if you don't know what they are for. You won't break anything there! Good luck and good stories.

life hacks and tricks for creating stories on Instagram*.

Stories took the attention away from the feed of publications. In 2020, not using Stories means losing 50% of the engagement that could be in the profile. And the popularity of Stories continues to grow - more than 3 million Instagram stories are published daily in the world *.

In this article, we will tell and show you how to make stories on Instagram*, how businesses can use stories, and provide a sea of ​​cool ideas on what to post in stories to engage and retain followers.

Contents

What is Stories?

Why you should use stories

How to make your story

Do businesses need Stories?

TOP 9 third-party services for creating stories

Ideas for creating Stories

Life hacks and story tricks

Privacy settings

What are Stories?

Stories and Instagram*. Stories are the most popular Instagram* format. It was launched on August 2, 2016 and became extremely popular with users.

Stories are photos and videos that sit in a separate section at the top of your news feed and disappear after 24 hours.

Stories in the Instagram feed*.

The developers of the social network are actively developing it and constantly improving it. That is why recently in some accounts (so far in test mode) a story feed has appeared.

This is what the story feed looks like

The duration of stories is 15 seconds, however, developers are testing the format of longer stories, increasing the time to 30-60 seconds.

At the moment, the entire Instagram* ecosystem. divided into 2 camps:

• users who "live" in stories and occasionally post posts with important information;
• users who publish photos and videos every day to the feed, while they either do not watch stories at all or quickly scroll through them.

Why you should use stories

1. Stories last 24 hours. This means that the user has 24 hours to view the content. Here, the fear of missing out on something interesting and important is triggered, so the chance that the user will watch the story is much greater. This accordingly affects the coverage of both the stories themselves and the posts in the profile, if there was an announcement of the publication in the stories.
2. Stories are always in sight. The algorithm of Instagram* works in much the same way as in Facebook*: it decides which posts to show and which not for each specific user. In the case of stories, this does not work, since stories are always at the top in the order of publication.

Location of stories in the order they were published



3. You can always see the list of users who viewed the story while it was published. In ordinary publications, you can only see who liked or left a comment, but you can’t see who exactly saw the post.

Where can I see people who have watched stories?

Opening our story:




Opening history

Then he clicks on the thumbnails of avatars with the inscription “Viewed”.

History from a personal account

And here we can see those people who viewed this story:




List of those who viewed stories

You can also see the list of those who have watched the story in the archive.

In order to access the archive, go to your profile and click on the three bars in the upper right corner - this is your profile menu.




Profile menu

Next, click on "Archive":




Archive button

And voila, we are in the archive:




Stories archive

To see who viewed the story, we do the same manipulations as described above: click on the desired story - then click on the thumbnails of the avatars and get to the "Viewed" section.




Viewed button




Users who viewed history

Just like for normal posts, we can see the story statistics. To do this, go to the profile menu:




Profile menu

Open the "Statistics" tab:




Statistics section

Next, scroll down and find the "Stories" section and click the "All" button:




Press the "All" button

We get into the statistics of stories:





History statistics

By the way, since recently, stories statistics can only be viewed for 24 hours, 7 days and 14 days.




Time period for which you can view history statistics

And in this tab we can see the statistics of the indicator that we need:




History metrics tab

Here we can see reach, website clicks, button clicks, and more.





History indicators

Why is it useful to know who is watching your stories? If your account is not promoted, then in this way you can identify a “hot audience”, and also make sure that these are not bots. If your account is promoted and followed by, for example, an opinion leader you follow or some celebrity.


See also How to promote Instagram*. independently from scratch: detailed instructions

For example, recently the singer Drake signed up for the account of a Moscow tiler. You can read about it here. If the singer watches the story of this tiler, then you can release a video with an appeal directly to the singer (for example, on behalf of the brand) with a proposal for cooperation.

4. Stories can be pinned to your profile in the highlights section. They are also called eternal stories.

Hightlights (highlights)

In this case, when a person enters your account, he sees not only your publications, but also a list of stories above the feed. This will help to identify not only the hottest users, but also those who specifically went to your profile and viewed the section with stories: these are potential leads, customers, potential fans, positive people and brand advocates.


5. Stories are easier to get into the recommendations block than regular posts. To get into the recommendations, you need to put relevant hashtags and geolocation in the story - this tells Instagram * that the story was recorded on a certain topic in a certain place. When a user enters recommendations, he may see a block of recommendations from stories from a specific location. For example, a user who is located next to a Starbucks coffee shop in St. Petersburg can be shown stories recorded in this coffee shop. For a post to be recommended, it must have a lot of activity.
6. Stories have much more options for editing posts. When we post a regular photo, we can apply a filter, rotate the photo, tag a person and a place, or use third-party effects applications. And in stories, we can not only do all these actions inside the application, but also add stickers, animation, geolocation, text, music, hashtags, weather conditions, and so on. That is, stories are a ready-made tool for editing visual content.
   
7. You can create a full-fledged poll in stories. Yes, you can ask a question under a regular post and ask subscribers to answer it in the comments. But now the average user of social networks is lazy and leaving a comment under the post is a real feat. In the story, we can add a sticker with a survey or test, and all the user needs to do is click on one of the options.

An example of polls on Instagram *.

How to make your own story

To make a story for your Instagram, you need:

1. Log in to Instagram*. and click on your avatar. If during the day you did not have a single story, then next to the profile picture there will be a “+” icon. If you already have a story, then scroll down the article, because you already know how to do it :)




Click on avatar



2. Next, we get into the application's camera and immediately see that we can take a normal photo by clicking on the "Shoot" button. And to record a regular video, hold down the "Shoot" button for a long time.




Capture button

We can immediately apply a mask or effect:




Effects and Masks

Or we can launch a live broadcast to communicate with our audience online.




Live button

You can also add photos and videos from your library on your mobile device:




Library button




Mobile photo

And we can also apply the effect. To do this, click on the smiley with sparkles:




Selecting an effect for the finished photo

And choose the effect or mask you like:




Effects and Masks

So, back to the camera. On the right we see the shooting modes. Click on the arrow:





Expanding the list of shooting modes

And open the full list of modes:




Complete list of shooting modes

Boomerang is a looped video.




Stories Boomerang Example

Collage - a composition from a photo.




Sample collage for story

Superzoom - zooms in on the frame with music overlay.




Example of superzoom for Stories

Hands free mode - you can record video without long pressing the "record" button.


3. Next, we can mark a business partner.




Branded Content Tag

When we mark a business partner in the history, the inscription "Sponsor of the publication" and the name / name of the partner company appear.




"Publication Sponsor" inscription

The business partner will be able to view the metrics of this story, we will be able to see our story in the "Ad Library" section, and the ability to edit this story will be limited.

4. We can save the photo. Click on the arrow as shown in the screenshot below and your edited photo will be saved to your phone.




Saving a photo



5. Add stickers. Click on the icon as shown below and choose any sticker you like.




Adding stickers



6. Add text




Adding text

Recently Instagram*. expanded the number of fonts that can be used. This gives a new impetus to creativity :)


7. We can draw something directly on a photo or video




Drawing mode



8. When the photo is ready, click on the "Your story" button to publish the story.




Publish stories

Ready. Now your story is uploading and all your followers will see it.

Congratulations, you have learned how to make stories on Instagram*.

By the way, for stories there is a category “Close friends”. This means that only the people you want to show your story to will see your story. To post stories only for a certain circle of people, when publishing, click the "Close friends" button.




"Close Friends"

Also Instagram*. started testing the function of automatically generated subtitles in stories. Now it will be possible to understand what bloggers are saying, even without sound.

Do businesses need Stories?

There is an unequivocal answer to this question: absolutely necessary. And that's why:

1. Thanks to stories, you can increase the coverage of publications in the feed: make announcements of new posts and interest users. Let's not forget about the people who watch only stories instead of the news feed;
2. Stories advertising is cheaper because there is little competition. However, this will change drastically soon as more and more brands are using story ads.
3. Stories work great for audience engagement. Polls, quizzes, games - these story formats are good for people.

Example of Audience Engagement with a Survey

TOP 9 Third Party Services for Creating Stories

Wondering how to make stories on Instagram *. unusual and bright? If you don’t have enough built-in visual content creation tools to create stories, you can use third-party services. Below I will tell and show about the TOP 9 third-party story creation apps that we use in our work.

1. StoryPic - Story Maker - for those who like it brighter

An application for lovers of bright and unusual Stories. The templates are grouped into the Popular, Colors, Free Templates collections. Each collection has several design options in the same style. All collections of templates are distinguished by non-standard frames, play of shapes and contours, as well as elements (icons, substrates, backgrounds).

StoryPic App

Pros:

• You don't need registration and an account to work.
• 23 free templates available.
• You can work with fonts.

Cons:

• There are very few Cyrillic fonts.
• Lots of advertisements.

You can work for free, there is paid content.

2. StoryArt – everything is included here

A large set of templates for every taste, divided into categories. More than 1,000 design options are available. You can create covers for Hightlights - more than 200 templates are available.

StoryArt App

Pros:

• You can post a picture to Instagram*. right from the app.
• You can edit photos: correction, colors, vignettes.
• It is possible to set up quick access to frequently used templates in the "Favorites" section.

Cons:

• The resolution of finished publications does not always correspond to the Instagram* format, some of the edges are cut off.
• Few Cyrillic fonts.

You can work for free, but there is paid content.

3. Mojito - animated stories for those who are tired of ordinary pictures

Application for creating regular and animated stories, as well as short videos. There are 48 static story templates, 34 video templates and 19for animated. The application is constantly updated and new templates are added.

Mojito application

Pros:

• You can edit templates to your taste;
• You can insert your videos into templates;
• Can overlay music;
• Cool fonts with animation.

Cons:

• Not enough templates compared to similar applications;
• Few Cyrillic fonts.

Completely free.

See also TOP 8 major mistakes when promoting on Instagram*.

4. Story Maker - for stylish creators

A large number of templates, divided into collections: by holidays, by style, by purpose (for advertising, regular stories, etc.). The image editing kit is minimal: you can overlay text, a sticker, and add your own photo.

Story Maker App

Pros:

• Original and stylish templates;
• The application is completely free.

Cons:

• Poor functionality;
• Lots of ads

You can work for free.

5. Mojo - also for animated stories

The app creates slideshows of photos in stories. With the help of effects, photos move around the screen, change places, increase or decrease in size. Animation can be superimposed on text: add glowing and moving effects.

Mojo App

Pros:

• You don't need to register to use it.
• There is a special collection of animated templates for news stories.
• Publications are saved without watermarks.

Cons:

• Limited functionality for Android.
• Few Cyrillic fonts.
• Limited functionality in the free version.

You can work for free, but there is paid content.

6. Hype Text - work with text like a pro

Application exclusively for working with text. Able to create animated titles. The background can only be selected from the directory of the application itself.

Hype Text App

Pros:

• You can adjust the speed of text animation.
• You can edit existing templates - change colors and sizes.
• Over 200 text animated layouts.
• Layouts display well with Russian text.

Cons:

• Animation time is limited (6 sec).
• In the free version of the application, publications are saved with a watermark.
• Lots of advertisements.

You can work for free, but there are paid options.

7. InShot - cinema studio right on your phone

Video editing application. Allows you to process video fragments and glue them into full-fledged clips. You can overlay music, text, special effects and filters. You don’t need any special skills to use the application, it’s easy to deal with it.

InShot Application

Pluses:

• You can apply special effects.
• You can blur the background of the video.
• There is a music gallery.
• Both video and audio files can be trimmed.
• You can adjust the speed of the video: speed up or slow down the clips.
• You can overlay text, stickers, stickers.

Cons:

• In the free version, publications are saved with a watermark.
• It is not possible to paste text from the clipboard, only print it yourself.
• No video transitions between video slides.

You can work for free, but there is paid content.

8. Animated Stories is another app for animated stories

Application for animated stories. Allows you to overlay text, stickers. You can overlay music, but it is added from a mobile device. Works only with photos.

Animated Stories App

9 .

Nichi is a cool app for creative ideas

Another app that creates layered stories. There are collections of stickers, filters, backgrounds, fonts. The application is easy to use and has wide functionality.

Application Nichi

Pros:

• There are many features available in the free version.
• You can create your own templates from built-in elements.
• There are backgrounds with various textures.
• You can create collages.

Cons:

• Few Russian fonts.
• Advertisement present.

You can work for free, but there is paid content.

Stories ideas

Behind-the-scenes photos and videos

People love live content. They love to watch the development and events that the brand hosts. If you upload beautiful staged photos to the feed, subscribers will be interested in how everything looked live. For example, here are a couple of shots from life inside our agency: the birthday of the Web Center and the shooting of a new video for our YouTube channel.

Sample behind-the-scenes video from the Web Center

Customer reviews and content

Reviews are great proof that people love what a brand does: product, content, service. This is useful content that will help you improve and consolidate the reputation of your company without any effort or investment. If you received a notification that a user tagged you in a post or story, just share it on your profile. Reviews worth adding highlights.

An example of reviews about the Web Center Academy

For example, we post testimonials from our clients and Academy interns in the “Reviews” highlight.

Surveys and tests

If you want to know the opinion of your subscribers, then ask it using the Poll or Quiz sticker.

Create a poll and set the time when voting ends. You will have 2 possible answers. After the subscribers vote, you can publish the results in stories. So people will see the percentage of votes.

By the way, when the user clicks one of the two buttons, you will see the number of voters, profile names and percentage.

Poll example

Create a quiz. And here are 2 options:

• A quiz with only 1 correct answer. Ask a question and invite subscribers to guess the correct option from 5-6 options.
• Quiz with multiple choices but no correct answer. This quiz aims to find out the opinion of your audience or, for example, give them several options for the topic of an article / video. For subscribers, only the conditional correct answer will be visible. You can see the voting results in the history statistics and publish them in stories.

Sample surveys

You can ask subscribers for advice or find out what their experience was. You can ask what product they are waiting for in the assortment or what gift they are going to give their loved ones for any holiday. Often, subscribers participate in surveys to find out how many people think differently.

Open questions

One of the formats for communicating with subscribers. There are 2 options for how you can use open-ended questions:

• Questions are asked to you - write in the box so that users ask you questions and publish your answers in stories;
• Let users answer your question - write a question in the box and post subscribers' answers in stories and agree or refute their answers.

Example of open questions

You can answer both in video format and write the answer over a photo or a colored background. Ask questions, answer them, ask for advice - any communication with the audience automatically increases brand loyalty.

Memories

If there is nothing to post “today”, you can remind subscribers about an interesting post that you posted a few months or a year ago. To find Memories, go to the stories archive and scroll to the end of the feed. Below the feed will be posts from the feed that you posted on the same date as "today".

Memories from the history archive

Happy Holidays

Post holiday greetings for the audience, birthdays of employees or especially active subscribers, and so on. Along with congratulations, you can report promotions, opening hours or gifts in honor of this day. You can also congratulate the winners of competitions.

An example of congratulations in stories

Announcements and news

Announce new events, new products, price changes, invitations to webinars and other useful news. As we wrote above, people are divided into two camps: some watch the feed, others watch stories. That is why all the most important things should be duplicated in stories.

Stories announcement example

Live broadcasts

People love to communicate with brands, bloggers and get feedback from them. Therefore, conduct live broadcasts: in the Q&A format, just communicate with the audience.

Before starting a live broadcast, consider a few important details:

• Choose a hot topic. In the announcements, explain why you chose it, why people should watch this broadcast. Also don't forget to fill in the live stream title (this is a relatively recent feature)0156
• Do not forget to specify the date and time of the broadcast.
• During a live broadcast, address the audience: ask the audience to ask questions and answer them. Users will be more involved in the dialogue if you ask them to.

Live broadcasts can be saved to IGTV and reviewed at any time.

You can invite a guest for an interview - a specialist from your field. For example, the head of the Web Center Roman Plotnikov conducts a series of live broadcasts “Everything is online: how to enter and advance in digital”.

An example of live broadcasts from the "All in Online" series with the head of the Web Center Roman Plotnikov

Create a mini-cartoon

This option is for the most creative. Create an animated scene with famous characters. People love creativity and will definitely respond. All you need to do for this is to choose the right stickers, and then - a flight of fancy.

Life hacks and story tricks

• If you took a photo for Instagram*, you can swipe right and select the appropriate filter.
• Only users/brands with checkmarks or those with more than 10,000 followers can add a link to the site in stories. How to make a link in a story on Instagram *. As soon as you cross the threshold of 10,000 subscribers, a link icon will appear at the top of the Stories toolbar.

Link in stories



• On Instagram, you can write text on a gradient background. To do this, just press the "Text" button in the camera mode. The background can be selected by clicking on the colored circle.
• In stories, you can fill the screen with one color. How to do it: click on the drawing icon, which is located in the upper left corner.

Drawing mode

Select any color from the palette then long press on the screen.

See also Hashtags - why they are needed and how to use them

On a filled screen, you can draw with an eraser. If you just tap on the screen, you get circles, but you can also draw with your finger by reducing the size of the eraser.




Eraser pattern example



• If you want to write text or make a stroke in the shade that is on the photo, first you need to click on the colored circle - open the palette - put your finger behind the photo - select the desired color.




Color palette

Privacy settings

If a user posts too many stories, you can hide that person's stories. To do this, make a long press on the avatar:

Pin the user's avatar

And then click the Hide button.

Hide button

You can hide only stories or posts and stories.

Buttons for hiding history

If you want to watch his stories again, then scroll through the stories to the very end, find this user there.

User whose stories we have hidden

Next, hold down his avatar again and turn on the display of his stories.

Show history button

To tag someone in history, start typing a nickname in the @webcentr format. Instagram*. he will offer options for profiles.

Profile tag

A notification about a mention in your story will be sent to the user in direct.

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