- Wondering how to put a story on Instagram?
In this video, I'll walk you through step-by-step.
All right, let's get into it.
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My name is Jerry Potter.
Yes, it rhymes with the boy wizard.
And in this video, I'm gonna show you
how to post an Instagram story.
As you may know, Instagram is a 95% mobile app
and so we're gonna do this on a smartphone,
whether you have Android or iPhone,
should look about the same.
And it's a nice day here
so I'm gonna step outside and we'll walk through this.
So I'm here in the Instagram app,
and your story is always gonna be the first one
in that row of circles up there if you've recorded one.
So I can tap on my story to watch it.
This is something that I had shared,
and if I don't wanna watch anymore,
I can swipe that down.
Once you're in somebody's story,
so again, you can tap on anybody's stories to watch them,
and then, as soon as you were done with that one,
you can tap on the right side of the screen
to move forward in the stories,
or if you wanna move to the next person,
you can just swipe forward.
So that's how those work up here.
They show up in an order determined by the algorithm,
just like the feed post do,
based on who your favorite accounts are,
who you engage with the most,
who's most recently put something up there.
So again, this is a curated feed of stories,
just like this is a curated feed of posts
when we scroll up and down.
So to create your Instagram story,
you can do this from your profile or from the home screen,
but you're gonna tap that plus sign on the upper right.
Then it's gonna ask you,
"Do you want to create any of these many, many things?"
And we want to create a story
so I'm gonna go ahead and tap that plus sign
that says Story.
It's gonna bring you into your camera roll,
and so you could choose something from your camera roll,
or I'm just gonna tap that camera
so we can record something live here.
And so this opens up.
Now, here we are in the Instagram camera.
So quickly, going around the screen,
up here, this little X,
that's basically, if you didn't wanna do this,
you can hit that X and back outta here,
and you're not in Instagram story creation mode anymore.
The one in the middle there, you might recognize that,
that little lightning bolt,
that's to turn the flash or the light on, off, or on auto.
On the upper right here, this is a settings gear,
and you can go in here and you can choose settings
for stories and reels for your privacy,
who can reply, different things like that.
You can also, sometimes if you're trying
to catch something really quickly,
then you might want to switch this toggle here
where it says Default to front camera,
so that it was on the rear camera,
or you might want it defaulting to the front camera.
But if you're trying to catch something really quickly,
you obviously may have a preference
on whether it opens on the front camera or the back camera.
So down below, this is your shutter,
the big white circle on the lower center.
And I'm gonna come back to that here in just a second.
On the lower right, that is your camera roll.
So maybe you've already recorded a video
or used some photos that you wanna use
in your Instagram story, you just tap on that,
and it will give you access to all of those,
instead of actually starting from scratch
and recording it here.
Then down below, you'll see, it says,
POST, STORY, REELS, LIVE.
You can cycle through these.
So if you were gonna do a reel, it would be here,
and I've got another tutorial about that.
You were go live on Instagram, you would choose that.
So you can basically,
if you changed your mind or you hit the wrong thing,
you can access all the major posting formats
in Instagram right there.
And then on the lower right there,
that is just to flip from the front facing
to the rear facing camera
should you decide you wanted to use the other one.
Now, that main white circle there, as I said,
that is your shutter, that is your button
you're gonna choose to or use to create your reel.
So if I tap it, it'll just take a photo.
Okay, and so now, that's the photo that I just took,
and I can add filters and stickers,
which we'll get to in a second, or I'm gonna X out of that.
So now I'm gonna hold the button
down to record the video
that I wanna use for my Instagram story.
So I'm gonna tap that and it starts recording.
And you see that little circle that's going around.
You have 15 seconds to record an Instagram story,
but I wanna show you what happens when it gets to the end,
'cause it actually will keep recording,
and it will let you do currently
up to four 15 second clips in a row
before it will shut you off altogether.
So you can see now, it's continued onto the next one,
and it has added that first clip,
and now you can see the second one forming there
on the right.
Now that I've let go of the shutter, it stops recording,
and it's playing back the video that I just recorded,
that's why my voice is not matching
what you're seeing on the screen now,
'cause this is the video we just recorded.
So you can go through now,
and you can see there's two clips down there,
there's that first one or I can hit the second one.
And what all the effects that we're going to add afterwards
should you choose to add effects,
you can add to different clips.
So you could have one text outline
or whatever on this one
and a different one on the second one.
Hey, I'm standing out here next to an orange tree
recording an Instagram story
for this Instagram story's tutorial.
Now you may notice all of these other circles
next to that main white shutter button.
Those are different filters
and effects you can add before you film.
And I'm not gonna go through all of them,
but I just wanna show you a couple of things.
So this one over here to the left of the button,
that's actually a green screen effect,
and I was using this earlier today for an Instagram reel.
And so you can add something to your background.
So I can hit add media,
and I'm gonna choose this clip I was using earlier.
I was recording something
to make it look like I was at a rock concert.
Obviously, the lighting is terrible,
you can tell I'm not there,
but it's still fun to do sometimes
when you're being creative.
So that's how that green screen one works.
But if you didn't want that,
you can always go back to home,
and then you can swipe through.
These are all different effects that you can add,
and they show up in the order
based on when you've used them.
I wanna show you this one,
not because of my lovely hair color,
but you can see above that,
now there are three other options
that you can tap through as well.
So you can go in and just play
with these lots of fun stuff in there
if you wanna enhance your videos or change your appearance
'cause you're having a bad hair day or whatever it might be.
You've recorded your story, your clip,
your video, your photo you've chosen,
whatever it's gonna be,
it'll just basically play on repeat on this screen,
and then we can go through
and add all kinds of things to it.
So on the upper left, as you probably guessed,
that is the X out button.
If you don't want this,
you can just get rid of it, and it's gone.
The next button is a mute button.
And so maybe you are recording a beautiful sunset,
but meanwhile, there's sirens in the background
and you don't want those there,
you can tap that mute button,
and it'll just mute the sound of your video
that you are using.
Next up, that little infinity sign or sideways eight,
that is for what they call boomerangs.
And that is essentially where it'll loop a video.
So I can tap that,
and it's gonna start with the first part of my video,
and you can see it's just doing the same thing over
and over again.
I can tap in the video with my finger
and I can move it to a different section.
So this is just me talking,
so it's really not that wonderful of a clip for this.
It works really well
if somebody's doing something with more motion.
And then down below,
there are different effects that you can cycle through,
like slow-mo, echo,
this is called where it creates an echo,
visual echo of the video, and duo,
which is like it plays and then rewinds really quickly.
So I'm gonna go ahead and turn that back off,
hit Done on the upper right.
Next up is your text tool.
You can add all kinds of text to your story.
Just gonna type something in there really quick.
And then down here,
there are predefined styles that you can swipe through.
So I'm choosing these as I go,
and it changes the way that it looks.
Most people have a preference for one that they like.
Then from there, up here,
you can play with different things, like,
should it be on the left, the right, or the center.
You can come in here and play around with the colors.
You can change whether there's a background or not.
And then you can also add motion
by tapping that last A there with the lines behind it.
So once you're done,
you've got this looking the way you want,
you go ahead and hit Done.
I'll go ahead and put this down here.
Actually, I'm gonna put it up here
'cause I wanna show you another way to use text here
in just a second.
The next option there,
which looks like little post-it note
with a smiley face on it, that is your stickers,
and this is where a lot of the cool stuff
you can add to your story happen to live.
So you can see I'm recording this around Valentine's day,
so there's lots of Valentine's day things
right there at the top.
And then down here, a ton of stickers.
And I'll just show you some of the major ones.
If you wanted to add your location,
which could increase views,
if people are watching stories from that location,
you can tap that location sticker, and add it there.
If you wanted to ask questions.
You can add a GIF,
so you tap GIF and then you can search
all of the GIFs that are available from GIPHY
and add them on top of your story.
You can do a poll, which is a great way to get engagement.
The more people who engage with your post,
even if they just tap Yes or No, or A or B, on a poll,
the more people, other people will see your stories,
'cause then Instagram sees your story
as being very, very engaging.
Now I'm not gonna keep this poll,
but this is a perfect time
to show you how to delete something.
You hold your finger down on top of it
and then it lets you move it around the screen,
and you see, as I'm moving it,
you see this trash can has appeared at the bottom.
I'm gonna drag it down over the trash can and let go.
And now that's gone.
Couple more, really popular ones that you can use, music.
Not everybody has access to the main library of songs
that some of us have, like commercial music,
and it depends on where you are,
your region, different things like that.
But you can come in here
and you can search for almost any song
in the world it seems like
if you've got access to everything.
If not, you may have access to only non-commercial music,
non-copyrighted music, but either way,
you can come in and add music to your story.
And let me just show you what that would look like.
So I tap the MUSIC sticker, tap on a song,
and it's gonna actually start playing the song
in the background,
and down here, at the bottom,
it shows you which parts it's playing.
You can drag back and forth to choose the section
that you want to be part of your story.
You can also choose right above that timeline there
between these two options,
and it'll either show a small thing or a bigger album cover.
If the song has lyrics available,
you can actually display the lyrics on the screen
and that will be an option as well.
Once you have it looking the way that you want, tap Done,
then you can pinch to zoom or make it bigger or smaller,
you can drag it around the screen.
I'm gonna go ahead and drag it to the trash can
and get rid of it.
Next sticker I wanna show you that's really helpful
is this LINK sticker.
So we can finally all put links in our Instagram stories.
So I'm gonna go ahead and tap that LINK sticker.
And it'll say, "What's the link that you want?"
And you can manually type it in.
I prefer to copy it from a browser and paste it,
just to make sure I don't have any typos.
You can't hit that See Preview button, though,
to check your link as well.
So if I tap that, it's gonna actually go ahead
and open up the page, and I can go, okay, yes,
this is the one I wanna link to.
And then you can customize what shows up on the sticker.
So if I just hit Done, it'll actually show the URL there,
and you can move it around the screen wherever you want it.
Or you can tap Customize sticker text
and then add text here for whatever you want it to say.
Now you see it says CLICK HERE TO REGISTER, instead.
I can pinch to zoom, make it bigger, smaller,
resize it, put it wherever I want,
but I think it's good to have a call to action there
so people know very clearly
that they should click there to register.
Last sticker I wanna show you in this tutorial
because a lot of people watch Instagram stories
without the sound on.
They might be watching in bed next to somebody else
or on a bus and they may not have headphones,
so this sticker is very helpful,
it's the CAPTIONS sticker.
So I tap that,
and it's actually going to transcribe what I say
or what you say in your video, and it's relatively accurate.
So once it shows up there, again,
like we showed you with the other text,
you can cycle through,
and there are different styles at the bottom.
And then you can also change the colors by using those.
You can add backgrounds.
Again, you can play with all those there at the top.
So once I have the way I want it, I'm gonna hit Done,
and I'm gonna do this and move it down here.
And I try and have captions
on almost all my Instagram stories.
Now this one's getting a little crowded
with all the stuff that we have here,
so I would probably get rid of this, here is my text one.
And then I would probably move this down here
so that it doesn't look quite so cluttered
and it's not covering my whole face up.
So those are stickers.
Next one with the three stars.
These are different filters that you can add
after you filmed.
So for example, this one with the four colors,
we actually saw, you could add that as you were filming,
before you filmed, you can also add it afterwards.
So you can go through and play with these
and find one that you like afterwards,
rather than having to have done it before.
And then the three dots on the end give the ability to draw
on the Instagram story if you want.
So you can choose your color.
There's different pen types at the top.
And I could draw glasses if I wanted.
There is a very helpful undo button on the upper left,
if you mess that up.
I'm gonna go back out of that.
And then the other one is to Save,
so I can tap this
and it will actually save it to my camera roll
in case I wanted to share it somewhere else, for example.
Now we're gonna share it.
So at the bottom, you can see that it says,
the button on the left says Your story
and that's to share it to my Instagram story.
Close Friends is if you have a close friend's list
in your Instagram account,
it will only share it to those close friends.
And to get more options, so again,
if you wanna just share your story,
just tap Your story, and it goes.
To get more options,
tap that little arrow on the lower right,
and now I can tap sharing options where it says Your Story,
and I can add, if my Facebook account is connected,
I can say, "Hey, share it to my Facebook account as well."
Or that row down below where it says Message,
you can just DM it straight to people
and not post it if you didn't want to.
Once you're ready, hit Share,
depending on your internet speed,
it may take a while to upload,
or depending on how big or long it was.
When you're ready, you can hit Done.
And now, if I tap on, well here,
let's go back to the main screen,
if I tap on my icon there at the front,
we're gonna see this story that I just posted.
Down here at the bottom,
if I hadn't shared it to Facebook,
that Facebook icon would share it to Facebook.
I could add it to my Highlights,
and if you wanna learn more about Instagram Highlights,
I've linked to a tutorial
about those in the description of this video.
One more question that I get all the time is,
how do I add to my story?
So we go in here and you can see there's actually this clip
and then there's another one that we just recorded.
And some people say, "Okay, well, how did I get two?
Or how do I get 10?"
So what you would do is, again,
just go through the same process,
tap the plus sign, tap Story, then I would record,
here's my addition to my Instagram story.
Once I'm done, I'm gonna let go of the shutter button
and then I'm just gonna tap to share again to my stories.
And now, once I go back and watch my stories again,
it'll take a second to upload,
but here is the first part of the story that were recorded,
you can see with the captions and all that.
And then right after that
is going to be this additional part that we just added.
So that's all you have to do,
is go through the process again.
It will keep adding to your story.
I don't know if there's a limit at all.
I've never heard of one.
But basically each clip then will automatically delete
after 24 hours,
as we talked about at the beginning of this video.
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Thank you for watching today.
You're not only supporting me
but also my two tiny superheroes at home.