If you are getting annoyed at the low reach and engagement of your Instagram
Stories,
then making just one of the mistakes I'm gonna share in today's video could be
holding you back. How do I know?
Because I've made every single mistake that I'm about to share,
and when I stopped making them things changed a lot. My Story views went way up.
Now I'm gonna warn you,
some of the things I'm gonna share might sound frivolous or like they're not
really gonna impact your bottom line.
But these are the things that I wish someone would've screamed at me to stop
doing. Like this one.
For many years I missed out on making my Instagram Stories match my brand
colors. Why is this important? Well,
research shows that color can increase your brand recognition by up to 80%.
This means just by using your brand colors over and over again,
people are going to recognize you and your brand way more than if you're not.
For example, what brand comes to mind when I show you this image? Pretty easy.
We know this one, right? Now, what brand comes to mind with this image?
A little trickier, but I think you know where I'm going.
And what brand comes to mind with this image? Okay, this one's tough,
it's only one color. But did you get it?
All this talk of color reminds me of the time that I painted my nails like this.
Can you guess the brand that has almost the exact same colors? A little hint,
you eat it. I remember this day well.
After I got my nails done and it clicked what brand these nails reminded me of,
I couldn't stop thinking about them. My taste buds were salivating.
So much so that I made my mom travel halfway around the world from Vancouver to
Barcelona with a huge bag of Mini Eggs. It's a big one.
It's half empty now, but that's how powerful color psychology is.
I'm gonna show you a super fast way to bring your brand colors into your
Instagram Stories. So here I am in my Instagram,
I'm going to swipe to the right and bring up my Story feature.
So you can see down in the bottom center, it's set to Story.
Then I can either take a photo here or I can swipe my thumb up
and pull a photo from my camera roll. So let's say I take a photo here.
Now I wanna add some text, so I'm gonna tap the AA at the top.
So the default text is the black with the white background, that's fine,
but I wanna bring in my brand colors, right?
So I'm going to stay in the text area and you can see in the upper area
there is a gradient. So if you tap this gradient,
this actually gives you more color options than what you see down here.
There's about 10 options down there,
but if you tap onto any one of these colors and hold your finger,
you're gonna see a whole wide range of colors where you can just drag your
finger and find one that's similar to your brand color.
Now there's not just that option.
If I swipe to the left and I look at even more color options and again,
hold my finger down on one of them, I get a whole new color palette, basically.
There's reds, there's browns, there's greens, and same thing.
If I swipe my finger one more time to the grays and the blacks and hold my
finger down, I get some more options. So don't forget that if you can
Find a color similar to your brand color just by looking through these
gradients, don't forget that little tip.
Hold down on any color and then you're gonna get the whole rainbow of options
ahead of you. Now let's say you have a very specific brand color.
What I want you to do is save your color palette in your camera roll.
So I'll go to my camera roll and you can see under photos I have my brand
colors in two different versions.
This is a screenshot from Canva and this was a screenshot from my brand
designer.
So I keep them in my camera roll and I also heart them so they're always under
my favorites. These are essentially the same colors,
but those are my brand colors.
So what I'm going to do is go back to my Story and I'm going to tap
the square happy face and then go down to the circle where you can
input an image.
So tap the circle on the right side and then choose from your camera roll your
brand colors. There they are, they can cover your face, that's okay.
Now tap back into your text and then tap on the eyedropper tool.
And the eyedropper tool allows you to move your finger around to
whatever color you want. Okay,
so let's say we want the purple and I can tap the A's with the
sparkles to get a different version of that purple.
But I like the lighter purple, and that is my exact brand color purple.
So again, if I wanna maybe switch to the yellow,
I'm gonna go back to the eyedropper tool and I'm gonna drag my finger over to
that bright yellow, that's my brand yellow. I'm gonna hit done. Okay,
now with this image, I can just drag it around my screen,
there's a trash can in the bottom center, I'm gonna drag it to the trash can,
and there we go. We have my brand color as the text in my Story. Ugh,
that's so much better, my Story looks so on brand - oh!
Someone just mentioned me in their Story! Oh,
I'm just gonna go ahead and like reshare that really quickly. No, don't do it!
I'm Elise from the future and you said you wish someone would scream at you.
Well,
I'm here screaming at you now to not repost every Story mention like you're a
walking billboard or something. Why? What's the problem?
People make this mistake all the time.
Relying on boring Story re-shares whether other posts or when other accounts
mention them in their Stories,
and then they get mad at the Instagram algorithm when their reach is low.
I can see what you're saying because yeah,
Instagram Stories aren't meant to be a billboard for your advertisements,
like what you'd see at your local gym.
And I've definitely done that before and my views went way down.
But I actually have a hack for this,
on how to jazz up your Stories when you do share content.
So let's say you have a post or a Reel that you wanna share to your Stories.
So typically you're gonna go into that post,
hit the paper airplane button and then hit add to Story. And if you tap it once,
you're gonna get that option. So it's not bad, not great, but nothing crazy.
So what I'm gonna do is take a screenshot of this image and then in my camera
roll I'm actually going to edit this image and crop the borders down
so that you just see this part of the image. And I'm going to hit done.
Now I'm going to
Expand this as wide as it possibly can because this is tappable.
Next I'm going to go to the square happy face,
and I'm going to go to the circle icon on the right that pulls in an image from
my camera roll. And I'm going to find the original image of my post. Here it is.
Okay,
so this is the image and I'm gonna make this large and I'm going to cover what's
going on in the background. Alright,
and then next step is I'm gonna go back to the square happy face,
and I'm gonna pull in the image that I just cropped and I'm gonna place it
centered right over that last image. So there's three layers here.
There's my tappable post at the very bottom,
there is my large image in the middle, and then my cropped image at the top.
And this just gives you a nice visual boost.
Now I'm going to share to my Stories,
and then when you view it from your Stories, this post is now tappable.
So it's gonna take people directly to your post and it's more visually
interesting. Now, if you don't wanna go through all that effort,
another simple thing that you can do is let's say you're sharing this Reel.
Again, hit the paper airplane button and then hit add to Story.
Then go to the square, happy face,
go to your camera roll and pull in your brand colors.
Then go to the three dots and hit draw.
Then choose the eyedropper tool and find one of your brand colors.
Then hold your finger down right next to your Reel or around it and it's gonna
change the background to that color.
Then get rid of your your image that you don't need, and there you go.
You've just changed the background of your Story to be on brand.
I just cannot resist these Mini Eggs. My nails reminded me of them,
here I am with this 10 pound bag,
and I knew this would be a dangerous prop for this video, but worth it.
Just like I can't resist Mini Eggs,
that irresistibility is exactly what you want your viewers to have when it comes
to your Stories. And beyond just editing your text to be on brand,
did you know that you can go a step further and make customizations to the
question sticker and the location sticker? I'm gonna show you how.
So the question sticker. This is what most people do, they swipe up,
they choose a photo from their camera roll, they hit the square happy face,
and then they find the question sticker there.
But I don't want you to go that route. Instead,
I want you to open up your Stories,
tap this arrow and you're gonna go to create. Okay?
So in the create menu is where you're gonna go find your question
sticker. Here it is. Now if you tap on the question sticker,
now you're gonna see that color dropper tool as an option. Normally it's not.
So you can use this color dropper tool to choose a custom color for your
sticker. So in the bottom left, that button brings up your camera roll. Again,
we are going to bring in your brand colors, tap the question sticker,
tap the color icon and choose one of your brand colors, then hit done,
okay? Then we are going to move the sticker. And if you can't delete it, just
Minimize it and put your question sticker over top of it, but there you go.
Now you have an on-brand question sticker. Once you've chosen your color,
that's going to be it, and then your Story's ready to be shared.
Now let's say you wanna add your location sticker to your Story.
Here's what most people do, they go to the square,
happy face at the top and they tap location.
But I don't want you to go this route, so hit cancel. Instead,
I want you to go to the AA, the text option, and you can see over on the right,
right on top of your keyboard, there's a location option.
So tap that location option and then type in your location.
And now we can actually use the color wheel,
so if I tap the color wheel at the top to change the color of my location tag.
So I can choose any one of these,
I can hold my finger down and choose something like that.
Or I can use the same trick where I bring in my brand colors and use the
eyedropper tool to choose my brand colors. So in this case,
it's just chosen the green,
but let's drag it over to the purple in my profile and then hit done.
Once you hit done, you can't change that.
But now I've just customized two stickers to be on brand.
Now we've made it this far.
I've yet to eat this entire bag of Mini Eggs yet because I have to share the
biggest mistake that I've made with my Stories over the years.
And it all starts with this question, what do you have that Mini Eggs don't?
Aside from its crisp shell and its perfectly balanced milk chocolate flavor,
what Mini Eggs don't have that you do is humanness. You are a human.
Mini Eggs are not. And that's the next mistake I made with my Stories.
I removed my humanness from the Stories and sometimes I would just share graphic
after graphic after graphic. Yawn, boring. Now,
if you wanna add more humanness to your Stories, because let's face it,
people do business with people, so it's a really good thing.
But let's say you don't wanna be talking to your camera.
Let me show you this really cool iPhone trick that allows you to put your
humanness into Stories without you having to even do your hair.
If you go to your your photo reel,
and let's say there's a photo you like,
like I took this one of myself yesterday.
There's this really cool iPhone trick that I don't think a lot of people know
about, but when there's a subject of the photo, for example, this is me,
and I hold my finger down on the subject. Well,
now we're looking at the live photo.
But hold your finger down and then swipe up when you can see that you've been
selected.
Now you can see this white ring of fire around me and basically iPhone
has cropped me out of the photo. What? That's insane.
So you can either share it or hit copy and then go over
to your Instagram, open up your Stories,
and let's say you pull open this image.
And then I go to my three dots, I hit draw, I hit the white,
I hold my finger down and I give myself a blank canvas, hit done.
Then go to the AA or the text icon and where you see this blue
cursor, tap It and hit paste. And there you go.
You've got a cutout version of yourself. So cool, right?
So you can go to your camera roll.
I like to keep the brand photos of mine as an album in my camera roll,
and I can do the exact same thing. So I can choose any brand image of mine.
I'll hold my finger down on the subject and then quickly swipe up.
Now iPhone has cut me out. I'm gonna hit copy, go back to my Story.
Let's delete this one and then go back to AA where I see the the blue
cursor, tap it, hit paste.
And now I've just pasted myself into the Story. Of course,
I can change the background color. You already know this trick,
but bring in your brand colors, there they are.
Then go to the draw feature,
go to the color dropper feature and choose a brand color.
Then hold your finger down where the background is, hit done,
move this to the trash can. And there you go.
You've just created an on-brand Instagram Story with this human element.
And you didn't even have to do your hair,
and you didn't even have to open up Canva,
you did it all within the Instagram Story app.
Now that your Stories are ready to be more recognized, get more reach,
and have more humanness, don't drop the ball when it comes to your sales.
Watch this video next on how to generate more sales all through Instagram and
without ever leaving the app.