- Wondering how to use Instagram Stories?
Good, 'cause people are watching Instagram Stories
more and more every single day.
In this video, I'm gonna walk you through
all of the essential features
so you can start creating Instagram Stories right away,
and if you've already been doing Instagram Stories,
watch because I'm sure I'll be able to show you
some ways to do them quicker, better
or more creatively, all right?
Let's dive into it.
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My name is Jerry Potter, yes it rhymes with the boy wizard,
and in this video, I'm showing you how to use
Instagram Stories, start to finish, step by step.
Plus, there's definitely a strategy for the best time
and when you should post on Instagram Stories,
so make sure you watch 'til the end
and we'll tell you all about that.
For anyone who is brand new to Stories,
they're vertical content for smartphones
made up of photos, videos and graphics
that automatically delete after 24 hours,
and a lot of people ask, "Why would I create something
"that will be gone in 24 hours?"
Keep in mind that most of the posts on social media
stop showing up in feeds after 24 hours,
sometimes even less.
Once you put up an Instagram Story, it will show up here
at the top of the Instagram app.
So these are all Instagram Stories.
These are different from the feed posts,
which is the part of Instagram that has always been there
that you scroll through.
So if you were gonna post to your feed,
you click the plus sign at the bottom there in the middle,
but we are going to post to Instagram Stories
and so to do that, we're going to tap the little camera icon
on the upper left, that opens the Instagram camera.
Now there are a ton of settings inside Instagram Stories,
and so I'm gonna walk through them relatively quickly
'cause I want you to have a general overview
of what all of this stuff does.
So on the upper left there, that's just a settings icon.
I can tap that, you can go in and choose who can reply,
who can see your Stories, pretty self explanatory in there.
The one in the middle,
I left this out of a previous tutorial and somebody says,
"You didn't tell me what the lightning bolt was!"
The lightning bolt is basically a camera flash.
The X on the right is simply to close it out
and go back to the Instagram app.
Now on the bottom, the big button in the middle there,
that is how you're gonna take a picture or record a video.
So to take a picture, you just tap it once.
Or to record a video, you would actually hold it down.
So as I'm holding it down there,
you can see that circle going around.
You can record up to a 15 second clip,
but one feature that Instagram added, which is great,
is if I hold it beyond 15 seconds,
it'll start another 15 second clip.
So you can see, it's almost back to the top,
and you see the little thumbnail that popped up.
Now it's recording the second 15 second clip.
When I'm done, I take my hand off the button.
Now you can see there's actually two clips down there
at the bottom that will go up back to back.
Now, I'll address these guys with the glasses here
in just a second, but first, I wanna take you through
the bottom row of what you're seeing on your screen
when you're in the Instagram camera.
First of all, on the left, that's actually your camera roll.
So if you tap on that, you can take a video or a photo
that you took already another time,
maybe with your regular camera
or a special camera app that you love,
and you can use that in your Instagram Story.
And then across the bottom, these are all different settings
for different things.
So the first one is actually to go live on Instagram,
which we're not gonna cover in this video,
but I do have a tutorial about going live on Instagram
and you can find that in the description of this video.
Next up is called Create.
So you notice the camera went away.
Create is a screen where you can add some text,
you can add stickers.
Basically you're not using a photo or a video as the basis
and you can just kind of decorate something
from scratch here, and I will go through
all the different features as we go through
some of this other stuff.
Next up is Normal, so that's where we started
and that's just essentially the normal camera.
After that is Boomerang, and if you've ever seen
a looping photo, looks like a looping video
on Instagram Stories, that's what that is.
So I tap it and it will actually take
basically quick shots for about two seconds.
And you can see I've magically turned myself into a dork
but that's kind of what that does.
It's a really fun way to capture motion.
The next one is relatively new and it's called Layout
and this is where you can actually put in
a bunch of different pictures.
So you can actually scroll across here,
so there's four, there's two pictures,
there's three stacked on top, there's two side by side,
there's a six, there's one on top, two on the bottom.
And you can actually take them in here,
so I can go,
take four different photos that way.
If they look the way I want 'em, I hit the check mark
and it saves them.
But you can also insert photos from your camera roll here.
So I go back down to the bottom.
You see it now has a blue plus sign on it.
I can tap that and I can go through
and choose four pictures from my camera roll instead.
Once they're in there too, you can pinch to zoom them
or move them around so they show up
exactly where you want them.
All right, next after Layout is Superzoom
and Superzoom has all of these different ones.
You can play with them, I won't go through all of them.
But basically what it does is it zooms in
and adds a music or sound effect
and it's a special zoom sequence.
So this one is called Dramatic and it zooms in dramatically.
Here is a Beats one, I'll show you how this one looks.
(dance music)
And the last one here is Hands-Free and that's basically
if you didn't want to be holding the phone,
then you can just tap Hands-Free once
and then it will automatically record
until you tap again to stop it.
Now I promised I'd tell you about these little icons
with the glasses on, and those are basically little filters
that you can use.
You can use them on different features.
So you can see now, it's got my username
almost like sunglasses apparently.
I can scroll these different cool effects here.
Oh, that one makes my skin look nice.
This one gives you regular glasses.
So these are all, again, different filters
that you can play with.
Oh nice.
I kinda like this old school filmstrip one.
So lots of those that you can play with and have fun,
whatever is appropriate for your personality and your brand.
And then that last little icon on the lower right,
that's just simply if you wanted to flip around
to your reverse camera.
Right now, this is obviously my front facing camera,
but you can switch back and forth between your cameras,
even while you're recording an Instagram Story.
So those are all the different ways you can take a picture
or record a video in Instagram Stories.
But let's say you wanted to use something
that was already on your phone,
well then you would tap that little icon on the lower left
there to pull up your camera roll or your gallery,
then you would choose the photo you want.
So if I tap that one, it pulls it up.
This is an older photo,
so it automatically adds the date there.
But I can put my finger on it, drag it down to the trash,
see that little trash icon, and that will go away.
It'll show the date if you choose anything
that's more than 24 hours old.
Also, when you're choosing, if you want to choose
more than one at a time, you can tap this little icon
on the upper right and then I can go through
and I can say I want this picture and this picture
and then hit next, and they'll show up here in the Story.
I can do what I want to this picture,
and then I can tap on the other one
and add whatever graphics I want to that one.
So I've selected a video here from my camera roll
and it's basically going to loop over and over again
as I do whatever I wanna do to dress it up.
First thing you can do is you can add a filter.
Just like traditional Instagram, except here,
I'm just gonna swipe with my finger
and it swipes through all of these different filters.
So you may have a favorite, or it may vary
depending on the picture that you have.
So that top X on the upper left is to x it out of this
if I didn't want to use this Story.
The down arrow next to that is if I wanted to save the Story
to my camera roll on my phone.
So maybe I recorded it in Instagram, but I wanna save it
to my camera roll for later.
The next icon is a bunch of different effects
that you can add, kinda like the ones we looked at before
we actually had something.
So I can tap on that and you can actually add things
after you record as well.
This will actually recognize my face
and then add different effects to it.
More options than you could ever possibly need.
Oh, that's disturbing.
And that's more disturbing.
The next icon across the top, that is a chain link
and that is if you want to add a link
to your Instagram Story.
Now if you have an IGTV channel,
you can link to any IGTV video, but otherwise,
you have to have at least 10000 followers
or a verified account to get that link feature,
so most of us don't have that.
Next up is the stickers, and this is where a lot of the fun
and creativity can happen inside of Instagram Stories.
So I tap that little Post-It note smiley face icon,
and these all serve different purposes.
I'll show you a few really quick.
For example, if I wanted to add my location,
I could tap that location one, choose where I am,
move it around the screen, pinch to zoom.
I can also tap on it, and this is true for all of these,
and it'll change the way it appears.
Go back in, if you want to @ mention somebody,
like another account, I can click on that,
and one cool thing there is if you @ mention
somebody else's account, they can share your Story
to their Instagram Story.
The hashtag one is if you want to add a hashtag.
Again you can tap through and change the way that it looks,
move it around, and if at any time, you don't want anything,
you can just drag it down to the bottom
and you'll see this trash can appear
and you can get rid of it.
Gifs or gifs, whatever you wanna say, are a lot of fun.
You can tap on that and then you can search GIPHY
for all kinds of different things.
So some of the most popular ones will show up at the top,
but you can search for literally anything.
So I can search for Facebook for example,
choose something like that, add it to it,
it's a nice little animation.
The music gif may or may not appear in your phone.
I hear from so many upset people, and I'll be honest,
mine has disappeared and reappeared six times.
But it all has to do with the record companies
and what deals they currently have with Instagram.
If you have a business profile,
you're less likely to have it.
And the rules vary from country to country
and region to region all around the world.
But if you have the music sticker, you can come in here,
you can search any song, select it,
and add it to your Story.
And then, down here at the bottom,
you can choose to have the lyrics show in different ways.
So the lyrics will actually play as words on the screen.
And then down here, you can actually choose
which part of the song you want.
So it's a lot of fun and a way to add commercial music
to your Story if you have this feature.
You may not have it, so I just want to keep reiterating that
because a lot of people don't.
All right, what else should I show you?
You can add the date, you can do a poll.
This is a great little feature.
You can just add a poll there
and it can be whatever you want.
Quiz, you can do a quiz
where you have multiple choice answers
and then people select their answer
and then it shows them whether they were right or wrong.
You can count down to something with the countdown sticker,
current temperature.
And then lots and lots of other things.
And sometimes the best thing to do
is just start here at the top
and search for whatever you have in mind,
and it'll search stickers and gifs
and all kinds of different things that you can add.
All right, after that one is the sound icon.
Let's say that I don't want any sound in this video,
I can tap that and you'll see now it mutes the sound.
This is especially useful,
for example, if you were at the beach
filming some peaceful wave,
meanwhile there's people screaming in the background.
Next to that is basically a pen that you can use.
So I can tap on that and then I can draw on the screen.
I can also choose the different colors
that I want to draw with at the bottom there.
The little eyedrop tool on the bottom left there,
I can tap that and I can actually choose any color
I want on the screen.
So let's say I wanted something to be the same color
as my jeans there, I can do that,
and now I can actually draw in the same color as my jeans.
Up here, you can also experiment
with different types of pens.
There's kind of a cool neon outline with that effect,
and then there's also an eraser
if you wanna erase everything.
There's also an undo button at the top.
You can go back and undo everything
that you just put on the screen.
And the last one on the right is the text feature
and there's a lot you can do in here.
So I tap those letters and then I type what I wanna type.
For me, it might be something about a new free training.
So right now it's typing in white
'cause that's the default color,
but I can go through and change them
to whatever I want down here.
Again, I can use the eyedropper
to choose the color of my shirt for the text if I want.
I can use this slider over here
to change the size of the text.
And by the way, sometimes I might make it,
so here you can see it's on one line,
sometimes I might make it bigger so that it's on two lines
and then after I'm done, I will shrink it down,
but I did it that way
just because I wanted to have it on two lines.
Once I've saved it, I can still tap in and go back
and edit that some more.
On the upper left here, this is the justification,
so I can have it justified, left, right or centered.
This middle one where it says Classic,
you can go through and there's different fonts and styles.
Modern, Neon, Typewriter, Strong.
And certain ones, you'll see this little box over here
on the left with the letter A in it.
You can tap that and what that will do
actually will put a color box behind it
and invert the colors and you can go through
and change those as well.
And you can even make it a transparent background
if I tap that box with an A one more time.
You can see now it's a little bit transparent.
Once you've got your Story the way that you want it,
down below you can see it says Your Stories
and you can see a little picture of my profile picture,
and then next to that, you can connect it to Facebook
and you can automatically post it
to Facebook Stories as well.
So if I tap that, it will go to both places.
If I only wanna do one, I can actually hold it down on that
and then I can say,
"Okay I don't wanna share this one to Facebook",
for some reason, and then hit Share.
Sometimes you won't see the Facebook option
and that usually means you used a feature
in Instagram Stories that's not available on Facebook.
Close Friends means you share it to your close friends.
So you can have a list of people
that are your close friends and family,
maybe where you share more personal things,
or some people use that as a special client list
and so that might be where they share things
that are more work related only with the work people.
And then finally, over here on the right,
you can tap Send To and you can see here
there's the option to share it to Your Story,
Close Friends again,
and then you can actually Direct Message it
to people down below if you want to.
So I'll go ahead and share it to my Story,
and now it goes right there to my Story.
I tap it and you can see it's uploading,
depending on your Internet connection
and the length of the clip.
Time will vary, but now you can see it has been posted
and people can watch it.
Now, a lot of times, I'll get asked,
"How do you add more than one Story?".
So you can see here that I have multiple Stories
in my Instagram Story overall,
and basically all you would do is come back here,
go back to the Instagram camera and then add another Story.
Here's the first one we did, and then I tap
and then there's the picture that I just put up.
So that's all you have to do to add another one.
One more less obvious trick I wanna show you,
I just popped over to my camera roll
and I'm gonna actually just copy this photo.
Then back in Instagram, you can see it says Add Sticker,
or if it goes away, I can actually tap the screen
to bring up a text box,
and then I can hold my finger down here,
on the iPhone at least, and hit paste,
and I can actually paste a photo on top of my video
or any other photo you have.
So one thing I'll do, I've got a copy of my logo
with a transparent background on my phone
and I can add that right on top
of my Instagram Story like that.
You should also know about Instagram Story Highlights.
So here I am on my profile and these are the Highlights.
Instagram Stories auto delete after 24 hours,
but you can actually go through and save them as Highlights
on your Instagram profile,
so people who are checking you out for the first time
can see some of your best stories
and I've got a tutorial on how to do that linked up
in the description of this video.
Now if you're looking to go beyond the basics,
I've linked to some other popular videos
about Instagram Stories in the description of this video.
Now, let's talk about when should you put
your Instagram Stories up.
Is there a strategy that will get them seen by more people?
Absolutely.
The newer your Instagram Story is, in other words,
the more recently it's been posted,
the more likely someone is to see it earlier
in the list of Instagram Stories across the top of the app.
So it's good, if it makes sense, to spread your Stories out.
Now, the algorithm and who they most recently engaged with
also determines what order those will be in at the top,
but it does make sense
to have the freshest stuff up there first.
That being said, don't spread out Stories
just for the sake of spreading them out.
Let's say you have a Story that's three separate clips
and you put one up at 9 a.m., noon and 5 p.m.,
just 'cause you want to be at the front of the line
as often as possible, right?
But then somebody comes in
and watches at 1 p.m. the next day,
they're only going to see the last part of the Story
and they're gonna go,
"I don't even know what they're talking about here."
Now, if you do spread them out, you can do that.
Just include sort of a quick update disclaimer, like,
"By the way, in case you missed it earlier,
"I had reported this or I showed you this,
"now here's what's happening, here's an update."
Questions, drop them in the comments below.
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