- I'm glad you're looking for an Instagram tutorial
because the platform is huge,
and today we're gonna run through it.
And even if you're already using Instagram,
you might pick up a few quick tips
and best practices as we go, all right?
Let's get into it!
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What's up busy people?
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My name is Jerry Potter, and by the end of this video,
you'll know how to post to Instagram
for your brand or business.
We're gonna do a big overview
on how to post to the Instagram feed.
But if you're hoping to learn more about Instagram Stories,
I've got a video about that, you can get that there
and in the description of this video.
Now I'm assuming at this point,
you've already downloaded the Instagram app
and created your account.
If not, hit pause really quick, and do that first.
So for just about any screen within Instagram,
to post to your feed, you're gonna wanna click the plus sign
at the bottom there, right in the middle.
So I click that.
And immediately it will bring up my camera roll.
I'm doing this on an iPhone,
so it might be slightly different on Android,
but it should be pretty much the same.
And so here are all of my pictures that I've taken
that are on my camera roll
that I can add up there, if I want to.
So for example, if I click on this,
this was a slide I actually made for Instagram Stories.
Once the photo is in there, you can move it around,
you can pinch to zoom it,
and make it exactly the way that you want it to show up.
If it's taller than a square,
you can tap these little arrows here on the lower left,
then it'll zoom out on your picture
so that you can see a little bit better on how it will show.
Instagram has traditionally
been about square images, 1080 by 1080,
but I've actually found that taller images work better,
because they take up more space in your feed.
And I'll show you that on a widescreen image here,
in just a second.
Once you have your picture there
and that's the way you want it, you would hit next.
And then you will go into some of the filters.
But before we do that,
I wanna show you a widescreen image here.
So here's an image that is a widescreen image,
meaning it's wider than it is tall.
So if this goes up the way it is,
it actually won't take up much space in the feed,
when somebody is scrolling through as fast as they can.
I think the more space you take up,
the more likely you are to get somebody's attention.
So I'm gonna pinch and zoom this
to make it at least a square, like that.
That's how I think it should show up.
You can, of course, do whatever you want
with your own creative.
So that's just a tip that I like to use.
You can also post a video to your feed.
So if I was gonna do a video, and here,
this is just a four second video that I have,
that I was using in an Instagram Story,
but now I have a video there instead.
You cannot pinch and zoom on that
but you can move it up and down
for which part you want to show in the feed.
Up here at the top,
you can also tap camera roll with the down arrow,
and you can choose from different folders.
So there might be something somewhere else on your phone
that's easier to find.
And if you wanna post more than one photo,
that's called a carousel post,
and that's where you kind of swipe to the left
to scroll through that,
you're gonna click this little button on the lower right.
It sort of looks like a picture stacked on top of a picture.
Tap that.
Now, I can go through and I can choose
up to 10 photos and videos
to have in a single post.
Now let's say you haven't taken
the photo or the video that you wanna use.
You can actually do that right here, in Instagram.
So instead of using the library on the lower left there,
that's where we've been this whole time,
I can click on photo, and as you can see,
that brings up a camera.
So then I can just take a picture if I want, in the moment.
Or if you wanna do video, I can click video there,
and now this brings up the video camera.
To record a video, I'm gonna hold that button down.
So I hold it down like this, and it starts recording
and it's like, hey,
I'm making a video on how to record video,
it's very meta, on Instagram (chuckling).
You can go up to 60 seconds
for a video on the Instagram feed
and if I let go with my thumb, it stops recording.
Now if you look on the screen there,
you'll see a black line at the bottom,
and it's not all the way across,
that means I could record more.
So I could change the way my scene looks
or move to a different location, or anything like that,
and then hit record again.
And as you can see, it starts recording again
and I can say, hey, I'm over here now, hi!
And that way, you can sort of edit your own video together
as you record it, if you want to.
I've never heard of anybody using this feature
but I think it's really cool that it even exists.
So that's how you shoot video
for the feed, right there, in Instagram.
Now I'm back in library,
there's that dumb selfie I just took.
We might as well use the dumb selfie, why not?
So once you have what you're gonna use here,
whether it's a series of pictures, or videos,
or one or the other, then you hit next,
in the upper right-and corner.
Now this is where you can add filters.
So maybe you don't like the way you look.
I like this second filter here, called Crema,
so I use that a lot.
By the way, your filters might be in a different order,
but you can swipe through, and you can test out
all of these different filters.
And different filters will look different
on different photos, not surprisingly,
depending on how bright or dim they are.
If you double tap on a filter,
you can actually adjust the intensity
of how much that filter has been applied.
And then also down here, on the lower right,
you can click edit.
And that'll actually allow you to go through
and play with all sorts of different settings
for the way that your photo looks.
Personally, I try and stand in good light,
facing a window, whatever it might be,
to just take a good photo the first time,
but some people love to come in here
and tool around afterwards,
with all of these different options.
So now I'm gonna hit next.
Now this is where I'm gonna post to Instagram.
I can go ahead and write my caption.
This is not a real thing, but let's pretend,
that SillySelfieSunday is a thing.
Oh, never mind, it is!
4,000 people have posted with SillySelfieSunday.
Look at that!
Whatever your caption is, you can add it here.
You can add in emojis, punctuation.
I'll show you one trick a lotta people will do,
'cause it's really hard
to have any kind of page breaks within here.
'Cause you'll notice there's no return or enter key here.
But if you go to Notes, or another program,
you can actually type your caption there,
with spaces between paragraphs, copy it,
and then just paste it here.
I strongly suggest using hashtags
if you want people to see it
because that's how people discover things on Instagram.
You can have up to 30 hashtags.
I sometimes put 'em in the caption
but sometimes I also put 'em in the first comment.
Instagram has been rumored to be changing this,
but as of now, if you put the hashtags in the first comment
just to kinda keep the caption clean
they will still help your post in search, on Instagram.
Once you've got the caption
the way you want it, hit OK.
You can tag people, if you want.
So if you had somebody that you wanted to tag in there,
you could do that.
You can add a location.
I strongly recommend adding locations.
This will also get your post seen by a lot more people,
because people will simply browse a location.
Like I'm there in Seattle
and so I could just tag it as, in Seattle.
Down below that, these are switches
where you can auto-share the post
to Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr.
Facebook, if you're trying
to kill two birds with one stone, you can do that.
Personally, I like to change the caption for Facebook,
because I think people use Facebook in a different way.
Twitter, do not use this tool on Twitter
because what it will do,
is it'll put your caption on Titter,
and then it'll have a link to the photo,
and it won't actually show the photo.
I found an awesome free app,
that will automatically take your Instagram photo
and share it to Twitter.
The actual photo, instead of a link to the photo.
I got a tutorial on how to do that
and that's in the description of this video.
So once you're all done, hit share, it'll upload,
and there it is, SillySelfieSunday.
One of the hassles of Instagram
is it's pretty much a mobile platform.
And so if I'm gonna tell a longer story
with multiple paragraphs and a caption,
it's a lotta thumb typing.
I know there are some amazing thumb-typers out there,
I am not one of them, I'm okay.
But there are some amazing software programs
that will allow you to type your captions
and upload your photos to a computer,
and then it'll automatically upload
the image and the caption to Instagram,
at the time you want.
All three of my favorites have free options
and if you wanna learn how to do that,
I've got a tutorial on how to do that, right here.
You can watch it right now.
Or I will put it in the description of this video,
if you wanna come back and check it out later.
Hey, if this was helpful, click like, hit subscribe.
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