Instagram is a social network whose vital function is to share photos and videos with other people, regardless of your location in the world. However, since the acquisition by Facebook, this popular app has been constantly updated and has performed other functions as well. One of the most important innovations was, without a doubt, the stories or "stories". Here you will learn what they are and how to create stories on instagram.
Stories have become a part of the lives of a wide variety of people and brands, and that's due to the features and functions of this platform. In this way they allow you to highlight the visual aspect, both on a personal and professional level. For this reason, in addition to being an attractive tool, they are also considered an excellent marketing tool that exists on the social network, which is still considered essential today.
What are Instagram Stories and what are they for?
Before knowing how to create stories on Instagram, you must know that they offer the possibility of sharing photos and videos at any time of the day to interact with other users through content that will disappear 24 hours after publication. Keep in mind that when shared, they will appear as a kind of series of videos in your profile section.
Stories are considered a useful tool for engaging and creative interaction with other users. Likewise, by their character, we distinguish that they are divided vertically and, as we pointed out before, they are seen for a whole day.
This is how Instagram stories are classified as a «feed extra» where you can publish more visual content to raise awareness of your brand, increase sales, attract subscribers and even use it as a means of customer service. This has a huge advantage over regular Instagram content, for example.
Thus, Instagram stories are digital elements that serve to increase visibility on this social network and create content with maximum speed, virtue and creativity. Also from there you can add drawings, smiles and stickers, gif images, normal images, places, writings, among other things. To embellish these publications, which are characterized as informal publications based on the daily activities of a person, brand or company.
Why is it important to share stories on Instagram?
First of all, you should know that the main importance of posting Instagram Stories for your followers on this social network is have an impact. In this way, it will be possible to increase the »interaction» with your community, so you have the opportunity to effortlessly get closer to your fans and capture their attention.
Additionally, distinctive content on Instagram has the uncanny ability to promote the «storytelling«, which has been rated as a really effective method of marketing your business in recent years. Thus, you can tell attention-grabbing stories with your brand and respective services.
Hence, the importance of Instagram Stories in terms of marketing or digital strategy is unconditional. Well, keeping that in mind, this resource works very well to drive traffic to off-platform videos or newsletters, help draw attention to what you offer, and generate significant engagement and value.
How will I create your Instagram storie?
Despite being such a basic element in Instagram, the truth is that today there are still many people who do not know how to create Instagram Stories in their respective accounts, which is why it is essential to know how to do it. See the steps to follow to do this from the mobile app.
Next, we will explain the procedure in detail:
- First you need to open the Instagram application on your mobile phone, tablet or iPad to access your account, simply by correctly entering your name or email address along with your password.
- So, once you are in the main section of Instagram, you must go to the upper left corner of the screen to tap on the icon that says » The your story » and the circle with your profile picture.
- They will then show you a screen where you can take photos or record videos by simply tapping the white circle in the lower middle section.
- If you want to use a photo or video that's already saved in your phone's gallery, tap the square gallery icon in the lower left corner of the screen. Also, you should know that you can also do this by simply swiping up anywhere on the panel.
- Finally, you can place the location, the hashtag, the mentions, the time, the music, the GIFs and many other elements that you can find on Instagram, perfect for enriching your story. Once done, it's time to publish your content by clicking on «your story" right away.
Tips for creating Instagram stories that generate more sympathy in your followers
As we have already pointed out in this article, Instagram Stories show tremendous power to increase visibility and engagement with people who follow you and even attract many more followers.
Although to get all the benefits, it is important to follow some ideal guidelines to develop Instagram Stories that evoke more empathy with such users.
Here are some interesting ones:
- Use original videos, as this format continues to be very successful on social media. This way you can record the most special moments of your day or say hello to your friends. You can also record live videos and have them edited professionally to get more attention.
- Make the most of the potential of hashtags, as these types of tags give you the opportunity to get much greater reach. This means that with them, not only people who follow you on Instagram will be able to see your stories, but also people who are not yet in your circle of followers.
- Never forget to take photos and videos, which should be as vertical as possible, thanks to the space available on the platform that allows the publication of this type of content. On the other hand, publishing content horizontally will have a huge gap at the top and bottom which can be unattractive.
- Add motivational phrases to your Stories, as it is a type of content that traditionally has success in posts from Instagram users. Then focus on creating phrases for your images on the platform to share them in your stories.
- Increase engagement with Storytelling by focusing on giving this strategy a good start so your followers expect a response during the anecdote you're telling. Which you can implement with images, videos or a combination of these elements and, of course, within the same 24 hours. This way, the algorithm will make you much more visible.
The best tools and apps to create Instagram Stories
Now that you have learned how to create Instagram stories, you should also know how to capture the attention of your followers with stories, you can also get more help to enrich this important content. This guide is for using tools or apps that help you create high-quality stories.
Here are three of the best tools:
1- Piktochart.com
Basically, it's an online tool that offers the ability to create infographics for free. In addition, it guarantees a large number of pre-designed templates where you can easily add content and format text (such as type, size, color or alignment), and it also allows you to add graphics and multimedia content such as photos and videos. Thus, you can create lively Instagram Stories.
It also has the tools you need to make high-quality projects for personal presentations or as murals. Furthermore, it is essential to learn how to organize visual content in a limited space and visually extract the most relevant information on the subject to gain a global perspective of it.
2-Open
It is a mobile app for Android and iOS that offers a large number of templates that are perfect for creating Instagram Stories. These templates are pre-created right in the app, so you just have to add the photos and text you want to share on the social network, then upload the result and share it there, like we taught you before.
For its part, Unflod has a function where you can create your images in different albums to better organize all your content. In this way, within each album you can create the different compositions you want, and this, in addition to supporting organization, is also useful for creating multiple related stories; both for quick predictions and for tidying them up.
Download Unfold – Instagram Stories Editor for Android
Download Unfold – Story Editor for iOS
3- Canva.com
This is a software and website that has great tools for easy graphic designing and also grants you access to over 60 million photos and 5 million vector images, graphics and fonts. This is why it is considered a really useful editing tool to enhance the stories you can share on Instagram, as it has many templates of this class.
Among Canva's most interesting specialties, we find the perfect tool to straighten photos that allows you to publish them directly. Likewise, you can add quality text to your images to tell stories through them, it also has a photo decoration tool, vignetting effects, free icons, frames, stickers and other things.
