Recently, The Orchard Interactive Marketing crew had the opportunity to hang out with Facebook and discuss Instagram Stories. With Stories being the fastest growing product in Facebook history (starting with 10M users in October 2016 to 300M by 2017), it’s imperative to keep up with the conversation and to take advantage of everything Stories has to offer.
Users are engaging with Stories in a much different way than with their feed, and the opportunities to create amazing content have already changed so much since our last run down on Stories back in October. This time around, let’s jump into some of the ways to amp up your Story game and utilize some of the new features.
Fun with Fonts
Tired of the classic Story font? We got you! — There’s now an array of fonts for you to choose from. Simply click through the font style menu at the top to get the party started.
Font Color Frenzy — Beyond the color palette Instagram provides, there’s a whole world of color out there. Hold down on one of the colors to open up a full palette of colors to choose from.
Color Matching — Use the eye dropper tool to match your font or pen color to a color in your picture or video.
Express Your Range — Feeling brave? Select/highlight all your text, now open your color palette. Drag your fingers across your highlight and your color palette simultaneously to create a gradient.
Accent With Stickers
GIFS — You can now add GIF stickers to your stories, swipe up and select the GIF button. You can either search GIFs or choose from the currently trending stickers.
Emoji Slider — The Emoji Slider is the newest feature to Instagram Stories, and still an enigma to some, but now you’re a step ahead! You can ask a question, or let the slider speak for itself. Choose a representative emoji from the suggest set, or go rouge and add your own. Either way, ask away ….is anyone else craving a good veggie burger with some guac?
Take A Poll — Use the poll sticker to give your friends two options to choose between. Use text, or be a bit more mysterious with just emojis.
Location Sticker — Using the location sticker not only lets your friends know the cool places you’ve visited, but it also adds your story to the location’s story.
Questions Sticker – Ask your audience a question, or give them the opportunity to ask you questions with the Questions Stickers. Share some of your favorite answers/questions on your story through a fun video or image story.
Be Revealing
Using the pen tools, you can select a color, hold down on your image, and the whole screen will turn the color you’ve chosen. Test it out and you’ll notice the main pen is completely solid, while the highlighter creates a layer with a little more opacity. Use the highlighter two or three times to layer and change the opacity. From here you can erase part of the color to show the image beneath.
A fun trick to create a reveal — cover your image with color and ask a question. From there, erase spots little by little to slowly reveal your image to your audience, saving each new image along the way. Once you’ve created all of your images, upload them to your story for a fun click through reveal.
Don’t Bop it, Pin it
In a video or boomerang, you can pin text or a sticker to a moving object! Simply press down on the content you’d like to pin, this will open up the pin option. From here, you can scrub through your footage to select the object you’d like to pin.
Stop! In the Name of Motion
Stop-Motion is a not a largely known camera feature within Instagram Stories, but definitely a great one… no one puts Stop-Motion in the corner. With Stop-Motion you can find creative ways to capture the moment, take fans backstage, and switch up your story content.
Now that you have more tools to add to you Instagram Story belt, don’t forget to feature all the new entertaining content in your gallery with Highlights!
