By What is this Instagram Story everyone’s talking about? The new feature in Instagram. Well, it’s not that new anymore. The feature was rolled out in September 2016 and has since overtaken the competitor Snapchat in seven-league boots. But the reason why we’re now writing an Instagram Stories tutorial is that we’ve noticed that some users still have big question marks in their faces. Google Trends also shows that the search behavior for Instagram Stories has risen steadily over the past 12 months, even though the function has been available since September 2016.
Especially for companies to buy instagram story views is becoming more and more interesting (like social media in general – see these ingenious examples). That’s why our article on what Instagram Stories are answers questions about creating, storing, monitoring and viewing third-party Instagram Stories. Additionally we show you some Life Hacks you may not know yet.
What is Instagram Stories?
Instagram Stories is a feature to create a slideshow of photos, videos or boomerangs. These stories don’t appear in your Instagram Feed, but above the Newsfeed. After 24 hours the pictures of the slideshow disappear automatically. You can edit your photos and videos with emojis, lettering and filters. Meanwhile there are also face and geofilters, similar to Snapchat.
Lifehacks in Instagram
# Lifehack No. 1 – One-Finger Zoom
Now Instagram has a one-finger zoom, just like Snapchat. Means you no longer need pinch to zoom in on videos. With one finger you can zoom in a video by holding down the Record button and wiping up or down with your thumb. The only important thing is that you keep pressing the screen.
It’s also possible to include existing videos or photos you’ve taken in the last 24 hours in your story. To do this, you have to wipe up or down on your homepage in Stories mode and you will see your older photos in the lower area. You can select them by wiping to the right and left and open them by clicking on them in edit mode.
# Lifehack No. 2 – Share photos and videos older than 24 hours
If you would like to share photos that are older than 24 hours, you can take a screenshot of the photos and save it beforehand. If you crop the screenshot, you will have your original photo back. By saving the photo again, you can select it even though it is older than 24 hours. It also works with videos if you edit them and save them as a new clip.
Edit Instagram Stories creatively
You can edit your photos and videos with Emojis or text. These creative functions can be found in the upper right corner. You have to make a photo or video beforehand. Then you also have the possibility to choose here between
1st Emojis
Emojis and other effects can be found by clicking on the smiley in the upper right corner or by wiping up the screen. There you can choose between different emojis. Often Instagram also offers theme-related emojis, such as flip-flops or ice stickers, as it’s summer at the moment. You can also zoom in and zoom out with the pinch-and-zoom gesture.
# Lifehack No. 3 – Use Emojis as a filter
We have noticed that for many users the filters in Instagram are not sufficient. We will show you how to select them later in our blog post. If the filters offered by Instagram are not enough for you: Try this trick:
Choose an emoji, similar to a color you’d like to have as a filter.
Zoom in on the emoji so that the emoji is no longer visible.
Place the emoji as a color filter over your photo.
You can change your selection by clicking on your emoji for a long time and dragging it down. Then a trash icon will appear and you can remove the emoji and choose a new one.
# Lifehack no. 4 – click on Emojis for more variations
Once you’ve chosen an emoji sticker, you can tap it. Many emojis have several variations. You can also see this in the screenshot below.
Pen
If you choose the pen, you have the possibility to scribble with different pens on your photo. Many also use this feature to create a background for a text so that the text is visually highlighted.
# Lifehack No. 5: Full Colour Background
Especially marketers want to highlight text in their Instagram Stories. Example: In lotteries, it’s sometimes not the photo that counts, but the text. You can also simply place this text on a colored background, without a photo background. So nothing distracts from your text.
This works like this: You take a photo, no matter which motive. That should not be visible later. You choose the Pen option, choose a color and tap your photo for a long time. Bam! Your entire photo is already covered by the color you have chosen.
