Everything you need to know about Instagram Stories and how to make them
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What is an Insta Story?
Instagram Stories is a feature of the Instagram platform that allows you to connect with your followers through videos, photos, text, drawings, and music in a slideshow format. When stories are posted, they are available in chronological order for your followers to view for a period of 24 hours.
Unlike a regular Instagram feed post, an Instagram Story allows you to use stickers, emoji, text overlays, and augmented reality filters to add some personality to your photos and videos. IG Stories are great for sharing more personal content you might be hesitant to put on your Instagram feed.
Posting IG Stories
Posting to Insta Stories is super easy — and a bit addictive, truth be told. There are a few things to keep in mind when posting to your Story, including the size of your photo, the length of your video, and personalizations that will make your IG Stories more interesting and unique.
How to post an Instagram Story
In case you’ve never done it before, here’s how to post to your Instagram Story:
- Open Instagram.
- In the top left corner, you’ll see your profile picture with Your Story under it and a small + next to it.
- Tap on your profile photo. If you don’t currently have any posted Stories, you’ll be directed to Instagram’s camera. (You can also quickly open the Instagram camera from the Instagram app by swiping right across your screen.)
- You’ll see a menu at the bottom of the screen with things you can add to your Instagram Story, including Type, Music, Live, Boomerang, Superzoom, Focus, Rewind, and Hands-Free. We’ll go over these in more detail below, but for now let’s stick with simple photos and videos.
- To take a photo, simply tap on the shutter at the bottom of your screen. If you want to shoot a video, hold down on the shutter while you film.
- To choose a photo or video from your Camera Roll, tap on the small square photo in the bottom left corner of the screen. Scroll through and tap on a photo or video to choose it.
- If you’re using content from your Camera Roll, a date stamp will automatically appear with the date the photo or video was taken. If you don’t want the date to be a part of your Story, hold your finger on it and drag it to the trash icon at the bottom of the screen.
- Once you’ve chosen your photo or video, you can add filters, stickers, drawings, or text by choosing from the icons at the top of your screen.
- Tap Send To > Your Story to share your photo or video to your Instagram Story. The photo or video will be available for viewing by your followers for 24 yours.
The perfect Instagram Story photo has an aspect ratio of 9:16 and is 1080px wide by 1920px high. You can upload photos of any size, but by default Instagram will shrink landscape photos to fit the width of the frame, with a wide border at the top and bottom of the screen.
When posting any photo to your Insta Story, you can use your thumb and index finger on the screen to zoom in or out on the pic. Bringing them closer together will make your photo smaller. Moving them away from each other will zoom in on the screen and make the photo larger.
Using special features in your Instagram Story
Once you get the hang of posting photos and videos to your Insta Story, you may want to get creative and take advantage of some of Instagram’s special features that are available in Stories.
The following items are listed across the bottom of the screen when you open IG Stories:
- Type. Using the Type screen allows you to type a message using a variety of screen colors and fonts. Choose a screen color by tapping the small circle in the bottom left corner, or take a photo to type over by tapping on the camera icon on the bottom right corner. Your default font is Modern, but you can change that by tapping the name of the typeface at the top of the screen.
- Music. The music feature allows you to choose music clips to accompany your photos and videos. More on adding music to your Insta Stories below.
- Live. Using the Live feature lets you stream a video in real time. To go live on your Insta Story, simply tap Live>Start Live Video. Instagram will start a three-second countdown. You can shoot video with your forward facing or selfie camera, depending on your preferences. Just tap the double arrow icon to switch between cameras. Instagram Live videos are limited to one hour. When you’re finished recording, tap Save in the upper right corner to save your video to your Camera Roll or share it to your IG Story.
- Boomerang. The Boomerang feature for Instagram Stories allows you to take a burst of up to 20 photos and then combine them into a video loop that plays forward and backward. To create a Boomerang video, tap Boomerang, then hold your finger on the circle in the bottom center of your screen to take a burst of photos. The video will automatically play when you’re finished, and you can share it to your IG Stories if you like the way it came out.
- Superzoom. Superzoom is a great tool for adding fun variations to your photos, complete with filters and sound effects. Choose Superzoom from your Instagram Stories menu and then play with the effects by scrolling the icons above the shutter button. Variations include Paparazzi, which comes with camera flashes and the sound of clicking shutters, Fire, which surrounds your photo with flames and plays dramatic music, and Hearts, which adds a cheesy love song and pink hearts to your photo.
- Rewind. The Rewind feature lets you share videos in reverse. Hold down the shutter button to create your video. Rewind will automatically show the video backward.
- Hands-Free. Hands-free is not exactly hands-free. It just means that you don’t have to hold your finger on the shutter to film. It works exactly like your iPhone’s Camera app. Tap once on the shutter button to start recording. Tap again to stop recording.
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