Lessons

Lesson Info

Create your Stories

So, now we're gonna move into creating your story. How do you create an Instagram story? Okay. So, you can use graphics, photos, videos, and all the elements inside of the stories feature, to do this. And there's a lot of information here, I'm gonna get to as much as I can but I want you guys to know that I actually do have an extensive Instagram stories class. And if you have any questions, hopefully I'll have time to answer them. So, follow along, because sometimes Instagram is updating the features that they're adding, whether it's new stickers, the animated GIFs they came and they went, but everything I'm gonna show you here today, will help you get going with these creative elements. So, what you need to do to start an Instagram story is simply tap on the home button, that I've highlighted in purple, and when you do, you see the camera icon on top. That's what you press, to take a picture or video. This is the view outside my window in Boston, and that is an arrow, pointing to the...

top of the four different features. If you have swipe up, the double chain links, is that swipe up feature, that's how you link your the website that you're driving people to. Then we have the sticker, we've got the writing tool and the text. On the bottom is where you can save your clip, like I said earlier, if you don't wanna post it right away, save it to your camera roll. And then you can plus it, add it to your story. And the "send to" you can send your story to anyone that you're following, and connected to, in an Instagram direct message. So you can just choose to send that clip, to specific people, or to your story for everyone to see. Now, we're in the sticker. And at the top, I don't know if you guys can see this, but there's three dots, and there's one that's white, and there's two that are clear, and so, these are the ones I most frequently used, at the time that I took this screenshot, but if you swipe to the left, you'll see more options. And swipe again, you'll see more options. So it's a carousel. So just know that you have all of these options. What I wanna point out here, is the location, the hastag, the selfie camera, and the poll. So for those of you that aren't comfortable on video, but you're okay with a photo, you can infuse a selfie sticker. I'm gonna show you what that looks like, into your story, so people at least see your face. And they get a sense of who you are. The poll is that interactive feature where I talked about earlier, and how it can help to have the engagement in your stories, and it helps with the algorithm. Location, when you use that, you show up in that location hub that we talked about earlier. Hastags, sticker, you can have on sticker, but you can use up to 11 hastags in your story. Now, those hastags, remember, you keep them in your notes, and you can use them in your story. Who wants to see a clip in their stories with 11 hastags? That kinda looks ridiculous, right? So, ninja tip, you can take those hastags, and this is in my tips, and highlights. And you can shrink down the hastags, so that you don't even see them. I show you exactly how to do that in the highlights, so you have to go watch the highlights, but at least you heard me say it, so you're like, "Oh, I didn't know that." Alright, writing tool, so, now we're in, thank you, Instagram, we have four choices of texts, I believe there's gonna be a lot more coming. Because we all like that we have options for our text style now, so right now, there are four, we're in classic. And the writing tool, there are four different styles, I like to call it the Sharpie, the calligraphy, the highlight, and the chalk. The eraser in the middle literally erases. Again, I'm not gonna go into detail with all these features, but I just want you guys to know, what they represent when you're looking at them. So I use the same color purple, and I just quickly created this using my finger. Now, we're gonna go into the type. So I just mentioned that there are four different styles, and here are all the four different styles we have. The classic, the strong, the typewriter, the neon on the bottom, and then, just the regular type that we're used to, right here on the far left. So depending on what's your messaging is, and the point you wanna get across, choosing the right type style will help with that consistency, that branding. Whatever you choose, you wanna consistently use it, so that when people see it, you know, they're gonna remember your business and your brand. And use the same color consistently, I like to use the bright colors, the purple, the fuschia and the blue. So, play around with those type colors. And what I didn't show you real quick, I'm just gonna go back. When you tap on any of these colors, and you hold your finger, the whole color spectrum pops up. So you can literally find your brand color. How, you can't put in your hex color, yet, but that could be coming too. So you can find your color, hold down and press it, and the whole, every color pops up, a lot of people don't know that. So I wanna make sure I showed you that. Okay, let's move into the creative elements. So, what are the creative elements that you can add to your stories? You can add background filers, so when you swipe with your fingers, there's seven different background filters that you can add. You can use the stylized fonts that we just talked about. The Instagram polls, the geotag that we talked about. And the hastag stickers. These are elements that you can add to your story to get more engagement. So let me show you what those look like. The first one is type. To the left of that, is the background filter. So this relatively new, maybe three weeks now, we've had the background filers. So, each, so you have to slide past live. And get to type. Now, when you're on type, you just wanna tap on this little dot, to change the background filer. And each type style has different color backgrounds. So if you tap through modern, and neon, and typewriter and strong, and you tap that circle, you're gonna see different colors. Now, I wanna point out, after you've written your type, and you've pressed the arrow, and the words are there, you can take a picture, and add that to your background. This is also in my Instagram tips, in my highlights. So you can add a photo to the background. A lot of people don't know that, and the camera's right there. Has anybody in the audience done that yet? No? Okay. Yes. The juggler (laughs), awesome. You have, too? Awesome, okay, so this just some, you know, you have a background, you have text, but maybe you want a photo. On top of that, so you can do that. So, let's go back to Health Warriors, I love how they consistently use the colors in their packaging, with the background of the text, and they alternated. It's the same text style throughout, but they alternated the colors to match up. So for those of you that don't know how to do this, you literally can take your finger, there's now pens that have little eraser tops that you can use, to accentuate the color behind it, because let's face it, if that was just white, you wouldn't be able to read it. So by putting color behind it, it pops, right? Here is an example of the poll. What do you wanna learn, Instagram or Instagram highlight? Tune in to RSVP here. So I've done. Oh, this was Creative Live's Instagram story, and they wanted to know, which one, that simple, and that's a poll. So, what you wanna try to stay away from, is just yes and no answers in your poll. But you can use emojis, 'cause remember what I said, it's the universal language. You can use emojis in your poll, so maybe it's the thumbs up, or it's the thumbs down. Or it's chocolate or it's avocado. Like, you know, just get creative with your polls, and what you're putting in, to grab someone's attention to get that engagement. And here's the geotag. So we talked about this a couple of times already. But putting a geotag sticker on a post, gets you to show up in the geolocation. So, #colortheory, that's a really good hastag if you're creative. This is Nick Tay, who actually is a student of mine, and she's a graphic designer, and she was at Adobe here in San Francisco recently doing a project with them, and so she did all the right things. She's got #GraphicDesigner, the geolocation, the hastag, and her account name. So, when you tap through, she is in the Adobe sprak story, so they gave a shoutout, to Nick Tay, for being there. So, big brands can bring you into their stories. As much as you can bring other people into yours. So that's pretty cool. Here's the sticker, you guys. So, #SundaySnackingWithSueB, there's my little hastag again. So, my community members know what that is, that's inside my VIP Facebook group. For Ready, Set Gram. And every Saturday, I go live for 30 minutes, and I teach all the updates from the week, every week, on Saturday, I teach. Every week, for 30 minutes, 'cause there's something to talk about everyweek. And this is great, this is how I build community, this is how I continue to give value, within my Facebook group, to the members who have purchased my online course. And that sticker, if you tap it three times, so it can be blurred out like that, it can have a circle around it, or a square. So that's just infusing a little bit of your persona into a clip, if you're not comfortable with the video piece. Right? Boston, Massachusetts, I wanna point out that that geolocation, when you tap it, it can be white, or it can be rainbow. So if you want it to be in the foreground, it can go forward. I wanted the hastag to be more prevalent than the geotag, so I didn't want it be competing there. Alright, so that was a lot, a lot to learn with the creative elements, right? So, now let's talk about stylizing your account. You can stylize your account, like I just showed you. But you really wanna make sure that you're always stylizing in a very consistent way, so every time you use a certain color text, or a certain emoji, or a certain sticker, or an element, where you're positioning it, the color you're choosing. Does it match up to your launch goals, right? Are you being consistent? And you can use the polls that we just talked about to get feedback, to plan future strategies that you have. So, if you wanna do a story and talk about your launch, product, and get feedback from your audience, do a poll. I mean you do polls frequently to get feedback. Because when people tap into your polls, you can go into the back end of your stories, and see the results of your poll, by tapping in the back end of your stories. You can see how many people said yes, or no, or thumps up or thumbs down, I just told you guys not to do the yes or no. But like, definitely get in there and see what people want. Do you wanna learn Instagram stories, you wanna learn Instagram highlights? Mine came neck to neck on that one. People wanted to learn both. So, here we are, teaching both, okay. So, experiment with different story styles, to see which one encourages the most engagement.