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Easy, step-by-step walkthrough of how to create AWESOME Instagram stories!

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Beginner Instagram Stories Tutorial

Welcome back to my series Going Remote. In today’s video, I’m going to show you how to use Instagram Stories. This is going to be more of a beginner tutorial, so if you’ve been watching everyone’s Instagram Stories and wondering how they got them so cute, this video is going to be helpful for you. If you are a more advanced user, I think there will be some tricks in here that you might not know. Instagram Stories are so much fun and a fantastic way for you to connect with your audience, so I’m excited to share this Instagram Stories tutorial with you.

Check for Updates

The first thing that you want to do is check for updates. Instagram is always updating and adding new features, so it’s likely that there will be even more in just a week from now. Click on the App Store, then click on your Profile Picture and check if there’s an update you need to make.

Instagram Stories Tutorial

I’m going to open up Instagram and dive into the training right now. To create an Instagram Story, you’re going to click on the little Camera icon, top left of your screen. This has opened up our Stories, and I can go ahead and create one. You have two options when it comes to Instagram Stories. You can simply take a picture, or you can take video as well. If I want to take a picture, I’m just going to click on the center icon – the center circle – and that will take a photo. If I want to take a video, I’m just going to hold the center icon down. So, we have those two options. Now, I have the camera facing towards me. If I wanted to change that, I could just click the little Arrows icon at the bottom right of my screen and that is going to flip over and then display outwards.

Customize Your Story with Stickers

That is how you take a photo and how you take a video, but there’s a whole lot more within Instagram that you can do. So, let’s start with the basics. Let’s say I’ve taken a photo, but then I want to add to that. I can click on this smiley-face Sticker icon and it’s going to bring up a ton of options that I can customize my Story with.

First, we have Location – I can go ahead and type in where I’m at. Anytime you add an element to your Story, you can simply click on it and drag it around to move it into position. So, that’s Location. Let’s click on the Sticker icon again and click @Mention. You can mention other people – I could mention any of my friends – for example, CamiFarey. If someone were to click on Cami’s name here it will actually go to her profile. Let’s click on the Sticker again. Next we have #Hashtag, if you want to add a hashtag to your Story.

Use GIFs

The next one is a really fun one - this is GIF. If you’ve been wondering how everyone gets those cute animated icons on their Story, this is how they are doing it. If you click on GIF, you’ll see a ton of fun options appear. You can actually use the search bar up at the top to look for what you want. For example, let’s say I want to do one about work. I can just type in work, and then I’m going to get all these cute GIFs that I can add to my Story - the selection is endless. Let’s click on this one here, and then I can drag it around simply by clicking on it, and I can increase the size by kind of pinching outwards. (I’m putting both of my thumbs on the screen and moving it outwards and that’s increasing the size.) Definitely experiment, have fun with that, and add as many GIFs as you would like - there really is no limit here.

Add Filters

The one thing you might want to know as well is that you can add filters to your images or your videos. What I’m showing you now applies to both photos like this, as well as if we created a video. In order to add those filters, all I need to do is swipe over to the right. As you can see, that has just added a filter. We have the Paris filter, the Oslo filter, and honestly it goes on and on and you have tons of different filters that you can choose from.

Another common one that I use is Music. This one is really fun. Generally, when you’re doing a video, you can click on Music, and you’ll see all these different songs that you can add to your Stories. (I’ll actually come back to this one and demo when we have a video.)

Take a Poll or Ask a Question

You can poll your audience and ask them a Yes or No question. At any point, if you want to remove one of these Story elements, you can simply click on it, drag it down to the bottom middle of your screen and a little Trashcan icon will appear, and you can drop it in there. You can ask your audience a question, like What’s your Fave Food? They’ll be able to come in here and add an answer.

Use a Countdown Timer

Finally, I want to show you the Countdown. You can actually create a countdown for any important event coming up. You would just name the countdown – for example, Time Until Video Drops – and then I just click on the Timer here and I can set the date where it’s going to happen, and then I can hit Done. If I actually click on it and then click this color wheel at the top here, I can change the color of that countdown. As you can see, there are a lot of different elements that we can add to our Instagram Stories.

Write with the Drawing Tool

There are a few more features that I want to show you. If you click over here on this drawing icon, this is going to allow you to write on top of your Stories. I can choose a color from down below – let’s say I want to go with white – and now I can simply draw on my screen. For example, I’m just going to write Hi. You can click Undo at the top to remove this. Next to it, we have a thinner-looking pencil icon. If I hit the Arrow icon, it’s going to add an arrow at the end of my text. Then we have this icon here, which is more thicker-looking, and this one here, which is more of a neon-type look. At any point, if you want to delete your text, you can click this Eraser icon over here to the right, and then you can simply go over it with your finger to delete that text. You can make it bigger by going over here to the left side and dragging the bar up. So, that’s how people are decorating it with their own handwriting.

Type in Content

If you click on the Text icon (the Aa here, top right), you can actually type in content. So, I’m going to say, Hey! Just making a video! So, I’ve typed that in, and you’ll see I have a lot of options in terms of fonts, alignment, colors - all sorts of things. This font is on Strong at the moment, but if I tap the top here you’ll see that I can change that to lots of different font types. If I click on a color down here, I can change the color of my text. I can also click on the text and then click on the Text Background icon (A++) at the top here and that will add a background color. That is mostly how I’m doing my text - I find it the easiest to see. You can add as much text as you want. Let me add more text here - let’s do that one in a different color. So, that’s mostly how I’m doing my text.

Add Music to Your Video

Now let’s create a video and then do our music. I have the camera towards me now, and I’m going to hold down the circle and just create a video of me right now, talking about something important. So, we have our video there, and I’m going to temporarily mute myself with the Speaker icon there. Then I’m going to click on the Sticker icon and go over to Music. You can actually click Browse and it will show you different categories. (Right now, you see the category is 20 Second Handwashing Songs – very important.) It also shows you Weekend, Pop, Sentimental – lots of different categories. I’m going to go with Dance Monkey because it’s an upbeat song, so I click on that. Then there are many different ways that we can display the music. These first four icons are going to display the lyrics onscreen – or you can just kind of display the artwork for this song. Let’s go with this one here and hit Done. So, you get the idea - that is how people are adding music to their Stories.

Boomerangs

Now, a super popular thing to do as well is to add Boomerangs. Let me show you how to create that. (I’m going to X out of here.) This time I’m going to face the camera towards me and I’m going to go down here to the bottom where it says Boomerang. Boomerang is basically like a little moving GIF of yourself, I guess you could say. You’re going to make sure you’re on Boomerang, and then you just hold this circle down and you’re going to do a little short movement. Let’s go ahead and do that - and it’s just going to repeat like that. These are fun and they actually come in handy. That is how you create a Boomerang. The same rules apply where you can add everything that I just showed you onto this Boomerang. For example, I can swipe over to the right to add a filter, I can click on the Sticker icon, go over to GIF, and then I can go ahead and add a GIF sticker to my Story.

So, you now know how to create Instagram Stories and Boomerangs. What else? Instagram is one of those apps where there’s just so many things you can do, so have fun with it, click around, and see what it creates for you.

Additional Filters

You’ll see down here at the bottom now – still in Boomerang - if I swipe over to the right you’ll see all these different built-in filters as well. They vary so much, and some are just super crazy, others are cute, some are just crazy. You’ll see a few over here to the left, which are ones I like and have saved. I like this one here, I like this one, and I wanted to show you ones that are just straight-up crazy like this one – the Dragon – you never know if you’ll need this in your Story. If you’re ever seeing crazy filters like this, this is how you access them. At any point, you can click right here on this bottom arrow, and then you can click Browse Effects, and this is going to pull up a ton of different effects for you that you can check out and try.

Let’s say that you find one that you like – for example Freckles. You’re just going to click on it, and then you’re going to click Try It, and that’s going to load so you can see what you would look like with freckles. Let’s say you try it and really like it - click on the arrow down here and then just click Save Effect and that’s going to add it over to the left when you go into your Stories. Let’s open up a new Story – so now when I swipe over to the left, I’ll see that effect saved right there.

Use Content from your Camera Roll

That’s how to create Instagram Stories in real-time. I also want to show you that you can upload any photos or videos that you’ve already taken to your camera roll. Let’s create a new Instagram Story. Now, if I swipe up from the bottom, you’ll see all my different photos that I’ve taken. (I can just click on one and I can create a Story out of that – this one’s a little funny meme I had taken.) I also have some stickers and different graphics. Any video that is actually on your camera roll you can actually upload as well, and the same rules apply in terms of customizing it.

More Customization Options

Now I want to share with you two more pro tips on how to up your game with Instagram Stories. The first is to create Backgrounds in your brand colors and upload those. I’m going to click on the Camera icon, then swipe up from the bottom, and you’ll see here that I’ve uploaded my brand colors as plain PNG tiles. This is something I would do in Canva - you can check out my video from yesterday on how to do that. I would create just a plain background, download it as a PNG, get it over to my phone, and then upload it. For example, here is my yellow. I can remove this date right here by putting it in the Trashcan, and then I can go ahead and create a Story with that custom yellow background.

Then I want to show you that you can actually add images on top of images. This can really come in handy for business. For example, in my camera roll, you’ll see that I have the logo for my Asana Course. I have the logo here - this is a PNG file. What I’m going to do is I’m going to click this Share icon bottom left, then I’m going to click Copy Photo, then I’m going to go back into Instagram and it’s going to come up as a Sticker. Now all I have to do is click Add Sticker to add that to my design, and I can go ahead and move that around.

That is how you create Instagram Stories. You can do this no matter where you’re at, so have fun with this, get creative, share behind-the-scenes looks at your business and your life, and connect with others online.

That’s it for my beginner Instagram Stories tutorial. I hope this was helpful for you - if you have any questions at all, just drop them in the comments below. If you think that others will benefit from this Instagram Stories tutorial , please share it. Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you tomorrow with another Going Remote video.