What are Instagram stories?
Instagram stories are a creative feature of Instagram allowing you to post audio, video and even plain text content for 24 hours on everyone’s timeline. Stories appear in a colourful circle in alignment above the feed. Stories on Instagram encompass all the daily events and help you share your daily moments with everyone. Instagram stories appear in a small circle around your profile picture, tapping on this thumbnail reveals the story that you posted. It includes interesting features of live stickers, gifs, animated text, audios and much more. IG stories are a perfect place to place your best content as they gain the maximum amounts of views. It is the best place for brands to target an audience. stories on Instagram even allow you to react and respond to any person’s story, making it interactive.
How to post Instagram stories?
Now that we are aware what an Instagram story is, let’s move on to see how to post one.
- Open Instagram and click on the story icon in the top left corner of your screen. The icon is your profile encircled in a colourful ring with a plus sign at the bottom.
- It reveals Instagram stories. Tap on the recorder button to click a picture or long press the recorder button to record a video.
- You can even use the in-line filters by swiping through the filters in alignment with the recorder button. Once recorded, press
- Now you get text, sticker highlighter options to make your story more attractive. You can even add audio and gifs to your story. Use these and once you have finalized the look press done.
- Instagram asks you whether you want to share the story with all your followers or close friends. Choose a particular option and press done. Your story is now available to view on everyone’s feed for the next 24 hours.
Types of Instagram stories:
1. Public story:
Instagram stories are public. Public meaning when you choose the option of sharing your story with everyone, your story is visible to all your followers for 24 hours. Anyone who follows you can view your story. This is a generalized option and does not give you control on who can or cannot watch your story. Users can also use Instagram story viewer like StoriesIG to view your stories anonymously.
2. Close friends story:
Instagram released its close friends feature a few years back. This feature helps you list certain contacts as your close friends and then share your stories with these selected contacts. This provides you an option of sharing your story with your selected friends and hides it from others. Now you can easily upload your story without worrying that someone whom you do not want to show your story knows.
3. Highlights:
Want to keep your story on your profile post 24 hours. Here’s the hack! Just add it to the highlights. We all are aware that your story will automatically disappear post 24 hours. In order to keep your story on your profile, just play your uploaded story and tap on the ‘add to highlights’ button. This creates a place for your story on your highlights above your feed.
