10 Tips for Better Instagram Stories

So you are wanting to get a little better with your Instagram stories? Good job for wanting to improve yourself and your social media presence!

Today we have 10 tips to help you better your Instagram stories – did you know that for 2019 “stories” on social media are going to to be your “bread and butter” if you are wanting to take advantage of your social media. “Stories” are IN for 2019. We wanted to give you a few tips to help you along your way with your social media!

1. Share Highlights

We are sure that you know that you can select a highlight reel to create a story from your photos or archives. Well, did you know that you can share highlights with your friends on and outside Instagram? If you want to try this you need to open your Instagram profile and select the highlight you want to share. Then hold the highlight and from the pop-up menu, select Send to if you’re going to share highlights via Instagram DM. Or if you wanted to share through some other app you can tap on Copy Link. Then paste the copied link wherever you want to share it.

2. Add Multiple Photos and Videos

Before, being able to upload multiple photos or videos to Instagram was a pain. You had to repeat all the steps individually for each file you wanted to upload. Thanks to an update in programming you are now able to add multiple photos and videos into a single story.

3. Add Color Block To A Story

Sometimes you need a little extra color to catch people’s attention, so why not add a solid background color to your Instagram story? Do you want to hear a secret? A common misconception, you don’t have to download a template from the Internet. Now, Instagram provides a very easy way but it remains hidden under the options.

4. Post Stories Longer Than 15 Seconds

If you are ahead of the curve and you post a lot of stories, you might be annoyed that Instagram won’t let you post a story longer than 15 seconds. Well, today is your lucky day, as we will tell you how to get around this restriction.

All you need to do is slice up your video into smaller videos. And thankfully you don’t have to do it manually either. There are third-party apps are available that do it automatically. On Android, download Story Cutter for Instagram and on iPhone, use CutStory. And then you will be able to post Stories longer than 15 seconds.

5. Using the Built-In Portrait Mode

Most of the smartphones today have upgraded their programming to include a portrait mode, which is a feature that blurs the background of an image to focus sharply on the subject. But if your phone hasn’t upgraded yet don’t worry, Instagram has you covered. It provides a native portrait mode that goes by the name of Focus. All you have to do to use it: tap the Story icon at the top-left corner, then on the Story screen, swipe left on the modes of the camera at the bottom till you see the “Focus” mode. Now all you have to do is CLICK!

6. Interactive Stickers

This is a huge change for Instagram! Before you could add stickers on your stories and it was just a sticker. But now Instagram provides a variety of interactive stickers, like polls, emoji slider, and the recently released questions sticker. You can use these stickers to get a response from your followers. Just tap on the sticker icon and select a sticker to add them.

7. Removing Dates From Old Photos

Pretty sure you already know that you can add old photos from the gallery to your stories. But some of those photos Instagram will automatically add the date on the photo was taken as actually a sticker. Did you know that you can remove it? To remove it just hold the sticker and drag it to the trash icon that appears at the bottom. TA-DA!!

8. Share Posts To Stories

Did you know that if you like your own or someone else’s post, you can share it with your story? Yes, without screen-shotting it. Instagram now provides an option. Once you share it in your story, the post is clickable. Meaning, users can directly go to that post via your story. Nice, eh?

9. Mute The Story

You might have a lot of folks who post on Instagram with their stories regularly. We don’t always want to watch everyone’s stories even if we follow them. Even if you don’t want to watch the story, you will still get a notification if they post a story. If you want to avoid them, Instagram lets you mute stories…just to give you a little silence.

10. “Re-gram” Your Story

If you are lucky and someone mentions you in their story, Instagram sends you a notification via DM. Then you can share the same story on your profile. A little “Regramming” action.

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