Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: Stories are one of the most adored and profitable part of the Instagram ecosystem. Therefore, as content creators, it's our duty that we are using stories to our full potential. They are extremely powerful. But if you're not sure what you're doing when you come to create Instagram stories can be very, very difficult to create stories that are engaging and stories that actually convert. So that is what today's skill share class is all about. Hi guys. My name is Ethan bridge. I'm host of the social media marketing School podcast. And the guy behind the Instagram page. Marketing, either Instagram stories are possibly my favorite part of the platform. It gives me a chance to be a little less formal with my content is a bit wrong. I show the behind the scenes and in turn that allows me to build the relationship and trust with my audience. That is our go with stories. But when I was new to stories, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't even know how to navigate the stories tab and that's wind, day skill share cars are going to be going through it all from the very, very Star, literally from navigating through stories, working out where everything is. So if you're brand new to Instagram stories, this is perfect for you. Then also go into a lot more detail. So if you are joining this class and you're a little bit more advanced and you've been on Instagram for a while. This is also for you. I talked through some of my favorite apps. I talked through storytelling, that narrative I talked for how to work alongside the algorithm, how you need to be using hashtags, geotags, stickers you should be using to convert, build trust, you name it. All of that good stuff is packed into this Schwabe bits. We still share costs. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, I hope to see you in the first module.
2. Why You Need To Use Stories: Hello everybody and welcome to the first module of this Instagram Stories master class. Now before I actually go into the details of actually creating stories and how you can best utilize that platform through hacking the algorithm using hashtags, geotags, different apps you can use. I think it's really, really important to first understand why you should actually be creating stories in the first place. The importance of Instagram stories, because if you don't really understand it, you're just going to be creating stories for the sake of it, you first need to understand just how important stories are to the platform. In my opinion, stories are one of the most popular parts of Instagram, if not the most popular. How often do you find yourself just aimlessly scrolling through Instagram stories. I personally do it far too often. They coincide, so, so well with your feed posts, but you have to use them in a different way. You'll feed posts are much more polished, they're much more professional, you take time on them. Whereas your stories are something that are going to be a bit more relaxed, a bit more roar, uncut behind the scenes. This allows your audience to get to know you on a more personal level. With a video, for example, that you post on your feet. You're going to edit this in post-production. You're gonna make sure it's perfect. You're going to add captions. You can pretty much do everything to make that video as good as you possibly can. But with the story, you can't really do that with a story. You've just gotta click Record talk. And that's it. It allows you to connect with your audience on a more personal level. And this is why I love stories so much. Instagram, love the stories features so much that they're even at the moment, testing two rows of stories. At the moment, it's most likely that you have one. But Instagram have actually been testing two rows in Scrum are willing to take up half of the Home screen with stories, then that should explain just how important they are to the platform and just how loved they are by the audience of Instagram. Now, something I must say right now is that your stories need to be a completely different content strategy to that of which you post on your feet and your stories shouldn't just be a place where you share your new post. You don't just say, I've got a new post guys, go check it out. It shouldn't be like that. You need to have a completely different strategy. You wanted to give people a reason to actually view your story in the first place. They're not going to want to view your stories and engage with you if they are just simply you sharing your new posts, you want to add value in storage. You want to show people behind the scenes so they get to know you on a more personal level. People are nosy. People want to know the personal lives of their following. And this is why I've loggers such as Casey, nice dire pizza, McKenna, and this is why they're so successful. And if you think about it this way, it's kind of strange because when people meet these creators in the street, they go on your casey, nice though I know you from YouTube, your love, your videos. You look like you have a great family life and in reality you have no idea who this person is. You've never met them before. They've never met you, but they know you pretty much know everything about them. As an influencer that just goes to show how powerful and influence over someone could be. But that influenced has been established by the fat they are showing behind the scenes and they are building trust with their audience by being more rural, by being more personal, by being more emotional. And that is what you're able to do if your stories, so where your feed is much more polished, much more professional, much more thought about your stories are really where you can begin to build that relationship with your followers so that you build that trust with trust comes conversions, with convergence comes money. And that is what you want to do if you're trying to grow a business on Instagram. So if you want to build trust, you need to be using Instagram stories. I hope that summarizes the importance of Instagram stories. Now that we do know the importance and, and you should now know that you should be posting stories daily. Let's dive into the very, very basics of stories. If you already are familiar with Instagram stories, the next module isn't going to be for you. Just skip to the one after because I'm going to go into the very, very basics and go through the navigation of the stories feature so that anybody who is joining this class and is completely new to Instagram gets that introduction so that when they do begin to create, they know what they are doing. So let's dive into the next module where we're going to learn the very, very basics of stories.
3. Instagram Stories Navigation: So as I mentioned at the end of the last module, in this module, we are going back to basics. If you are very new to Instagram and you haven't used the stories feature before. When you first go on to the stories feature, it can be very overwhelming. There's a lot of options. There's a lot of features, and there's just a lot to know. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm going to head onto my phone. I'm gonna take you through step-by-step on how to navigate stories so that when you begin to create, you know exactly what you need to do to get the most out of the stories feature. So without any further ado, let's dive straight into my phone. So when you actually open up Instagram, obviously you're going to be greeted with your home screen and on your home screen, this is how you begin to access your stories. So to access your stories, you can either tap on your little face there next to the stories feed, or you can hit the plus in the top left-hand corner and then click on story. Now, when you open up this pole, you can see that you are greeted with this page here. And I'm going to first go through the side navigation bar. The side navigation bars where you can begin to select what type of story you're going to create. And then from that you can then go and create accordingly. So firstly, we have our create buttons. So this will just greet you with a different background. For example, whether you want it to be a happy birthday message, a gear. Oh, what am I listened to this week's topic that interests essentially templates created by Instagram to make the process of the creation much, much simpler. Now, next we have Boomerang. So if you don't know what a boomerang is, essentially what you do is you tap on record. When you use it. It will flick between the images that you have just recorded four. So that is Boomerang, so we'll discard that for now. Next we have layout. This is where you can actually begin to import photos from your camera. So you can select one by one. You can change the grid if you want to have it in a different layout. Layouts pretty self-explanatory. Next we have super zoom. This is one way you can add different animated effects to your stories. She showed you how to do this one, because it's unlikely that you're ever actually going to use this. I don't think I've ever used this before as a creative, but it's there if you want to use it. And then finally we have hands free, which is one I used all the time when I wanted to record video. It's so, so annoying having to hold down the Record button as you try to record a video. Instead, you can just click on hands-free tap Record. That is it as oh, you need to do. And then tap Record when you finish talking. There's your Instagram story of you recording a video. So hands for me is a really, really popular one to use. But you also notice along the bottom you have different affects it. Now these are really, really good to use it. If you want to add a bit more substance to your photo, your video, you can actually search from really cool different effects by different creators that have created them. If you scroll along to the very end, you can see here that you can browse effect. There is an effect gallery. You can just scroll through, find out which ones you like, and then you can go from there. There are tons to pick from. So just go through there. You can save them to your Effects tab at the bottom so that you can use them time and time again. But I love to use these effects because they do add a bit more substance and make my story is a bit more interesting. So this is something you may use time and time again. So remember that is there. But for the sake of this demonstration, I'm just going to take a very basic photos so that we can go through the rest of the navigation. So at the top here, when you take a photo, you'll be greeted by five little tabs at the top. Now the very, very first one is save. If you tap that, it's going to save your image, the camera o. The next one, we have some more animated effects. So if you select these, for example, where they were at different effects to your photo. Now again, I don't really use these, but you might find a use for them. So remember they're, they're Next we have stickers. Now this is one that I use all the time. This is one that can actually really, really develop your story and make it much more eye-catching. And you can use the stickers to increase engagement. I'm going to go into the different stickers you can use in a later module, but the next one is sticky, as you can see here, you can search for different stickers. For example, if I type lines, you can use these various different creations here to add a bit more substance to your image. For example, you could put this in the corner here, and that just makes it look a bit more fancy, doesn't make it look so plane, but there you go. You've also got your location tab questions yet polish it DM me stickers. Those are the ones I'm going to talk about later because you can actually use them to great effect. But they all your stickers. Next we have the pen tools. They have five different pen tools you can actually use the contains the size of the pen by swiping up and down on that little slider, the, change the color by using the bit at the bottom. But the very first one is the very basic Penn will just use black here and we'll make it a little bit smaller. You can see the very basic. Next we have the RA. This one is actually quite simple because when you try and create an arrow here, sometimes it doesn't look very good and looks bit sloppy, but there's actually an arrow Pen tool. You can use that perfect arrowhead, perfectly connected. Use that tool to create your arrows. Don't try and make them yourself. Next we have the highlighter and I'm going to select a different color for this to show its effect and make it bigger. But they go, you highlight field Hollich, certain parts of your text to make them stand out. Highlighters perfect. Next we have the gluey pen. I don't really use this, but I've seen a lot of people use it to great effect. They was, for example, they'll put it around the subject of their image. So if you are creative, you find great ways to use that glow pen. But I've never really utilized it for my sort of niche. And then finally, we have a razor. So if you wanted to lay everything, use the eraser or gone. So they append tools. Now finally, we have our text. Now for some reason on certain accounts I have I don't have access to all of these different texts. So you may have access to any five, you may have got a new update for stories and you've got access to all ten like a half on this account. But for example, we're just gonna use the word hello, nice and basic. And you can see all of the different fonts Instagram has to offer. Now, I would try and keep your branding consistent. If you find a text that you like, stick to it. Don't change all the time between different texts be consistent between your stories that you can create a brand for yourself and you are consistent with that branding. Now, we're going to select this one, for example. Again, along the top you have where you want your text to be centered or left side, right side, you can click that one middle, you've got your colors. Now this final button, the third one along. If you tap that, you will actually give your texts that background. If you tap it again, invert it. Now, these background effects on your texts and different for each text type. So I'm just gonna go through them all for you. Again, you can see here, this one adds the background. This one adds a background. This one makes it glow slightly. This one adds a background. This one adds a nice electrical layered effect. So this one's good if you really want to make something stand out. I actually really like this one in US law. This one's like a paint scrub. This one's really fancy. I like this one. It's bit more elegant. You can use it in more serious situations, or if you want to make something really quite elegant, I've used that word twice now, but I think it's perfect for what you can use this for. Next we have this one here is a nice rounded effect. This is another one I use quite a lot. I'm trying to highlight certain aspects. And then finally, this is very basic square one here. But that is the very, very basic navigation of Instagram stories. If you're brand new to Instagram, I've hope that's provided you with some insight on how you can actually navigate stories so that when you begin to create, you know exactly what you're doing. So now that we actually know how to create Instagram stories using the stories feature, let's dive into actually creating the perfect story. I'm gonna talk you through step-by-step on some things to consider, some apps you can use. Then I'll talk through hashtags, the algorithm, all that fun stuff. But let's dive into the next module.
4. Storytelling & Narrative: So now we understand the very, very basic navigation of Instagram stories. Now we really have to consider what we're actually going to create. Now this is where I think a lot of people for sure, because Instagram stories need to have substance. They need to be something they can't just be thrown up randomly and you hope they perform. You want to have people actually interested in view in your stories. You want to keep them coming back if they view at once and they don't like it, they're not going to view it again. So you want to have them be engaging. And for them to be engaging, you have to have great storytelling and a fantastic narrative. This is where a lot of people fail and it's one of the reasons why you wouldn't see a lot of people not even post Instagram stories in the first place. The reason being they don't know what to create. You need to know every time you open up a story and you post something, what you are going to do, don't jump on a story and go, uh, let's talk about this topic. Have something in mind, make sure it's valuable in that it has substance. That storytelling aspect is going to keep people engaged throughout. Now, you could almost have a mini vlog every single day on your story. From the minute you wake up, you take people through your day, is a perfect example of storytelling. People are interested in what you do day-to-day and people follow you because you've either entertain them or you educate them. If you educate them, they obviously are following you because they are at B, they are following you because they want to bridge the gap between B. If they can follow certain tips or things you do throughout your day, they are going to do that. So if you were doing like a mini vlog throughout your day, every single day as an educator, as a business owner, that's going to inspire people to take action and do similar things to what you were doing as a creator. So that many blog is a perfect example of storytelling in great narrative because you're literally taking people through your day step-by-step. That is a story you are living story. So it's just an example of how you can provide a really good engaging Instagram story. Now you don't have to take people through your whole day. You can just have a certain thing every single day, a topic that you stick to, for example, today, you won't see it because this was posted a while back. I recorded an Instagram story about the importance of patients. And now today I'm going to stick to that topic home, my story of talking about patients. So having that narrative, having that storytelling aspect keeps people engaged. Because if people are engaged with what I'm talking about, they're going to keep referring back to my story to learn a little bit more about it as I continue to post. So when you are creating a story, make sure you know what you're talking about. That way you can tell a great story and have a good narrative that people will want to continue to follow and engage with. Having people to consistently engage with your stories as well as perfect when it comes to hacking the algorithm. When it comes to stories, if you don't know how the algorithm works, what social dilemma, but in very, very basic terms, or the algorithm wants to do is keep people on the platform. The longer it can keep people on the platform, the more ads it can show, the more ads it can show, the more you can charge it, its advertisers, the more can charge its advertisers, the more money they make the premises. They want to keep people on the platform so they can show more ads. If your stories are engaging and people are watching them the whole way through from start to finish every single day. Instagram is going to push your stories to more of your followers. So if you want to increase your story view, if you want to make sure that each of the stories you posts are really engaging and they are having people watch them the whole way through. Because that tells the algorithm that people are enjoying your content, that is keeping people on the platform and therefore they can make more money because if your content and people are staying on the platform because of it. So making sure you have a good story to tell and a great narrative is k. So before you even begin to create, make sure you know what you're going to talk about.
5. Creating Stories & Layout: So in this module, we're actually going to begin creating our stories. We understand the importance, we understand the basics, then navigation, and we know that we need to have a great story to keep our audience engaged. So now that we know that, let's start creating. Now I'm going to dive into my phone again. I'm going to firstly running through some stories I created within the past 24 hours to give you an example of what I do, then I'm gonna run you through how I actually created those stories. Now, I do want to say, I don't get overly technical and fancy with my stories, with my content, I educate. So with my stories, I don't want to take the attention away from the content itself with loads of fancy effects. So I try and keep it as basic but clean and on-brand as possible. So I'm gonna show you how I do just that. Let's dive into my phone. So if we tap on my story, let's go through some of my stories here. So first one, this was me just promoting a new post I posted. This is one thing I do amongst a lot of other content. It's ok to post about your new post as long as it's not the only thing you are doing. You can see here, I'm literally just sharing the post. I've got exactly what it is and why people need to check it out. And the little squiggle to make it look a little bit more fantasy. Was that necessary? Probably not really, but adds a little bit more and it makes it look a little bit more professional in my opinion. You might disagree, but I like it. But you can see from the texts they're, your hook is the most important aspect of your post. That's what the post about getting people in trade. They're like, okay, if I'm creating content, I really need this. And then here's the complete framework tells people why they need to check out and consequently they will. So we move to the next one. This is where I begin to get into the more educational part of my story. I record a video beforehand in my camera, import it to stories and edited. That way. I like doing that because the camera quality on the back camera, I find it's much better when you are recording on the camera itself. You can change the 4K, you name it, and then you can import onto stories through your camera. So you can see here how basic My story creation actually is. If you see him really design driven and you name it, you can get really creative, you can do just that and I'll show you different ways you can do that. I just choose not to because I don't want to draw the attention away from the content itself. And that's me actually talking in educating. So you can see here, I've got the video in black and white off-center to the left. I've added captions. Captions are key. I cannot tell you how important having a caption on your Instagram story is. You need to remember that not everybody has their sound turned on. If somebody doesn't have their sound turned on, but you're talking in the video. Your video is essentially useless because they aren't getting any value from it because it's silane. So how do you counteract that? You make sure you add captions that mentioned what you were talking about. That way you can cater both for the audio listeners and the nano audio listeners. And no matter which one they are, they still get the value that you are providing. So I encourage you if you're posting video, even if you're just talking, it doesn't even have to be educational. You might just be talking about your morning. Still add captions. The quickest way to add captions. Click on the text, click on the speech to text button in the bottom right, the keyboard and talk the caption, because you'll listen to yourself talk. You just repeat it. Desi caption gun, simplest app. And you can see here, keep it slightly off centered again up to the right, consistent with brown colors. Swipe through it a little bit of highlight. Again, I make it look a little bit more fancy, but keep it simple. Next story continues on for the previous ones, I'm still talking about the same thing by moving over to the top right. To keep people engaged, keep people's eyes moving, encouraged to listen on. If you keep it in the same place every single time, it can get a little bit boring. In my opinion, you want to keep people engaged by drawing their focus to other points of the page and making sure that they are staying consistently engaged. So again, you've got the same thing here. Post in the top right. Texts in the bottom. Highlight swipe through. Simple as that. Again, continue, again, move to the left caption text highlights worked through. And you can see here again, that is today no, same layout, different story. Posting, the top-left highlight through Caption button, right. You can see here how important consistency with your branding really is. If you're not being consistent, then people won't know when they are stumbling across your story in the story feed unless they are looking at the usernames in the top-left. You want people to know as soon as they stumble across your story that it's yours. How do you do that? You have a brand, you have brand colors. You have consistency with the way you create your content. Now when people are engaged with you, they trust you, they love your content when they stumble across your story because they know it's yours, they will engage with it, they will watch the whole thing. But if you're all over the place with your branding when your stories, people aren't going to realize that when they do stumble across your content, did it is actually yours. So that just goes to show how important consistency with your branding throughout your story actually is. Now, I know this is very basic My Story design, but it works, it works for me and that's why I've continued to do it. Now I'm actually going to go into stories and show you how I created this piece of content. So head of stories now. And you can see that I'm going to import the video from the camera. So I'm going to click at the bottom left-hand corner and up will pop my camera roll with all my videos. I'm going to use this one here. This is this one I posted earlier. Show you again. Now I want to make it black and white. How do I do that? I swipe on the screen and that'll give me all the different filters. Now here's the black and white Tokyo. Then I want to make it smaller and off center. So to make it smaller, you pinch it and then move it. Simple as that. Now because I have got my sound turned on, I don't exactly know what I'm saying is I'm just gonna use some example, texts and forgettable. Hello, my name is Ethan. Thank you for joining. My skill share clause. Exclamation mark. Now I use a gray background with yellow text for my text. So firstly, I want to make sure it's over to the right because that's how I sent to my text. So I use that top left one. And then to make my background color, I choose the select certain of my text. Click the little a with the stars. There we have it. That is what I use. And then to actually change the color of my text, I highlight all of it. And then I'll go to the yellow. And then I'll click Done. Now what to make that slightly smaller so it fits in at the top. So use the slider, use the guidelines. Put it up there, and there we have it. Now I know I've got a little bit of extra space there. So I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make the video a bit bigger to fill it up, But then I add the highlighted line. So I'm gonna go across to the gray, make that a bit fatter, swipe across. And there's my story. Now I have to do the same for every single one because it's going to break it up into four parts because stories that limited to 15 seconds sections. So I'll go up to the next one. Do the same. Tokyo, make it smaller, different area of the screen saying text, same design. But it's as simple as that as for creating more stories. Now you can make your story's a little bit more fancy to emphasize design skills. Now, something I would possibly do is head over to the sticker tab, type in square or type in, let's use corner. Whose corner is an example. We can select this corner one here. We can put it in the corner of our post, just like that. And although it is only very minimal, it makes it look a little bit more fancy. Again, you might want to add something down the side here so we can go onto stickers and we can go dots and find something that goes quite well with our feed. This works perfectly actually. We'll use that and we'll just put that down there like that. But you can see now that I've got quite a lot going on on the screen. That corner one was just fine because it's very minimal, but I've now got those dots and all that. It looks good. It's kinda drawing the attention away from the content itself, which is actually me speaking. And that's why I like to keep it as minimal as possible. But if you want to get creative, do just that. This is a perfect example. It looks quite nice, looks very professional, opposed to me holding up the camera and just speaking into it and then leave and it just does that and adding a caption. I'd like to get a little bit more creative, show my design skills in some way to make it more engaging. Now, you can experiment as much as you possibly want when it comes to designing your stories. There are so many different stickers. You can use so many different filters, you name it, and you can make some incredibly stunning Instagram stories. But I completely understand some of you may be thinking, I'm not very creative. I didn't think I could do something like that, even though some people make it look so easy and they get really fancy, I don't know how to do that. I'm not very creative, so I want to make it a little bit easier. You're in luck. Because in the next couple of modules, I'm going to go through a few of my favorite apps that allow you to create really, really professional Instagram stories. With these. Let's go into the next module and talk about a few of those apps.
6. App 1 - Inshot: So the first step I want to talk about is an app called in shot. Now, this is essentially a Premier Pro on your phone. It's very basic, nowhere near as advanced as Premier Pro, but what you expect for a free app and something that you can just grab on your phone and edit on the go. I primarily use it however, to get the right dimensions for when I'm posting certain pieces of content, specifically Instagram stories, because sometimes you may shoot something in landscape, but want to post it as a portrait story. Or you may see something in square and what is compress it and put it in as the correct size for Instagram Stories. Ensure allows you to do just that with their dimensions feature or show you some other features it has, but that is what I primarily use it for. So again, let's dive into my phone and I'll walk you through the app. So I head over to the little app. So I'm gonna show you through today and these are the three apps I'm going to talk through. But in short, the logo for this, if you're looking on the App Store, looks just like this. So if we open up the app, you can see here, you are greeted to whether you want to create a video, photo, or collage. Now for this purpose, I'm going to use video again, new, and we'll select the video I was looking at last time. So this one here. Now once you've imported the video, again, you're greeted with this screen. So the very first button is the one. I use this platform for the most, and it's canvas. The canvas is going to be able to rescale your video to the size you want it to. So you have one by one, which is obviously the classic square for Instagram. Four by five, which is the size you should be posting on Instagram because it takes up the most real estate. And then you have of the YouTube and all the other things. But the one for Instagram Stories is nine by 16, but it's also shown on this app as the tick tock one. You can see here that it compresses into the Instagram story format. Now, this is a slightly poor example because this video was already in the correct format for stories, but you can see how it would compress it if it were to be a video show in landscape or square. So that is what I primarily use this app for. But if you want to actually use it in a little bit more detail As a video editing app. You can. So we'll click the critique there. And firstly, you can see, you can add music, so you can import music, you can look at different tracks. It will come up with different tracking import from iTunes, you name it, and you can import music. Next, you can add different stickers. You can add gifts. You name it. There's loads of different things you can go through. I'm not gonna go through the more books it would take forever. So download the app and explore for yourself. You cannot load a different stickers on. Next you got text. This is another good one. If you want to add captions, you may not necessarily like the texts they have on offer. In instagrams. You can add your text on inshore and go from there. This is the free version. I must stress all of these three apps I'm going to show you offer ie, they have paid versions, but I'm gonna show you the free options so that they are accessible to all no matter if you want to pay for them or not. So again, filter, you can adjust wherever you want it to be. More contrast edge, you can adjust the brightness. Basically you can color correct it the way you exactly wanted to be. And then finally, you've just got all the classic things such as your crop, your flip regime, burst, your split, which is one I really like if you want to actually go through and split different things and other things in place. This is why I added the comparison to primary approach because you can actually go into much more detail with your video editing and you can pre-cut things and you name it, you can get really, really technical with this app. But as I did say, I primarily use this app for the dimension purposes. If I shoot something in landscape, I wanted to be in the story format. I go on to ensure I go on two dimensions. Use the dimensions tab to resize it and then I save it. So it's perfectly formatted for Instagram stories. So download in short, haven't experiment is a really quite powerful video editing app. As far as iPhone video editing apps go. So if you want to use it for a bit more detail, wants to make your story's a little bit more professional and add some pop-ups and things like that coming in at certain times of the video. You can do just that with info. So download the app, have an experiment, but that is app number one.
7. App 2 - Unfold: Now app Number two I want to talk about is an app called unfold. If you look in the App Store, the middle one unfold is what it looks like. So if we open up unfold, this is essentially an app where you are given a bunch of different story templates to use if you want very creative and you want an app to get you good results of the get-go download unfold. You will not be disappointed, I promised. But if we go through to the app, you can see here, you click add. You can create your first story. So I'm just gonna call it Hello, exclamation mark creates story. And now at popup with this page here, and if you click on the plus sign up will pop an enormous amount of templates. If we look at Classico, scrapbook, plastic, mood board, you can just see how many different templates there are to use. So you can just go through the whole app essentially, and all your stories will look incredibly professional. It's a no brainer. If you don't have a creative mind or you don't think you have a creative when everyone has a creative mind, just the more you experiment, the better you get at things. But if you want to be assured that you're going to have a professional-looking story download unfold because it's got a ton of these different apps for you to use. This is, again, free, has a paid option where you can get more templates, but there are a ton of free templates you can use. So let's just look at this one for example. We can see here up pops our template. Now we can select the image or video we want to go within that template. I'm gonna click this one here, for example, I can resize it however we wish, and then edit the text. However we wish. We save that. And we have a really, really professional-looking story with minimal wether. I had to put no effort into the design of this because it was already done for me. So if you want to have really, really professional-looking stories, download, unfold, no thought process goes into the creation, but it still looks professional. I've been using unfold for very, very long time now and I get people come to me and go, how on earth do you make your stories look so professional? Your design skills are incredible and I go, I'm gonna let you into a little secret here. I use an app, couldn't vote. None of those designs are mine. I use templates, but they clearly work because you think they look incredibly professional and that's what I wanted. So I'm glad you really like them if you want to create similar ones, download unfold and they go. Okay. I'm definitely gonna download unfold because I want my stories look awesome too. So if you want to create awesome professional-looking stories with minimal effort through templates, download, unfold. Brilliant app. At number two, make sure you get it.
8. App 3 - Mojo: Now at number three, and this is the final Apple going to talk about in today's skill share class and his mojo. Now, mojo is another template app you noticed in unfold all of the templates, we're still, they didn't move around. You just imported your video and photo and it changed texts, you name, it just made it look fancy. But mojo is an animated story app. So they'll move around and grab attention and make it liberally interest in because it's not just still. So let's open it up. Open up my job. You'll be greeted with this screen here. Again is free. There's a pro version. With the pro version, you get more templates, simple as that. You can see here, we scroll down. There were a good amount of free templates for you to use. So for example, let's use this showcase template here. Let's have this post again. So we can change the text to new post available on all platforms. Bam, that animated. That looks so much more interesting than if I were to put new post on top of a screenshot from the Instagram itself. Now it's grabbing attention because it's standing there and it's people looking at it and go, oh wow, that's actually quite cool. That's interesting. I'm going to go and check that out. Animation can bring a lot to your Instagram. Story creation are mojo has so many different templates that you can use to do just that. There are ones where you can have a carousel, your whole carousel because it lets you select multiple images to import. And then it will show like an example. I slide across a, show people through every single slide. And it will have other slides coming in slide and n, left, right and center. You name it. There's loads of different templates that you can use to make your stories or mojo and make the animations that really, really interesting. And so if you're a bit bored, if those still templates that don't really do much and there's only just text, but it makes it look really nice. Download mojo, because then you can begin to create animated templates which ADA extra substance and engagement through your stories. Now I could spend all day going through the different templates and given you examples of how you can generate them, that kind of defeats the objective of you need to experiment yourself and work out what works best for you. So download the app and find out what works best and just go with that, go with the flow, find something you like, and continue to run with it. Download mosaic, that was APN number three. And they are the three apps that you need to download to up your Instagram story game.
9. Utilizing Story Stickers: Now this skill share cars is coming to an end. But the final thing I wanted to talk to you about is utilizing for different stickers within your stories to encourage engagement and make people interact with you a little bit more. Because at the moment we are only really creating stories that people were consuming. They all are doing. They're not interacting with them. They can't do anything with them. But if you utilize these four stickers to, I'm mentioning, this will increase the likelihood of viewer engagement, which in turn makes it a bit more interesting for them. They don't want to just sit there and scroll and listen to you all the time. Sometimes they want to interact. And these four stickers allow them to do just that. So we have the post occur, we have the question sticker, We have the DM mistakes, and we have the quiz sticker. I will leave a little bit of a recording coming up here, just which walks you through a few of them very basically, but I'm gonna tell you how you can utilize each of those stickers to their full potential. The post occur. The post Decker allows you to ask a question or a statement and then gives you two different options which you can change starts off with yes and no, but you can type in whatever you want. Now, this is really good if you want to decipher between two different things, obviously, because you have those two different options. But for example, you can have a pole where you ask which content July receive more from me, video or single image. Now, depending on the results, you can then adjust your content creation strategy accordingly. Let's say more people say video. They clearly like you posting video content. So you should post more of it. I know we're only has two options for them to choose from. But if you ask the right questions and you are wise about the two different options you give your audience to select from. You can really find out quite a lot about the question you are asking. So be specific with your questions and be specific with the responses you offer. So Paul is the first one. The next one you can use is the question. Now, the question sticker is perfect for setting up a Q and a. You can have a question sticker that says, ask me anything. Now when this question sticker shows up on one of your followers feeds, you'll come up with a little response box. You would have seen it in the little walk-through. But that just allows your follower to pretty much responded with anything. So let's say, you've said ask me anything. They might use that as an opportunity to get to know you a little bit more. Or let's say you are in a certain niche, I'm in social media marketing. They'll give them the opportunity to ask a question about social media marketing. Now these are giving you not only content ideas, but you can respond using the questions that they ask in your stories. They have it, they have a story series for that day. So you could use that questions to get to a Q and a. And you can also use it to accumulate content ideas and put up a question saying, what content you want to see from me, or what are you struggling with? Question mark, they can respond with whatever they want. Those responses they have at their content ideas for your main feed, use the questions they're going to set up a Q and a, or find out more about what your audience wants to see. Learn a little bit more about their struggle, so then you can cater your content going forward accordingly. Next, we have the DME sticker. It has never been easier to get someone to the DMZ on Instagram. Especially with stories. We've stories, you can use the dam mistake as soon as they tap on it, it will take them to the DM. They can send you a message. They can also swipe up and react. So with stories we have to do to send you a DM is one step. I can swipe up or tap the DM mystic or it's not like they have to go to your profile and click on the message and type out the message just once. Why? Purple one tap and they're there. So if you want to get people into the DMZ, that's how you do it. And the reason I'm saying you need to use this one, it's because the DMZ or where you build that relationship. If you want to sell anything on Instagram, you have to build a relationship with your audience. With that relationship comes trust and you can't sell anything without trust. But to build that trust, you have to get to know your audience, know more personal level, and that means talking to them in the DMZ, you can't expect to build that relationship. If you just post content and respond to comments, it doesn't work like that. You have to show the time of day, you have to reach out to them in the DMD, you have to be concerned about them, ask them about them. They are following you. And if, imagine if your favorite content creative reached out to you and started wanting to know a little bit more about you as an individual rather than their mosque can give a lot of questions. You bill, okay, this person's really, really consider. And in turn that builds that trust. And once that trust is built, you can sell them something is as simple as that. So if you want to sell something, you need to build that relationship. You need to build that trust. How do you do that? You get them in the DMZ. How do you get them in the damns? You post stories that they can even swipe up and He is the DM sticker so that they can just tap that. And DME done Dams sticker, make sure you use it is perfect for building that relationship with your audience. Now finally, we have the quiz sticker. Now, I personally used this as an alternative to the post, or when I have more than two options that I want my audience to choose from. And so with the postdoc or we hired me, had two different options. With the quest deca. We can have more than that. We have three, we can have four. You name it. You can ask question in a four different options, and then they can select accordingly. Now because it is put together as a quiz, it will show there being one right answer and the recipe in Rome. But if you're using it as an alternative to a poll, just let your audience know there's no right or wrong answer. You're just wanting more options to choose from. And you can do it that way. Or you can test your audience and actually use it like a quiz. If you want to find out the level of knowledge within your follower base asked quite a complicated question. You can also mean easier questions about a certain topic and they can answer accordingly depending on what they think. From that, you'll be able to gauge the knowledge of your audience. Then you can tailor your content accordingly because you might be making some really, really complicated content on your feet at the moment. But your audience may only understand the very basic terms. So the complicated content you are creating for them has no real relevance because they don't know what you're talking about. But if you use quizzes, you are able to gauge what level they are at with regards to their knowledge on that niche. So you can then go and create your content accordingly. So all of these different stickers are making your audience engage with you more. It makes it a bit more interesting for them on your stories. But ultimately, you gathering data, you get to find out so much information if you use the stickers to their full potential. But at the same time your audience enjoys the process because it allows them to engage. So it's a win-win in both situations. So make sure you are utilizing those four different stickers. Not just posting stories where he dictate and educate the whole time. People do want to get involved. They want to get to know, use or use that dm sticker. They want to have some input into the content you produce, that they make sure that they are consistently learning what they want to learn. Use the power rule and the quiz for that. Make sure you are using those stickers and your Instagram stories are going to improve dramatically.
10. Course Conclusion & Your Project: And that does wrap up today's skill share clause. I hope by now you have a complete understanding on what you're doing with Instagram stories. If you were brand new to Instagram, I hope I've showed you step by step on how to create the perfect Instagram story. If you've already familiar stories, I hope I've taught you how the algorithm works, how you should be using hashtags, geotags, some awesome apps you can use to improve your design. You name it. I've thoroughly enjoyed teaching you, but I just wanted to let you know about your class project. For your class projects, I want you to take me through a day of your stories. I want you to screenshot each story. It may be a video. Well, you take a screenshot each individual story and upload each story as a file for your project. Now this allows me to see what you're doing with your stories, how you've improved your design, whether you're using mojo, unfold, you name it to actually create the star of your templates wherever you are adding your captions, you need to make sure you're adding your captions. Whether you're adding a sleek little bit of design, you name it. All of this stuff that I've taught in today's Scotia, cause I want to see you using that in the stories you create. So I want you to take a screenshot of each of the stories you create on a day, put them into a certain document, laid them out so you can see them away in order and upload that as your project now is a very simple Scotia clause I know because I hope you're going to go and do this anyway. So what we need to do is screen show what you did and show me what you've done. From that. I can then give you pointers. Should you need any direction I can tell you what's great ways you can improve. But I hope this Scotia clause has taught you how to improve your Instagram stories and I want to see just how you improve yours. But if you did enjoy today's go check house, I just wanted to let you know that I am the host of a podcast called social media marketing school. I upload new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Mondays are about paid ads, Wednesdays are about Instagram growth. And Fridays are pretty much about anything. So random day or if I find a topic in the week or talk about that, or if some things on my mind, Friday is the day I do that, but more of a fun laid back episode for me. So if that interests, you, make sure you head over and give that a listen. You can find it on pretty much any podcast platform, Spotify, Apple, Google, you name it. All of those platforms, just search, social media marketing School, and I will be there. But if you have any questions with regards to anything I've mentioned in this class, you can even leave it as a discussion point or you can reach out to me on Instagram at the marketing, Ethan, just submit DM and I will get that to you no matter what. But I just want to finish off this class by saying if you have made it to this point, really enjoyed teaching you the ins and outs of Instagram stories. If you are interested in Instagram Grove hashtags, for example, engagement strategies, you name it. I have got other Scotia classes on those. So head over to my profile, you will be able to find them to further your Instagram growth. And but if you did make it to this point in today's class, I just want to finish off by saying, thank you for tuning in and I hope to see you in my other classes.
Ethan Bridge, Social Media Marketing Coach
