Polly Barnfield walks through creating an Instagram Story from start to finish. Learn how to add text, stickers, filters, and drawings, plus how to use the Close Friends option to share with specific people and save stories as highlights.
Chapters
Let's create an Instagram story, shall we? So I am here on my main Instagram feed. I'm just going to hit the little icon in the bottom of my screen to come to our own feed. But back to the main one where I've hit the home button. You can see in the top left hand corner of my screen it says your story. So there's a few ways you can get to the create a story function. You can hit this button, your story and it will open. You can hit this button here on the top right at the top of your screen in the middle to see how it. There we go. And you can create a post story reel or live from there. Alternatively, you can click the plus button at the top right hand side of your screen, pop up from the bottom and again it gives you the options of creating post reel story. So let's open create story and automatically it takes you to your camera reel. You can see here on the left hand side it's got the camera option which will in. If I clicked on it would show you my face and you don't want to see my face. Trust me, not camera ready. So I'm going to click on one of my images and it's opened up on my screen. From here you can add a whole bunch of things. You can add some text. So I've just typed hello and you can change the color of this text. You can. If I scroll across, you can see there are quite a number of options in terms of color. You can also use this droplet icon on the left hand side if you want to match your branding, which is something that we do quite commonly in our stories for. Maybe I'm going to click done here back into hello, but I want to change my colourway. I don't want blue writing on a lighter background. I want lighter writing on a blue background. So I'm going to click this solid A with the stars here and that changes the color. I can click it again. I just have the text and no background, but I want blue background here. We can make it big. What I'm doing here to move it around is I'm just clicking on the text and dragging it with my finger and I'm going to make it larger and getting it nice and aligned. Can you see those yellow lines that appear on my screen? And blue, blue is the center of the screen and yellow means that the text is nice and straight. So next you can. Oh, also sorry. With the, with the text itself, if I click on this A in a circle, it'll take you through all the font options that we have available at the moment within the app. Hello. So next this sticker button. So you can add in a whole heap of useful information. Here we just have a slight scroll down location. You can add people you see this mention.
So I'm just going to add in our pals there. Local rewards.
You can change the color of this sticker as well. You can add in a location which is fantastic for making sure you're joining in with local conversations. You can add a hashtag, you can ask people a question, run a poll, all kinds of things to boost interaction and engagement. You can add topical stickers as well, such as at the time of recording this, we're in the month of Ramadan. You can add in things for special days.
There'll be Christmas, there'll be things for Mother's Day. There will be all kinds of stickers.
That you may want to add to your stories for your followers to get involved with there. You can also see here, I'm just going to move it to the top, this top right hand icon. You can add in another image to your story. This is quite a nice neat thing here.
It's not going to be hugely apparent because it's white on a white background, but you see how that's really nice.
You can just add in an extra image. If you want to layer up images.
In your stories, you have the to do that. Back to the stickers though, away from your camera roll. The next thing you can add in are GIFs. GIFs, GIFs, whatever floats your boat.
You can search things, just type in a search term and you can scroll through the options that you have available. You can make these, you know, fun, accessible, engaging, interactive, anything like that. And again, with the elements that you're.
Adding on, you can move your gifts around and make them larger and make them smaller and generally have a nice time. Music and stuff like that.
The next thing we got here.
Hang on, I don't think I showed that to you properly.
You see these stars here on the right hand side? They offer filters. So if you're doing face to camera.
You can scroll through a bunch of filters here at the bottom.
You can also save filters from other.
People'S stories and they will appear down at the bottom of your screen as well.
Obviously the filter effects aren't going to.
Be hugely exciting because we are doing.
A text based version, but I've just clicked on this shiny rainbowy effect here and that has appeared. If you are using a filter, it.
Will say what the filter is at the top left hand side of your story. Lastly, these dots on the right hand side, you can draw or you can fade. Drawing is quite helpful because you can change the background of your story. Because I have got an image overlaid here. You'll see something happen to this. What I'm going to do is choose the black and you can draw. See that you change the size of your nib.
But what I'm going to do is I'm going to press and hold. My background image has disappeared, hasn't it? But everything else has become a lot more visible. What I'm going to choose now, if.
You can see all the little pens that have appeared, let's go for an arrow.
Arrows are brilliant because when you want.
To signpost people to certain things.
Take.
That down right to the smallest nib.
It's just useful for helping point stuff out to people.
Quite literally pointing stuff out to people.
This is a lovely feature, this one with the pen and the dots because.
It kind of creates a lovely glowing effect. Again you can use that for full coverage or just for enhancing your images. Then you've got a rubber which some people like to use for a kind of a sneak peek. I'm going to take my nib right up to the chunkiest setting and just go right across there.
You can see the other image, it's still there. See the original image that we had.
Below is starting to appear because I've.
Rubbed out some of the color that we overlaid. Lastly, you can choose where you want.
Your story to go. So the buttons on the bottom, bottom you can choose whether it's just simply to post your story or you can create a close friends list. This might be useful as a business when you are releasing new information you can ask people if they want to be put on your close friends list. You can share, offer codes and special offers, release dates, anything where you want. That kind of sense of fomo, the fear of missing out, you know, you want to create some excitement for like a product launch or something secret or an Easter egg. Or if you've got like one tiny little special offer on your website and people want people to find it, they could be part of your postpones list. Obviously when you are using Instagram on a as a personal setting, then you would have close friends for images that you don't want put out onto your main feed.
So we have got an image on our background, we've got an image overlaid on the top.
Let's make it wonky.
We've got an account tagged We've got.
A GIF on there, we've got an arrow and we've got a location.
And I'm just going to hit your story here.
And now it's pasted it and you.
Can see it's posted because I now.
Have that lovely ready orange ring around our profile picture.
Click on it, you can see it's uploading. And now it's posted, we can choose.
Whether to save our story as a highlight on our profile and you can delete it, save it, share it, send it, or share to Facebook as well.
So I do hope that was useful. Please, if you have any questions at all, use the blue button at the.
Bottom of your browser in maybe because that connects you to us 247 and.
