45 Tips for Instagram You Probably Didn’t Know About

45 Tips for Instagram You Probably Didn’t Know About. Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social networks and its user base continues to grow. Over a billion people use this app monthly. Even though we’ve been posting images on Instagram for a few years now, it contains many features that many people don’t even know about. So let’s see if any of these surprise you.

Features and Tricks for Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories have many advantages. Not only do many people browse through them rather than scroll through posts, but there’s also less pressure about content quality because they disappear after 24 hours. Because of this, you don’t even have to worry about figuring out when to post Stories.

You don’t have to film everything in real time. You can create stories from older posts in your phone’s gallery and play around with graphics. But we’ll talk about that another time.

Stories with videos have the greatest reach. Followers spend more time with them, and Instagram can then determine that it’s engaging content. Let’s look at how you can create and improve your stories.

What Kind of Stories Can You Create?

#1 Handsfree

You can record videos without having to hold your finger on the screen. Just use the handsfree feature. Double-tap to switch to the front camera and recording continues. During filming, you can also zoom in and out by swiping your finger up and down on the screen. However, you must keep your finger on the record button.

#2 Boomerang

With boomerang, you can create 4-second videos that will replay continuously in your story. Essentially, you’ll create a gif that can captivate and even entertain your followers.

#3 Video Doesn’t Have to Be Just 15 Seconds

If you record a video on your phone and save it to your files, you can then upload it to your stories. If it’s longer than 15 seconds, it will automatically be split into several parts. You can upload all of them or select just some. You save those (they are automatically edited) and upload them.

#4 Filters

Stories definitely include various filters. They can be used with both the front and rear camera. Instagram updates them frequently—some are seasonal and some were created by celebrities. You’ll find all of them under the smiley icon when creating a story.

When uploading an older photo or video to your story, Instagram offers you filters named after major cities.

#5 Text

Do you have just a short message that would be better written out? Instagram is ready for that. Choose a color scheme, select a font, and you can get started. You can now find this option by swiping to the “Create” section when making a story.

“Create” Section

New to this section, you’ll find not only creating text stories, but also creating stories made from gifs, birthday greetings (anniversaries, thank you notes…), sharing memories from past years, polls, countdowns, questions, or quizzes without first using a photo to create your story (from your gallery or camera).

#6 Layout

In 2019, the ability to create collages from photos directly in the Instagram app was added. You can create a story from photos in your gallery or “live” through your camera. You can choose from six templates where you can place up to 6 photos.

#7 Portraits with Focus

Not every phone has portrait mode in its camera. However, Instagram offers you the “Focus” feature, which you can use for photographing and filming people. It only works with people because it detects faces and automatically blurs the background. You can use the feature for both photos and videos and with both your front and rear camera.

#8 Live Streaming

This format is already somewhat of a challenge. It’s good to have a sufficient number of followers. You’ll probably not be streaming to 10 people who happen to be online. You can use live streaming, for example, to communicate with your fans, broadcast from an event, answer frequently asked questions, or introduce new products.

Or invite someone and interview them as part of a conversation. But be careful, always think about what value the broadcast will provide and whether you yourself would even be interested in such content.

#9 You Can Hide Stories From Competitors

When creating a story, click through the gear icon in the top left corner to access “Story Controls”. Here you can set:

who you want to hide your stories from,
whether users can reply to your stories,
whether they can be shared by other users,
saving stories to your phone,
sharing to stories on Facebook.

You can also access story controls through settings:
Your profile > ☰ > Settings > Privacy and security > Story controls

#10 Insights

What you don’t measure, you can’t manage.

It’s good to have an overview of how many people your story reached, who reacted to it, how many people clicked on the hashtag, tagged location, or person. You can find all of this in the statistics of individual stories.

Just open your story, swipe up, and all the data will be displayed to you.

How to Enhance Your Stories?

#11 Stickers

Instagram offers stickers that you can use to decorate your stories. Some change thematically (for example, with the season) and a few of them can be changed by tapping.

#12 Playing With Colors

Use the color that suits you at the moment. If you long-press one of the offered colors, the entire spectrum will appear. And if you need to match a color to a photo, you can also use the eyedropper function.

#13 Colored Backgrounds

Want to make only part of a photo stand out? Or would you simply prefer just a solid color background? Use drawing mode. If you choose a highlighter and hold your finger on the screen, the background will be transparent. With a pen, it will be solid. You can then highlight part of the photo using the eraser.

#14 Text Tricks

Every word in your story can be a different color. Just select it with your fingers and choose a color you like. If you want to make it really stand out, you can try rainbow text. You need two fingers. I recommend placing your phone on a table. Select all the text, gradually deselect it, and at the same time move your other finger across the color spectrum.

Try text shadowing. While Instagram doesn’t have a built-in function for this, it’s still a simple way to enhance your story. Just create two identical texts in different colors and the same size (which you can change with your fingers or the slider on the left) and place them on top of each other.

#15 Questions

Curious about your fans’ opinions or ideas? Ask a question and find out what you need to know. You’ll find all responses in one place on your story, and you’ll also get a notification for each new response.

You can respond publicly to all responses in another one of your stories. Just add a background and your reaction (using text, or even video).

#16 Polls

Get reactions and feedback from your fans using simple polls. They can vote on which of your products they prefer, what gift with an order they’d appreciate more, or help you make a decision.

You’ll see complete poll results in your story insights, including how each user voted specifically.

#17 GIFs

You can creatively bring your stories to life with GIFs. You’ll find thousands in the Instagram library. Your imagination knows no bounds.

A special trick is to use a gif (or sticker) to click through to a post. First, find the post you want to link to from your story, select the “Add to Story” option, resize it there, and add a gif over it, such as “Tap here/New post/” or something characteristic of your new post. This way, you interactively guide users to your new post after uploading the story.

#18 Music

With just a few clicks, you can bring your story to life with music. The library offers everything you can think of. Music can beautifully enhance the atmosphere of a video or photo.

You can use any 15 seconds of a song, just drag to change the section that suits you best.

#19 Product Tags

For some time now, you’ve been able to tag your products in posts and stories. Users get the opportunity to click directly to the product and make a purchase on your website. Tagging works similarly to tagging people, but you need to have products uploaded in Business Manager.

^{Source: www.instagram.com/madewell}

#20 Carousel Ad

Take advantage of the ability to show more products in one post. Not just as an organic post, but also as an ad. An ideal post format for playing with creativity. What about showing a product from a different angle with each additional click to your next story?

You can use a similar approach with Stories ads. They allow you to insert multiple cards, giving you a better chance to grab attention (than with a single story) and, for example, tell a short story. If you’re just starting out with ads on social media, some tips for beginners might be helpful.

#21 Location, #Hashtag, Mention, Donation

In stories, you can tag your location and add a hashtag. As a result, your story will appear in stories from that location, which you can view by clicking on the location.

Hashtags work in exactly the same way. You can also include a mention in your story. Be careful here. Fans often tag their favorite brands in stories. If they tag you, you’ll get a notification. You should definitely let the fan know that you noticed them and thank them for the mention. You can also share the story to your own profile.

In some countries, non-profit organizations can collect donations through Instagram.

The Czech Republic is not on this list yet, so you can only support collections for other projects through your profile.

#22 Quiz

Test how well your fans know you, your service, or your product.

The latest feature Instagram introduced is fun for fans. The goal is to guess the correct answer. You can suggest up to 4 options and then clearly track the results.

Features and Tips for Posts and Your Account Settings

From stories to posts. According to recent statistics, videos are the most successful with users. Videos on Instagram can be up to one minute long. The longer you keep your fans engaged with your content, the better Instagram will evaluate your content and increase its reach. Following videos are carousel posts (those where you place multiple photos, and therefore have a better chance of engaging fans for a longer period).

#23 How to Use Hashtags

Currently, you can add up to 30 hashtags to a post. These should be relevant and related to the post’s topic. Both Czech (which reach a smaller group of users, but with a greater chance that your post will be found) and English hashtags work (where it makes sense to use only those that combine a maximum of a few thousand posts, otherwise you’ll get lost among them).

Definitely do not use worn-out hashtags such as #follow4follow, #likes4likes and similar ones. Not only can you end up hitting a banned hashtag and your post (or worse, your professional account) will not be shown to other users for some time. Besides, these hashtags don’t bring anything useful.

Try to come up with a unique hashtag connected to your brand, service or product that you and your fans will use.

#24 Archiving Your Posts

If you feel that some of the posts on your profile are no longer needed, don’t fit there and you want to delete them, but at the same time don’t want to lose them completely, you can archive them. Other users won’t see them and you won’t lose them. Just click the three dots next to the post and select “Archive”. Such posts can be found under the clock icon on your profile.

#25 Zoom

As a brand, you can play around with your post and place something in it that users have to find using zoom (zooming in). Not only will you be original, your fans will enjoy the post, but they will also interact with it, and the Instagram algorithm loves that.

#26 Tags

Photos where you are tagged can be hidden. It can happen that someone tags your brand on a nonsensical, or worse, offensive photo. If the user refuses to delete it and doesn’t want to remove your tag, you can work around it and hide the photo on your profile or remove the tag. Click on the tag – your brand’s tag in the post and a menu will appear for you.

If this happens frequently, you can set up manual approval of tags. You can enable this option in Settings > Privacy > Photos and Videos of You and turn off “Add Automatically”.

On the other hand, if your fans tag you in great content, don’t forget to thank them and show that you care about your fans.

#27 Location

Posts with location have up to 79% greater reach than those without it. So don’t forget this important point when publishing your next post.

Location then works the same as with stories. Your post will be displayed whenever someone opens that particular location.

#28 Show Translation

On every post you will find the option “Show Translation”. Thanks to this, communication and understanding between users is somewhat easier.

Always communicate in the language that corresponds to the majority of your fans. Those few who might not understand can use this feature and you don’t have to worry about translations.

#29 Notifications for Posts

Someone entertains you a lot, but the Instagram algorithm never shows you their posts and you never click through to their stories? Turn on notifications for the selected user and nothing will escape you. You’ll find this option again under the three dots next to a specific post, as well as on the profile.

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#30 Saving Posts

Instagram has been allowing you to save posts you like using the bookmark icon for some time now. You can then organize them into folders and return to them anytime. Only you can see them. You’ll find them on your profile when you open the menu (in the top right corner) under the “Saved” tab.

#31 Activity Status

Because Instagram loves having an overview of us, it started tracking the activity of its users. In messages, you can see when a user was last active and likewise, your followers have an overview of you. You can turn off this feature, but be careful. By not wanting to show your activity status, you can’t “spy” on others and you won’t see their status either.

#32 Closest Group

If you communicate frequently with a selected group or have special messages for them, you can create a Close Friends list. You can then share stories only with them. In the case of a brand, you can use this feature, for example, with your most loyal Instagram followers.

#33 Try Fonts That Not Everyone Has

There are several websites that can help you. You will find countless text symbols (Emoji) and even fonts (Fancy Text tab). All you need to do is copy and paste them. You can use them both in stories and to decorate photo captions or your “bio” (profile description).
⇨ Lingojam
⇨ Coolsymbols
⇨ Instagram Fonts
⇨IG Font Generator

#34 Name Tag

Perhaps a bit unnecessary, but if your profile name (brand) is complex or you find that it is often mispronounced or searched incorrectly, try a name tag.

You will find it on your profile in the menu in the top right corner. You can style it however you like, using emojis or a photo. Then all someone who wants to start following you needs to do is scan it with their camera. You can search for and add people the same way. Of course, you can also share it.

Tip: You can place your name tag in a newsletter or printed materials, for example.

#35 Save Mobile Data

If you enable the “Use Less Data” option in settings, you will reduce the amount of data transferred on your mobile network. And you know how it is, those who save have it three times better. Note that this may affect the speed of data loading and uploading.

#36 Mute Those You Don’t Like

Don’t want to unfollow someone, but don’t need to see their posts or stories? Just “Mute” that specific user. You can find this option on their profile and in their posts in the menu under three dots. You select whether you want to mute posts, stories, or both and that’s it. You can change this setting back anytime, of course. Either on a specific profile or in the list of muted accounts, which you can find in your profile Settings under the Accounts tab.

#37 Verification

Verification is not only for celebrities. On the contrary, for a brand or product, this feature could come in handy. What do you need? Just a username, your name, category (e.g., Business, Brand, Organization) that your account falls under, and a photo of your ID.

#38 Video Calls

Such a detail that probably not many people use yet. In the direct messages section, you will find the option to start a video call.

You can make calls this way with up to four other users at once.

#39 Managing Multiple Accounts and Switching Between Them

This feature will come in handy if you have a private account and also manage a company’s Instagram account. Once you add a second account and log into it, you can easily switch between them. Instagram now allows you to have 5 accounts logged in from one device.

#40 Where Do I Find Posts I Like?

Did you remember a photo from your fan where your product was beautifully photographed, but the fan didn’t tag you and you can’t find the photo? If you made the fan happy with at least a like, it’s simple. In Settings, check the Accounts section. You will find all “Posts you like” there.

#41 Comment Settings

In settings, you can find the option to customize how comments work on your profile. Not only is it possible to disable comments from specific users, but you can also set who can comment on your posts (everyone, people you follow and your followers, people you follow, or only your followers).

You can also set filters here – turn on and off offensive comments or even set your own filter with words you want to block.

You can also completely disable comments on individual posts. This option is again hidden behind the three dots on the specific post.

#42 Search History

You can delete it in Settings (in Privacy and Security). Why? Perhaps you don’t want Instagram to suggest what you searched for before, or you’re interested in more relevant content that Instagram displays to you. At that point, it’s good to clear your history and start fresh.

#43 Quick Replies

If you frequently receive the same or very similar questions from fans, you can prepare answers in advance in Settings. This will save you a lot of time when responding.

#44 Data Overview – Download Option

If you’re curious about what Instagram knows about you, you can request a download of your data. This includes content you’ve shared, comments, profile information, and more.

#45 Business Account Benefits

As a business, definitely use a business profile. You have access to useful statistics about your activity, content, and followers. You know much better who you’re talking to and how your posts and stories are performing.

^{Source: influencermarketinghub.com}

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