Posting to Instagram

Marketing on Instagram has changed drastically over the last few years. While posting aesthetically beautiful photographs and images is still popular on this highly visual social mobile network, videos – or Reels – are given more emphasis on the platform. Other types of posts that are common on Instagram are Stories and Lives.

Leveraging these three types of posts – in addition to static images – can give you more creative freedom and flexibility in the way you present your messages to attract, engage, and retain your audience. Here’s what you should know about these posting options.

Instagram Reels

Reels are Instagram’s version of the short videos popularized on TikTok. Any video you upload to Instagram will be automatically formatted to fit the vertical dimensions of Reels: 1080 x 1920 pixels with a 9:16 aspect ratio. Reels to create shorter entertaining and informative videos, between three seconds and three minutes long.

Instagram’s in-app editing tool provides some basic capabilities such as trimming clips or stitching multiple clips together. However, Instagram now offers a separate app called “Edits” that offers more editing tools including:

• Capturing up to 10-minute-long videos directly in the editing tool.
• Gaining access to trending Reels and audio for inspiration.
• Recording with a green screen effect to insert other elements and backgrounds into your video.
• Isolating objects in videos to layer over other video content.
• Adding video transitions and special effects.
• Animating objects in videos using newer AI tools.

You can also opt to produce Reels in third-party apps such as Canva, then upload them into Instagram.

Before you share your Reel, you can change the cover image, add a caption with the appropriate hashtags, and tag others, if appropriate. You can opt to share your completed Reels on your main Instagram feed so it will appear on your profile grid, or if not, all your Reels will be archived on a separate Reels tab on your profile. You can also share Reels as a Story, but keep in mind it will disappear after 24 hours from your Stories section.

In general, your Reels have the potential to be seen by people who are not following your account in addition to your followers. Instagram also offers a feature called Trial Reels which lets you test out your Reels by only showing them to people who aren’t your followers. This can potentially bring new followers to your account. You can then choose to share the Reel to your own feed or not.

Instagram Stories

Stories are Instagram’s answer to Snapchat’s short, multimedia, disappearing posts. They appear prominently as round icons at the top of your follower’s feeds and disappear after 24 hours. You can add Stories to Highlights at the top of your Instagram profile page, under your bio and profile picture, where they remain visible in an archive.

A Story can be as simple as an uploaded photo or video; however, the more popular and engaging approach is to add embellishments like text, music, emoji, and animated GIFs or stickers. Other things you can add to your Stories include:

• Links – Stories are one of the few places where you can add an active, clickable link on the platform
• Location tags – to not only identify where an image was taken but to also add it to search results when people search for that location on the app
• @ mention links – to tag other Instagram accounts
• Polls – single-question polls to get quick feedback
• Cutouts – isolating images to paste over your Story
• Add Yours – an invitation to other Instagram users to add their own image based with similar subject matter as the one you upload

While the Stories you post are set to disappear in 24 hours, you can also save them to your smartphone to archive or use later. Stories can also be archived on your Instagram account page using Highlights that appear in circles under your account bio.

Instagram Live

Instagram Live is the real-time streaming feature that lets you broadcast video directly from your smartphone using the Instagram app. Instagram Live uses either a single-camera view or a split screen with two people in view – you and a guest – broadcasting from separate smartphones.

When you start an Instagram Live, your followers receive a notification if they’ve turned on the notifications feature. Followers can also see a Live is in progress by a “Live” tag and a colored ring around the round Story icon across the top of your follower’s feed.

You can interact with your Live audience verbally by reading the comments section of the feed or by typing in your responses. You can opt to pin comments to highlight them and add polls and Q&A stickers during a Live stream.

After you’ve ended your Live broadcast, you can save it to your phone’s camera roll by tapping Download Video only at that time - so remember to save it right away. Only the video is saved and not comments, likes, or viewers.

Instagram continues to add new features and modify existing ones to help you attract followers while serving your current ones. However, keep in mind their main goal is to get you to pay for advertising. The more features you leverage on the platform, the better chances you have of increasing the effectiveness of your posts and gaining followers while sticking to your budget.