How To Do An Instagram Story

How To Do An Instagram Story

In this basic training, I am going to show you the simplest way how to do an Instagram Story. Instagram Stories is a wonderful and fun way to increase your engagement and followers.

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It is a great way to tell your personal story in 15 seconds. And I Love It!

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Introduction: Instagram Stories BASICS

Instagram Stories is a very compelling and FUN tool to use to gain greater visibility and to build GREAT engagement with your audience. This Part 1 tutorial will show you all the basics of creating an Instagram Story using still photos.

In the near future, I may follow up with a Part 2 training demonstrating how to build our Instagram Stories by using VIDEOS, and a Part 3 where we will move on to Boomerang.

For now, here are the 5 Parts of my "How to Do an Instagram Story" Basic Training:

Introduction: Instagram Stories Basics

Lesson 1: Getting Started with Instagram Story (Images 1-3)

Lesson 2: Building Your Story (Images 4-6)

Lesson 3: Designing Your Story (Images 7-12)

Lesson 4: Adding Hashtags, and Icons to your Story (Images 13-16)

Lesson 5: Final Touches to your Story (Images 17-20)

For a recap on what Instagram Stories is all about, visit my blog post here:

Instagram Stories is a very intuitive program, so in the interest of time and workload there are a few very basic "in-between" steps where I did not include a screenshot (such as changing a font size, or a font from normal to italic), but how to make these small modifications will be very obvious and self-explanatory on your phone screen.

How to Do an Instagram Story requires writing

Just follow this Step-by-Step Training, and everything will be apparent.

You will surely see that by DOING IT is truly LEARNING it.

So let's move on to Lesson 1.

There are affiliate links within this post. What this means is that if you decide to purchase anything through one of my links, I'll be rewarded with a small commission at absolutely no extra cost to you. This small commission helps me run and maintain my website.


How to Do an Instagram Story Lesson 1

Lesson 1: Getting Started with "How to Do an Instagram Story"

1. Open up your Instagram app on your smartphone

How to Do an Instagram Story click Instagram

2. In your profile, tap on the"House" icon on the Bottom left of the screen.

Boutique ID firm

3. Tap on the "Camera" icon on the Top left of the screen

Camera Icon

When you are ready,  go to Lesson 2

How to Do an Instagram Story Lesson 2

Lesson 2: Building Your "How to Do an Instagram Story"

4. Select an image from your Photo Gallery by tapping on the Bottom Left Icon and ADD to Instagram

*Note: DO NOT select Random Shocking of Surprised Photos !

Shocked look!

5. For this simple lesson, our selected image is a bottle of water.

After selecting our Main Background Photo, tap on the Sticker Icon on the Top of the screen which are "Hashtags, Locations, Polls, Icons, and Emojis" all-in-one.

Alternately, you could just "Save" at anytime to your phone gallery.

Save to phnoe gallery

6. On the next screen, we can add a wide range of ELEMENTS by superimposing them over our main background image. Hence, we can add our Location, a Hashtag, a Poll, an Icon, a superimposed new Photo, a Music file, an Emoji, a Counter, the temperature, the date, and even MANY more elements to our original background image.

Here we will add a "POLL" to our Story, so we can get more viewers to take a survey so they will engage more with or story.

Tap on "Poll" on the Bottom Left of the screen.

Poll

The "POLL" now appears as a "YES /NO" box with a dialog box above it prompting us to write something, where we can type in a name, question, or phrase to define the Poll.

Here we will type in the question "Do you drink bottled water?"

Do you drink bottle water?

Note at anytime, if we don't like how any of our superimposed elements appear, we can drag 'n drop them into the "Drag to Delete" garbage pale at the Bottom of the Image.

Yes or No

When you're ready, go to Lesson 3.

How to Do an Instagram Story Lesson 3

Lesson 3: Designing Your "How to Do an Instagram Story"

7.1 Tap the Alphabet icon on the top right of the screen to add more text.

If you are satisfied already, go on to the next.

7.2 Move or rotate ANY of your Elements by touching and dragging the element(s) to anywhere on the screen, Here we rotated our text counter-clockwise by 45 degrees.

7.3 Here we also rotated our POLL box by 45 degrees.

Add an emoji

8. Add emoji's to your story. Here we added BOTH a relevant "Wave" and a "Droplet" underneath and to the far right of the text "Do you drink bottled water?"

Done

9. Now add a Bold Headline Title by tapping the Alphabet icon again from 7.1 (not shown) and type in your headline, i.e., we wrote "Delish!"

Then preview by tapping on several different text "stylings" from the Top Center for your Headline.

Here we first previewed the "Classic" style font. We weren't sure we liked it, so we moved on.

How to Do an Instagram Story classic

10.1 Next we tapped again, and previewed the "Strong" style font. We also changed some of the settings i.e., increased the font size and italicized the font (both not shown).

10.2 We then experimented with the font color and previewed it by tapping on "White"

10.3 We next added a different background for the text, by adding a Background Plate.

10.4 Here we changed it by tapping on the "hot pink" background plate color.

10.5 Finally, we THINK we are satisfied with all changes we made, so we tap "Done"on the Top Right

How to Do an Instagram Story features

11.1 After reviewing it, we change our mind and decide we don't like the font color or the "hot pink" background plate.

So to change BOTH we access them by tapping on the A+ symbol on the Top Left.

11.2 Next we change our Headline Font Color to Gold and eliminate the background text plate. (not shown)

11.3 We think we are satisfied this time for sure, so we click "Done".

Delish and Done!

12. Still not satisfied, we go all the way back to the "drawing board" and decide after everything we liked BEST our original Classic font with a White color Headline Textand the "hot pink" Background Plate.

So we changed everything back again by repeating Steps 9-11.

Only after repeating Steps 9-11, NOW we can start to get really CREATIVE!!

As shown by the arrow in the screenshot below, tap on the "Magic Marker" Icon on the Top Right of your screen.

How to Do an Instagram Story Marker

When you are ready,  go to Lesson 4.

How to Do an Instagram Story Lesson 4

Lesson 4: Adding ART Hashtags and Icons to your Story

13.1 Now you are ready to DRAW anything over your Story on your screen. Choose from one of the various "pens" from the Top of the screen as your weapon!

Here I have chosen by tapping on the "Heavy Magic Marker".

13.2 Next select a COLOR MARKER from the bottom of your screen. You can "scroll" through a seeming endless palette of colors by "swiping" your finger from Right to Left on the color row on the bottom of the screen.

Here we have chosen a terracotta color marker (brownish-reddish-pink)

*Note: Notice that whatever color we select by tapping the color circle, the "eye dropper icon on the far left of the color row will change to the color you selected.

13.3 Using the tip of our finger on our screen, we proceed to draw a very PATHETIC FACE!! (well, as long as you get the idea!)

13.4 After this terrible exercise in "art", we click "Done" on the Top Right of the screens, knowing we still can change this later!

Click done

14. After seeing that "Face" and how pathetic our ART was, we made the wise decision to "Drag to Delete" that BAD drawing by dragging where it belongs into the bin.

Drag to Delete

Next we click on our "Sticker icon" once again to go back to our various ELEMENTS.

Sticker Icon

15. Here we tap on #Hashtag to add - you guessed it - a HASHTAG to our Story!

How to Do an Instagram Story Hasgtag

16.1 Immediately, we are prompted to type in our #hashtag in the Dialog Box with a flashing cursor. Type in the complete hashtag.

16.2 We can change the size of the hashtag font, and various parameters such as the PRE-SET Color Combination and the Background color of the hashtag font (not shown)

-OR-

16.3  As soon as we type in the first few characters of the hashtag, SUGGESTED HASHTAGS will appear on the screen as a time-saving tool. You can also "swipe" the Suggested Hashtag Row from right to Left to see ALL of the suggested related hashtags.

To save time, click on the hashtag of choice, i.e., in our case we chose #BOTTLEDWATER, and it immediately appeared on the screen.

We can then proceed to change the size of the hashtag font, and various parameters such as the PRE-SET Color Combination and the Background color of the hashtag font we we did before in 16.2 (not shown).

16.4 If and when you are satisfied, tap on "Done" on the top right of the screen.

Hashtag and Done

When you are ready,  go to Lesson 5.

How to Do an Instagram Story Lesson 5

Lesson 5: Final Touches to Your Story

17. Once again, tap on the "Sticker Icon" on the top of your screen.

Stick icon Yes or No?

This will bring you back to the various ELEMENTS screen.

When you are here, "swipe" the screen with your finger from Right to Left, and this NEXT Screen will appear with even MORE OPTIONS.

Swipe the screen with finger

These Options as shown below will be ICONS.

King Icon

18. Tap the ICON of choice you would like to add to your Story.

Here we have chosen Super Mario to be our Icon of Choice (not shown).

Choose Super Mario

19. Now that we have added "Super Mario", our Story is getting rather busy. But we can remedy this by moving our various Elements to different locations of our Story.

As shown below, MOVE all your Elements by "swiping" each Element with your fingertip in various directions until you are HAPPY with EVERY ELEMENT'S PLACEMENT and no one element is overpowering any other. (well, except maybe Mario!)

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Feel free to change the various sizes of each Element until you have the Perfect Mix. As you will see, we had to change several of our element sizes to get that "perfect mix" and to communicate the right message.

Above all, MAKE SURE the totality of your Element Mix is TELLING the STORY you want to COMMUNICATE TO YOUR AUDIENCES!

Here you can see we have clearly indicated by the "Move" and arrows the PATHWAY each of our Elements will be relocated to arrive at OUR "Perfect Mix."

Super Mario a Perfect Mix

20. Finally, we have arrived to an END STORY mix we are satisfied with.

To add EMPHASIS to our hashtag, we have added a POINTING HAND FINGER iconto our Story pointing at #BOTTLEDWATER.

NOW that we are completely satisfied (or as close as possible for this exercise!), we tap on Your Story on the Bottom of the screen, and OUR STORY is immediately published and LIVE.

Now when we go to our profile, we will see our Story as a Circle with a reddish-pink ring encircling its outer perimeter.

From the very second you tap "Your Story" to publish, Our Story will be posted live for 24 hours and will be seen on our profile page and also scrolling inside the IG feed by all on Instagram.

How to Do an Instagram Story Conclusion


I hope you really enjoyed and LEARNED SOMETHING from this Instagram Stories basic training for still photos, Part 1. Part 2 and 3 as explained during the Introduction will be coming soon.

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Thank You so much for participating in my "How to Do an Instagram Story" training, Part 1.

Please feel free to leave any of your comments below, and "Like" this training if you feel it was helpful to you.

About the Author

KAJU is the band leader and founding member of OFF THE HOOK, one of the premiere dance party bands in the New York Tri-State Area. After contracting a mysterious hand disorder, Kaju now writes to help other musicians and artists deal with disabilities. Currently he is a Full-time Affiliate Marketer and 1-on-1 mentor at Wealthy Affiliate, a community that can help anyone start an online business without prior experience. This is where he teaches others how to make a great passive income. Read more about his story here!

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