New social media sites continue to emerge, new features are added, and algorithms are always being updated, making it tough to keep up with social media best practices.
However, social media is here to stay. According to Instagram, there are more than one billion active users monthly and more than 500 million Stories active every day.
In fact, Instagram Stories are a popular trend that isn't going away. Pamela Bump, audience growth writer at HubSpot, writes about Instagram Stories in this blog. She says, "Instagram Stories serves as an outlet for brands to creatively show their products, services, or happy customers in action. Branded Instagram Stories also enable audiences to learn more about topics related to your brand's industry. Helpful and valuable content might also allow prospective buyers to trust your brand more."
With this knowledge, you want your marketing team ready to develop a strategy for your Instagram Stories. To create this strategy, your team should decide what kind of images or videos they want to post. How do you plan on taking those images? With phones or professional cameras?
Below, you'll learn the Instagram Story dimensions and why it's important to add Instagram Stories to your strategy.
How do I fix the quality of my Instagram Stories?
You might be asking, why do you need to know about the specific Instagram Stories dimensions? There are instances in which you might find that your Stories aren't uploading with the quality that you'd like. The following tips can help you isolate the problem and improve the look of your brand assets:
1. Ensure your content is high-quality before you upload.
Instagram will compress images during the upload process, so an already grainy or pixelated image will only get worse it gets to the platform.
Check that your images are at least 72 ppi resolution and clear on your computer before you add them to Instagram.
2. Upload the right size and shape.
Instagram is strict about adhering to its dimensions in order to ensure quality photos and videos. When you upload a vertical image or video from your phone, you most likely won't have to think about these dimensions because Instagram will automatically format them.
However, if you have horizontal photos that don't fit the dimensions, Instagram will crop your photos, zoom in on content, or zoom out (making your image look small and placing it on a background). This typically results in lower quality images and videos.
3. Use photo editing apps.
Photo editing apps can help you control the quality of your Stories and ensure you're always using the right dimensions. In order to edit your photos for Instagram, you can use sites including:
- Canva: This is the perfect option for creating images for your Instagram Stories. To get started, Canva has templates that are designed with the Instagram dimensions in mind. Canva offers free and paid plans.
- Lumen5: This software makes it easy to produce videos for Instagram Stories. Once you get started creating a video, you can choose the right dimensions on the platform. Lumen5 starts at $19/month.
- Easil: Easil has templates for Instagram Stories to help create engaging content. They have templates for single images, and multi-card Stories as well. Easil offers free and paid versions.
- Adobe Spark: Adobe Spark makes creating images and video graphics for Instagram Stories easy. You can build your own Stories with their typography and imagery options. Adobe Spark has free and paid plans available.
- Embed Social: Embed Social is a different kind of tool for Instagram Stories — with Embed Stories, you can make your Stories Shoppable by adding CTAs, and creating embeddable code that you can add to your website. Embed Social offers free and paid plans.
With these tools, you can input the specifications, upload images and videos, and complete the editing process. These work well if you have higher quality images taken with a camera or want to add graphics or text to your images or videos.
Here's what the process would look like for Canva. Click on "Templates" and choose "Instagram Story" to see templates that are the right dimensions for Instagram.
Image source: Canva
4. Check if the quality is better on other devices.
If your internet connection is poor, Instagram stories will appear lower quality than the would on a faster connection.
Instagram does this to save resources for user experience as you interact with other areas of the site. Consider asking someone you know if the quality is low on their end as well. They — and your audience — may be viewing your stories with no issues.
5. Turn off Data Saver.
Data saver is a feature that prevents videos from loading in advance, which helps reduce your data usage.
If your connection is fine but you're still having issues with quality, this feature may be lowering the quality of your feed on your end.
6. Test photos from different cameras.
As a last resort, test whether there's a difference in quality between your phone's integrated camera vs. the Instagram camera. The photos you take with your phone's camera vs. the in-app camera (or vice versa) may weather Instagram's compression settings better.
Stats & Tips You Should Know About Instagram Stories
Why should you care about Instagram Stories? Here are a few stats from Instagram:
- 90% of accounts follow a business on Instagram
- More than 1 billion Instagram accounts worldwide are active every month
- More than 500 million accounts use Instagram Stories every day
Sophia Bernazzani, HubSpot blog writer, wrote about how to use Instagram Stories for business in this blog. She says you can use Instagram Stories to:
- Post footage of an office event
- Post breaking news about your industry
- Demonstrate your product
- Promote a company event
- Preview one of your company's blog posts
- Mention other companies who follow or work with yo
Using Instagram Stories is a tactic that all marketers should consider. With active and engaged users, using Stories can improve your discoverability and increase brand reputation and awareness.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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