Who else loves them? I gotta say – Instagram stories really reinvigorated my love of Instagram on the whole.
I’m *so* into Instagram stories that I’ve had people (even Instagram experts! yes, really!) ask me what I do to make my stories so cool – and so now I’m going to share my advice here with you.
Here are the 4 apps I count on big-time to help my brand stand out.
#1 – CANVA
Canva is an ABSOLUTE necessity in business anyway when it comes to creating and designing images for social media. You can’t beat how easy it is to use and how convenient the app functions on your phone.
A peeve I’ve had with Instagram stories (using it natively) is that you can never get your brand’s colors exactly right – and you can’t overlay your logo in a story design. That’s exactly where Canva comes in!
My clients often hire my team to create templates for Instagram stories *in* Canva – just because it keeps their content on brand as much as possible.
It’s of course TOTALLY OK to rely on Instagram Stories’ native tools. Who doesn’t love the GIFs? But wouldn’t it be awesome to use a backdrop that’s totally branded? It helps maintain consistency and increase brand awareness.
#2 – CUTSTORY
CutStory is SIMPLY the best when it comes to sharing videos taken on your iPhone into your Instagram stories. After you record your video using your Camera app, you would proceed to CutStory to add slight filtering (if you’d like to), add your logo (worth it for this reason alone), and cut the video into the story-sized chunks it needs to be (15 seconds each).
When you *don’t* use CutStory, you have to be really cognizant of how long your videos are – or you can cut everything yourself. But that’s not necessary when this is a FREE app. You’re crazy to not use it. Note that adding your logo or removing their watermark is a paid feature, but also worth every penny. I love this app for making video on Instagram stories so easy!
#3 – CLIPOMATIC
This is *not* a free app, but worth all 499 pennies in saving you time from captioning your own videos. Video captioning is a huge way to increase viewer engagement and allow people to tune in if they can’t trigger audio at that moment. Clipomatic is the app that will do that for you AUTOMATICALLY. The key is that you have to record the video from this app in order to get the captions. (And then you’d wanna use CutStory to make it the right duration for Instagram.)
BIG disclaimer though – it doesn’t get your words right unless you articulate with absolute perfection. I embrace that it gets my words wrong sometimes – but only because time is the only asset in your business you don’t get back. It’s not worth the hassle to stress if it gets a few words wrong, because the captions are still done-for-you automatically, increasing engagement, and sending the basic message.
#4 – GO RECORD: SCREEN RECORDER
If you’re wanting to share an article you’re be reading or show off how a website looks on mobile, Go Record is the perfect app for you!
This free app is SUPER easy to use once you install and set it up. You can opt to record the screen plus the audio of whatever the screen is doing — or you can put your own spin on your recording and narrate what you’re showing.
What apps do you use on Insta that I should know about? Do you use any of these?
Wanna be a lead magnet?
It starts with using better words on your website. Improving your copy is the absolute easiest, quickest, and most cost effective way to get more clients and cash rolling in. Fill out the form below to download my FREE copywriting training and you'll also get updates from me.