There are 5 main ways to post to make the most of all the different features available on Instagram:
- Grid posts
- Stories
- Reels
- IGTVs
- Lives
Grid Posts
There are 3 different ways to post directly onto your grid.
- Single image posts which are single photo images
- Video posts, a video under 1 minute will post directly onto your grids, longer videos become IGTVs, more on those below.
- Carousel posts, a carousel is made up of 10 images or videos or a mixture of both. Again these videos need to be under 1 minute long. What’s great about carousels is Instagram will show the 2nd page of your carousel to your audience again if they didn’t look through it the first time.
Stories
Stories can be either static images or video, in stories your video will show in 15-second clips, you can create or upload a longer video up to 1 minute and it will spread over multiple stories. Stories are great fun you can add text and stickers with fun animations, questions, polls there are lots of choices so go try some out. You can view your own stories by clicking on your profile picture and what’s great for engaging with your audience is your stories will appear along the top of their home page.
Reels
Reels are short videos either 15, 30 or 60 seconds long basically Instagram’s answer to Tik Tok. Reels are a fun way to interact with your audience in a more lighthearted and entertaining way.
IGTVs
IGTVs are longer videos starting at 1 minute and generally between 1 and 15 minutes. These longer videos are a great way of giving your audience more information on a subject
With both Reels and IGTVs you can create a cover and save them to your grid.
Lives
Live video is great to connect with your audience in real-time, they can comment as you are talking and you can even invite up to 3 other people to join you on your live. Once you have finished your live you can also save this as an IGTV and then onto your grid.
When you are first starting out you don’t need to do all of these posts at once, start of with the type of post you feel most comfortable with and then look into each other type of post as you get more familiar with Instagram.
Follow @nwdesignanddigital on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest for more hints and tips.
