If you are looking for interesting ways to increase your impressions on Instagram, try GIFs. They are trendy, funny and will keep your audience entertained.
Instagram first introduced the GIF feature to Instagram stories in 2018. In partnership with Giphy, an American online database and search engine that allows users to search and share GIFs, they have made this feature possible. Instagrammers have since had an exciting and fun way to improve their engagements and gain followers.
What Are GIFs? A Brief History.
GIF means Graphics Interchange Format. It is a format for image files that supports both animated and static images that loop continuously. It was developed and released in June 1987
by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite with a team at the online services provider, CompuServe.
Instagram GIFs stickers are pretty much GIFs with a transparent background which you can use over photos and videos in your Instagram stories. Popular brands like Google, Calm, Starbucks and Monzo use Instagram GIFs stickers.
Why You Should Use GIFs For Your Brand
- Brand awareness: You can create branded GIF stickers (more on this later) and use them in your stories. As people visit your stories, they will see your branded stickers.
- Deliver engaging and trendy content: Including GIFs in your posts will make them more catchy and engaging. They will help you tell stories in a better way. GIFs are never out of fashion and they will help you give your audience the content they signed up for.
- Increase impressions and engagements: Most GIFs are humorous and people will interact with anything that makes them laugh. It will make your followers comment, like or share your content. That is how your impressions will increase and make the Instagram algorithm work for you.
- Gain new followers and maintain your following: If your already existing followers love your content, they’ll never tap the unfollow button when you adopt Gifs. Also, you will have better organic reach.
- Your followers can use your GIFs: Other Instagrammers can use your GIFs because they are available to the public on GIPHY. This will likely make you more popular on the platform.
- Time-saving: Time is an asset in content creation and GIFs will give you some. Using them will save you the time and energy that’s needed to design high-end graphics. All you have to do is choose a suitable one from the pool GIFs and move on to other activities.
- They are relevant beyond Instagram: With GIPHY, you can use GIFs that you create for your brand on other social media platforms. This is a way to develop your brand identity on every platform. It also means you can increase your reach and win more followers on Instagram and everywhere else.
- It is free: In case you didn’t know, creating GIFs is free. You won’t spend a dime for so much value.
How To Create Your Own Instagram GIF Sticker.
It will interest you to know that you can create your own Instagram GIF stickers. That is a whole collection of GIFs just for your brand. Read on for more details
1. Get your brand verified on GIPHY
Remember that Instagram is in partnership with GIPHY to bring us this GIF feature? good. So firstly, you will need to sign up for a GIPHY channel and apply for verification. If you don’t verify your GIPHY account, your branded GIFs will not be available on Instagram stories.
2. Upload your GIFs
After getting verified, you can then proceed to upload your GIFs. To successfully upload GIFs, you must follow the requirements. Some of the requirements are:
- Stickers must comply with GIPHY’s community guidelines.
- At least one component of the sticker must be animated.
- Stickers must be exported with at least 20% transparency – no white or coloured background.
- Stickers cannot be smaller copies of existing GIFs.
- Use relevant tags or keywords for your GIFs to ensure that they get approval.
To make your GIFs more discoverable to the public and easily accessible, use tags. Use relevant tags or keywords that accurately describe your GIFs else, they will not get approval. You should use at least 5 tags for your GIFs.
3. Add Your GIF Stickers To Your Story
This is the point where you get to use your branded sticker. It’s so easy that anybody on Instagram can do it once they learn it. Remember, Instagram users love to see people’s stories. When you use Interesting gifs in your stories, new people that come across them will like you without hesitation. So, here is how:
- Launch your Instagram app
- Tap on the ‘+’ icon and choose Story
- Select the image you want to post to your stories.
- Tap on the sticker icon at the top of the screen.
- Tap on the search box and type in your GIPHY account name or a tag/keyword that describes the GIF you are looking for and make your choice.
- Proceed to make your post as usual.
Note: Inform your followers about your branded stickers so that they can use them and help promote your brand.
How To Use GIFs To Make An Impression and On Instagram
- Create Content With Your Branded GIFs:
Your Instagram story content in addition to being valuable to your audience should have your branded GIFs. That way, anywhere, people see your GIFs and they immediately remember your brand.
- Interact Your Audience
There are many ways to interact with your audience such that it yields engagement and brand growth. One of such ways is running contests with GIFs. Ask your followers to post a photo or video of themselves to their story with your branded GIF for them to win a prize. Doing this will create more awareness of your brand.
- Use GIFs That Convey Emotions
Like emojis, you can use GIFs to relate to your audience’s emotions. This will build a connection between you and your audience. This is also great for brand community building.
- Attract Your Viewers To A CTA
As we all know, GIFs are animated. A moving object on the screen will catch the attention of someone who is mindlessly viewing stories. Use GIFs that will point to your CTA. This is an excellent Instagram story marketing strategy.
- Pin Your GIF Stickers To Videos
You can take your video content to another level by pinning GIFs to portions of the videos. The GIFs will pop up while the video is playing, just like a surprise. If you keep using this trend, your followers will anticipate a GIF surprise while watching your videos. Here is how to do it: tap and hold the GIF on the screen until a little bar that says ‘pin’ comes up. Then move the GIF to where you want it in the video.
- Track Your GIFs Performance On GIPHY
One thing you will enjoy with your verified GIPHY account is the analytic dashboard. It allows you to monitor the performance of your GIFs. It shows you the view counts of your GIFs. Your view count simply tells you how often your GIFs have been viewed or their popularity. Monitoring your GIFs performance will give you insight into what type of branded GIFs do well and help you create more like that.
The End
Before now, you’ve probably seen GIFs as some fancy feature meant for only a few accounts. That’s not true.
Use them correctly and you’ll get impressive results. So, now that you know all the beneficial things Instagram GIFs stickers can do, apply them and make a grand impression on Instagram.
