The 3 different kinds of Instagram posts

As with all the major social media platforms, Instagram is changing all the time and it’s difficult to keep up with it all! Below ate the 3 type of posts available. Feed posts are the ‘traditional’ posts that we have all been using for the past few years. Stories are ephemoral (disappearing) which are displayed in a circle from your profile picture. Reels are full blown videos, similar to TikTok videos.

Have a look below for more info and you know where I am if you have any questions.

Feed posts

Creating a post on your feed was the first Instagram feature. You can add multiple pictures in one post which is an element that has really revolutionised Storytelling. Rather than having to post ten separate images (assuming you decided they were all worth sharing!), you can add them into one post.

This allows for cleaner feeds and more detailed posts. It should all be high quality and reflect your brand, products or business. Using hashtags in your post descriptions and creating engaging captions is a great way to interact with your audience. Audiences love to send posts to their friends and family, so making sure your post is clear and easy to share is a great feature.

Make sure your grid, that is, the overview that people see you once they click on your profile, looks good and consistent. This means using similar filters and colors in order to create a cohesive theme. This is a small thing that adds to the professionalism of your brand; they should also match and look similar to your Reels and stories. This is how you ensure that your brand gains recognition.

Having said that, don’t let this deter you from posting ad-hoc posts for fear of ‘messing up your grid’!! If you are a bit OCD about it, you can always delete posts further down the line and hopefully Instagram will create the feature to enable you to move posts around the grid at some point.

Instagram stories

Stories, a feature first coined by Snapchat, are not permanent posts. Before scrolling through their feed posts, users will be confronted with the Stories banner at the top of their home feed. They last only 24 hours at the top of your followers’ feeds but can be highlighted and saved on your profile for longer as well. They are a great way to keep at the top of your audience’s mind (as well as at the top of the feed) by posting snippets of your day, and as well as drawing attention to new content.

Stories can be a new photo uploaded from your camera roll or even a blank slide with text. Additionally, you can share feed posts to your Story. You can share other user’s posts or stories that you are tagged in. This is a great way to utilise user-generated content, as well as making your audience feel special and included in your brand by sharing the posts they create about you.

Stories can be a great way to share additional content as well as drawing attention to particular posts.?Your stories will need to be well designed and creative. Make use of tagged locations and the other features are available with stories in order to make them look professional and fun. Taking advantage

of the gifs, location tags, polls and stickers is the best way to grow your Story viewing.

There are nearly 500 million stories posted each day, which means there is a lot of competition for your

followers’ attention. More than half of Instagram users are more interested in a brand after seeing it in an Instagram Story. Therefore, utilising Instagram stories is a great way to drive traffic.

Adding Highlights to your profile is an effective way of continuing to draw your audience’s attention to particular elements of your brand. You can add numerous highlights, sorted however you wish (though the one you edited most recently is the first to show), and arranged however you want.

You get to choose a cover picture for your highlight as well as a text name that is also displayed. For example, many brands choose to do an “FAQ” highlight that explains the elements of their business. you could also do a “customer” highlight which shows the best of your customer’s pictures that you have shared to your Story. There are many uses for Instagram Stories, and they are not a feature that should be overlooked.

Reels

Seemingly inspired by TikTok, Reels are another recent feature that users love. Reels are a way to create short videos; sometimes done in one take, but often including audio and snappy editing and

transitions. Reels run from 15-60 seconds. Reels can be shared to your main Instagram feed. This is a huge benefit of them because many people choose not to engage with the new features and Explore Pages dedicated to them. By integrating them into the main feed it is easy for users to interact

with Reels, without having to go out of their way to do so.

The Reels feed also differs from the regular feed. On their regular feed, with the exception of sponsored posts, users only see posts and stories from accounts that they follow. Whereas, the Reels feed, also shows popular, trending, and suggested Reels all in one place.

As Reels are shorter and tend to be more informal, you can create unique and quirky content that showcases your personality and adds variety and depth to your brand.

Moving forward in 2022, there is a huge chance that Reels and Stories will become the focal point of the main display on the app, with feed posts taking the secondary stage, so the need to jump on Reels and Stories is vitally important if you are going to keep up with the trends.

Please feel free to reach out to me for any clarification on the above or book a free consultation with me here