With over one billion users by 2020, Instagram has experienced exponential growth in the past few years. There’s good news if you’re thinking about getting an Instagram account, or if you’ve already got one but don’t know how to use it. Let’s walk through Instagram’s basics so you can understand why Instagram is the most engaging social network today, how to make Instagram reels, and how to make Instagram stories longer.
An Instagram account lets you share photos and videos by using the app on both iOS and Android devices. Instagram allows users to upload and share photos and videos with their friends and followers. In addition, Instagram posts can also be viewed, commented on, and liked by their friends. By registering an email address and choosing a username, anyone 13 or older can create an account.
Instagram Story
In addition to its photo and video features, Instagram has a feature called Stories. This is the most popular feature of Instagram. Last year, Instagram revealed that over 250 million people were using its Stories feature.
Storytelling involves gathering a variety of short videos or photographs into a slideshow gallery that tells the story of what happened.
Creating Instagram stories: how to do it?
A story can be created in the following ways:
- You can do this by tapping the plus button on your home screen or by swiping left in your feed. Swiping right on the main screen will also allow you to launch Stories quickly.
- You can take pictures by tapping the circle button at the bottom of the screen. You can record a video by tapping and holding. The app also offers the option to start a live event or Boomerang or to use hands-free mode.
- In the lower-left corner, there is a photo icon that can be touched to add photos and videos from your gallery. You can remove the date sticker that will automatically appear on your gallery photos.
- Just as you would with a standard photo or video, you can add text or a drawing. There are three different types of pens available when you click the pen icon.
- Your Story will be saved when you tap Done.
- Adding a story is as simple as tapping the Add Your Story button. You can also save images and videos using the Save icon on your phone.
- You can either send your image to a friend or share your story if you click the Arrow icon.
- Select the person you want to share Your Story with, and then mark the bubble. Once your friend sees the image, it will disappear.
Instagram Stories: How to upload longer videos
Instagram stories have a 15-second video limitation, so you’ve probably run into it at some point. In other words, Instagram automatically crops your stories to 15 seconds no matter how long the videos are. So, you can share it with your friends.
The limit of 15 seconds is ideal for short videos, but what will happen if you post a video longer than 15 seconds?
From the Instagram official app, here’s how to post longer videos
With the new Instagram app, longer videos can be posted directly from the app.
- Instagram will automatically divide a longer video into small chunks of 15 seconds each after you select the longer video of up to 60 seconds.
- This is true regardless of whether you’re recording the clip using the Instagram camera.
We recommend that you use the app we mentioned below if you want to post a video that lasts longer than one minute on your Instagram Story. The following are the reasons.
If you want to upload a 1-minute 9-second video to my Instagram Story, use the Instagram official app. The video was divided into four 15-second segments, i.e., 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 60 seconds or 1 minute only. This clip was automatically trimmed by 9 seconds.
Instead, if you opt for the Split Video app, it will chop your lengthy videos into 15-second clips and also keep any remaining video clips (such as 9 seconds) as separate videos.
The complete video lasting more than a minute can be posted without having to edit out even the tiniest part by using is this app.
Instagram Story videos longer than 15 seconds: using Split Video
Here are the guidelines to post Instagram stories using Split Video other than the official Instagram app:
- Launch Split Video once you’ve downloaded it.
- You can split a video by tapping on Select Video. As a default, Instagram Story will automatically divide the video into 15-second chunks, allowing for easy editing. In some cases, however, the clip split length can be adjusted up to 60 seconds if necessary for other projects.
- Find a video that lasts longer than 15 seconds in your library. By tapping Choose, the video you want to slice to confirm it is indeed the video you want.
- The app will then slice the video into 15-second segments after being imported. Taking a look at an example, the video duration of 63 seconds will be divided into five segments (15+15+15+15+15+3).
- You can save clips by selecting Split and Save.
- After the export is complete, you will see a confirmation message informing you that the clips have been saved to your library.
- Your Instagram story will now include these 15-second clips. Make sure you put them in the correct order.
- There is now a more than one-minute story on Instagram based on the clips shared.
It’s this trick that lets you upload videos longer than 60 seconds to Instagram Stories.
Conclusion
By allowing users to create multiple clips with a single click, this new feature certainly expands Instagram Stories. However, Instagram previously allowed users to upload videos longer than 15 seconds, but those videos had been segmented in a similar manner to the new change. You can also extend the limit of Instagram stories by using the app discussed above.