We’ve been busy here at Storrito this summer, working hard to bring you an exciting new feature: our Instagram Stories editor now supports GIFs!

Adding GIFs to Instagram Stories is a fantastic way to add more character to your content, capture your audience’s attention, and have fun while you’re at it. When businesses use them as part of an Instagram marketing strategy, GIFs are not only a great feature to make your Stories more engaging and captivating – they’re ultimately a great tool that will help build a more memorable brand personality on the platform.

Now that they’re featured on the Storrito Editor, that means you’ll be able to add GIFs when you’re preparing Stories on browser and scheduling them for auto posting. So let’s dive right in and see how you can use GIFs to design awesome Instagram Stories.

Use animations to guide your audience

GIFs look like they’re all fun and games, but they’re a seriously beneficial marketing tool when you consider how helpful animations are for directing the viewer’s attention.

Animations don’t have to be complicated – in fact, the simpler, the better. There are countless arrows, signals, and cues in GIF format that you can add to your Stories to highlight specific elements or tell your audience what they need to do. Just search the GIF library by keywords, and you’ll find all kinds of cool animations to help you instruct your followers to follow the link in bio, turn on the sound, swipe to the next slide, etc.

Extra tip: the Storrito Editor also offers animated Swipe-Up stickers. These will help you grab attention and make your call to action more enticing!

Draw inspiration from current events

The GIPHY library on Instagram Stories gets updated in real-time, so you’ll have access to the trending stickers the moment you tap to open the library. For example, you’ll see the “Sunday Funday” animated sticker if you’ve opened the editing tray on a Sunday, and so on. You’ll also have a whole bunch of the most relevant stickers when important events and holidays approach. Use that to your advantage to help you create a bond with your followers over the current events. This is especially true for the holiday season, when you’ll want to use GIFs to make your Stories more festive.

Combine animations with static images

In other words, use GIFs to create different effects and make your images come to life!

When you’re designing your Stories, you can adjust the elements you’re adding as much as you like. For example, you can resize a GIF to get a miniature version or a version that stretches across the entire screen, you can rotate them, etc. So get creative and combine the animations with static images to add some magic or perhaps even tell a story. Think along the lines of sparkles, thought bubbles, confetti and such! And don’t ever post a plain old selfie again, without adding a little something from the GIPHY library.

You can search “effects” in the GIPHY library and see what pops up. Don’t forget to play around with the format to make your stickers complement the image more realistically. Also, be careful with the composition, so when you’re designing your Story, make sure the elements you’re trying to highlight are clearly visible.

Always add GIFs to text-only Stories

Especially if the content you’re posting is more on the wordy side.

We know that one of the primary rules of social media marketing is that you don’t want to bore your audience with walls of text, but granted, sometimes you’ll need a text-only Story to make a point. Adding some animated stickers and GIFs will help you grab your followers’ attention and make your wall of text seem less like a bore and more like something they really need to hear.

Again, head over to the library and see what’s trending to add to your Story design, or search for a GIF that is specifically related to the topic in the text. Trust us, you’ll be sure to find something amusing there, and you might even make yourself laugh. If you’d rather keep it more straightforward and don’t want to go all out, there’s always the “effects” keyword to help you find some simple animations to highlight parts of the text.

To wrap up – have fun with it! GIFs are there to have fun with, and the more creative you get with them, the more beneficial it will be to your brand presence. So don’t hesitate to get a little silly every once in a while. A little personality goes a long way in building that cherished bond with your followers.

Written by Angelina Harper