How to create my own story stickers

GIFs on Instagram stories are absolutely trending these days. All the big names from Gary Vaynerchuk to Nike are using them to engage better with their audience. 

And they don’t just help you engage with your followers. GIFs can truly bring a Story to life. 

So, how to make your own stickers? 

Instagram Story GIFs can be extremely helpful for your brand. Instagram for business plus original stickers? A homerun!

They draw attention to important details, such as CTAs (call to action) or the Swipe-Up feature.

We’re gonna show you how to step up your Instagram Story game. From how to upload GIFs to Instagram to why. 

Why would you even want to use someone else’s GIFs when you can create your own? Allow us to enlighten you!

We will primarily be focusing on how to make your own GIFs using Giphy.com, a free online GIF-making service. Here are the steps:

• Create an Account
• Create a sticker and GIFs
• Upload the GIF to your Giphy account
• Test them out and share them with your followers

What is a GIF or Sticker? And Where To Start?

All GIFs used in Instagram Stories are all powered by Giphy.com. That means you’ll need to create an account for your brand and go through the process of getting it verified.

Now there is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the process of getting verified on Giphy is pretty quick and rather painless. On the other hand, the bad news, small businesses may not get approved because of the verification restrictions.

So, first thing’s first; creating your new Giphy account. That’s simple enough. Just go to Giphy.com and click on the Login button at the top right corner of your screen. On the next screen just click Join GIPHY.

You will be asked to provide some basic information, like an email address and username. Don’t worry, Giphy will never ask you to provide any credit card information since it is completely free.

Now that you have your account set up, it’s time to get you the status of a Brand Account. 

The first step – create at least 5 original GIFs. Think of them as original and popular Instagram hashtags. 

Make sure that these GIFs accurately represent your business and how you intend to use your Brand account. Be yourself – that’s how to make your own stickers! 

While you’re waiting for the approval of your Brand account status, let’s spruce up your profile. One of the steps that you would need to do is set your profile to “Public”. That way people can search for your brand and see all your info there. 

This includes things like your website, links to your social media accounts, and a short summary of your brand.

If you are looking to not only get verified on Giphy but also on Instagram, we got you covered. Feel free to check out our latest blog on What to do to get the verified badge.

How To Make Your Own Stickers?

Now let’s get to the interesting part. How to design your own sticker. With the help of Giphy.com, you don’t need to be a badass graphic designer to do it. It’s safe to say that they have made this process pretty simple and intuitive.

When you have successfully logged into your account you will be forwarded to the home page. At the top, you can see two options on how to add GIFs: Upload and Create. 

In this section, we’ll cover the Create part.

There are several ways to create GIFs using Giphy. These include: 

• Choose Photo or GIF – With this option you can select multiple images or GIFs and make a slideshow. 

• Choose Video – You can upload an already existing video to convert it into a GIF. Almost all video file formats are supported.

• Add any URL – Link to an online video directly. The types of links that are supported by Giphy are YouTube, Vimeo, and Giphy itself.

If you are going with this route it’s important to use images or videos that have a transparent background. Basically, GIF stickers are just regular GIFs but on a transparent background. 

This is the general baseline for the Instagram story stickers. This works best since you want your stickers to interact with your Story and not cover it completely.

Giphy.com also offers some advice on how to create a great sticker.

 “A good sticker is simple, eye-catching, and fun. Because they are shared at a fairly small size, it’s important to keep them visually sharp and well defined.”

Here’s how to make your GIFs from images and videos.

GIFs From Images

Here we used just 3 images (that are very creatively named), but you can use as many as you’d like. Just try to keep it cute and simple. In this part, you can rearrange the images and adjust how much time they individually use up.

After that, it’s time to click that “Continue to Decorate” button. Now we get to the fun part.

This is where you can let your inner creative loose. Your hands and imagination are free on the decoration page. You can choose to add captions on your GIFs, add stickers on top (GIFs on GIFs), apply a variety of filters, and even draw different patterns over everything.

After you’ve edited your GIF to your liking, you can finish everything by adding tags. Which we’ll be covering in a minute.

GIFs From Videos

GIFs generally have a time limit of 15 seconds before they loop back around. That is true for both GIFs made from images and for videos. 

Along with the 15-second limit, you cannot use videos larger than 100MB. Long-form videos are not out of the question though. 

You have two ways to go about this: uploading the video to Giphy.com and finding the start time you’d need or simply editing it straight from your phone. This is just a personal preference, you can opt to use any video editing software you like.

Here, instead of the positioning of the images, you can choose a start time for the GIF. This helps you pinpoint the clip for the video that you want to use. And, of course, you can set the duration of the GIF.

The following part, Decoration, is basically exactly the same as for the images. Things like captions, stickers, filters, and drawing patterns are also available for you to play with.

This covers how to create GIFs using Giphy’s easy to use service. Next we’ll touch on how to upload GIFs if you made them yourself.

Uploading GIFs to your account

There are two things that we want to cover here. The first is the alternative. Do you want to make GIFs yourself? Without using Giphy.com?

These are the technical specs that Giphy states about creating GIF stickers:

• Upload your stickers as GIF files (APNG files are currently not supported)
• Stickers must be exported with at least 20% transparent pixels, no white or opaque color backgrounds.
• Size: 500-600px with an even-numbered height and width.
• There is no maximum file size, our server will automatically resize the sticker on upload.
• RGB color mode is mandatory.
• Set to loop Forever upon exporting.

Once you’ve covered these points, you’re ready to upload to Giphy!

Here you have a standard upload page for your GIFs.

In order for your GIFs to be used by your followers and in general, you will need to set them to “Public”.

Now that that’s done, let’s talk about tags and how to add GIFs to Instagram. 

It is crucial that you use tags that closely define your brand. This is how your stickers will show up in searches on Instagram Stories. Plus, this kind of originality tells how to turn Instagram followers into customers! 

Each sticker should have at least 5-10 relevant tags, and it’s really important to tag your stickers with the name of your brand to make them easy to find!

According to Giphy.com, the most popular searches across their API are love, happy, heart, dance, cat, sad, dog, cry, birthday, kiss, party, lol, and food. 

You should consider these terms when creating and tagging your stickers. Seal the deal when it comes to appearing in popular searches! This, plus a good Instagram bio when they visit your page? Whew! 

Testing it out and sharing it with your followers

Now that you have uploaded your GIFs and have added the right tags; it’s time to test them out.

Can you upload gifs to Instagram? Of course!

Simply take a photo or video, tap the Sticker button, and open the GIF option. Now search for your GIFs using the tags that you have assigned. That’s how you upload a GIF to Instagram. Very easy!

Also, original GIFs are great for a Giveaway on Instagram! Especially when your brand needs to be the center of attention! 

Feel free to use multiple tags at the same time while searching. This should bring up one of several of your GIFs.

Giphy also has analytics for each of your creations. This means you can track how many times your GIFs have been searched. That’s super useful!

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the most important thing is your creativity and style. The best stickers and GIFs are always the most creative ones!

But don’t stop there, Instagram Stories are complex features. For super-cool engagement rate and Instagram growth – take a look at why Instagram Stories are so vital!