💸 The Surprising 4th Design Tool: Instagram Stories, a Design Option? 🚀

About this Episode

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DESCRIPTION

Are you ready to elevate your design game to a whole new level? Look no further than Instagram Stories – the surprisingly powerful 4th design tool that will revolutionize your creative process. In this captivating video, we unlock the hidden potential of Instagram Stories as a secret design tool that will unleash your creative genius.

Discover how to utilize the dynamic features, engaging elements, and captivating visuals of Instagram Stories to create stunning designs with ease. From interactive polls and quizzes to eye-catching animations and stickers, this versatile platform offers endless possibilities for designers and artists alike.

Immerse yourself in a world of boundless inspiration as we delve into the unique ways Instagram Stories can enhance your design projects. Learn how to leverage the platform's vast library of filters, fonts, and effects to create captivating visual narratives that capture your audience's attention and leave a lasting impression.

Join us on this thrilling journey as we unveil the remarkable potential of Instagram Stories as a powerful design tool, empowering you to take your creativity to unimaginable heights. Elevate your designs, captivate your viewers, and unlock new dimensions of artistic expression through this revolutionary platform.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to tap into the secrets of Instagram Stories as a design powerhouse. Subscribe to our channel now and stay tuned for more exciting videos that will inspire and empower you in your creative endeavors.

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📓SHOWNOTES
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-02:23 Design Tool #4 is Instagram?
02:23-03:05 Why Every Student Ministry NEEDS a Strong Digital Presence
03:05-10:41 How to Hack Instagram and Make it work for on-demand Graphics
10:41-15:19 The Top 3 Ways to Use Instagram in Youth Groups for Design
15:19-17:37 The Shadow Side of Instagram

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Nick Clason (00:02):
In this episode, we're going to explore the surprising design tool that you probably didn't even know about or think about that is already sitting as an app on your cell phone. Yes, I'm talking about Instagram and the Instagram story editor. When you are in a pinch and you need a vertical based graphic or you need something that can be cropped down to a square size graphic or even potentially narrowing it down to a widescreen graphic, you can pop open your phone into the Instagram story editor and create amazing looking crisp graphics. And so in this video, we are going to explore the world of the Instagram Stories editor. We're going to look at some of its features, how you can implement and the downside of it. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. Well, hey everyone. My name is Nick Clason. I am a youth pastor in Dallas, Texas, and I have been doing youth ministry for 12 and a half, 13 years.

(00:59):
And every church, except for the very first church I had straight out of college, that was just a part-time job. I've had Instagram and I helped implement it in some churches. I've taken over it over account in other churches. But one of my favorite features of Instagram is the Instagram stories editor. And I've used it in a lot of different cases and a lot of different scenarios when I've been in a pinch or I've just really needed something on the fly on my phone that I can pull, open my phone real fast and just kind of make it happen. And so I love Instagram. It of course has some downsides and it has some shortcomings. Just like every other feature that we've looked at in this playlist. We've looked at PowerPoint, we've looked at Canva, we've looked at Adobe Express, and now we're looking at Instagram is probably the weakest of the four.

(01:48):
But it is great when you just need something quick on the fly and that you can make on your phone and you can get to it relatively accessibly. And so that is why I like to use it and that's why I included it. And in most cases, if you already have Instagram installed on your phone, if not, it's free to do. You can have it very accessibly in your pocket and you can make amazing looking graphics in just about no time. And hey, I am on a mission for every single youth ministry in America to understand that they need to have a strong digital presence. Don't believe me. Check out this video that I have linked right here, what every student ministry needs and why. Every student needs a strong digital presence. And if you're thinking, Hey, I don't have time for that, don't worry. Because in that episode, I have a surefire resource to help you build out a full digital social media strategy as well as a strong just digital strategy in general. And so you don't have time, that's okay. We got 40 resources basically done for you. So check that out. That is a free resource to you in that video. Also linked here in the show notes.

Nick Clason (02:59):
But let's dive in and let's explore the world of Instagram stories here together. Alright, so right here on my screen, you're going to be able to see some screenshots from my Instagram. And so first and foremost, if you open it up and you're already following people, you're going to see some stuff on your feed and stuff like that. But right up here in the top left corner is where stories live and stories exist, and all the way across the top here are additional stories. And so when you are adding a story, you can do one of two things. You can either hit this plus button up on your profile thing or you can swipe your phone to the left, and then you're going to now be able to see what is directly in front of you. Took screenshots. You all can see my other side of this setup, which is disastrous in my guest room.

(03:51):
And we had someone dog sit this weekend and it's still not cleaned up, so that's cool. But once you're in here, you can post a photo. So you can either upload a photo directly here from this upload thing, or you can take a photo of what is right in front of you. Either are great options or you can go over here to this left menu, which has multiple different options as well. So you have the create feature, which is one of my favorites. And when you're on the create feature down here in the right hand corner, you have different options of colors. So you can cycle through different colors that you may want to use. You can also scroll through and use some of these shout out things so they have Happy birthday, thanks, happy anniversary. And you can change the look of it. At the top here with this little dice thing, they have a GIF option, so you can search gifs and use gifs.

(04:50):
And then they also have a, on this day, five years ago type of thing, which it looks like on this day, a year ago, I was asking if 40 spam calls in one day is a lot, bro, I was getting so many spam calls a year ago. We were applying for a new mortgage, and so my number got out there and I was literally just getting call after call after call. My wife was too, it was a lot. Let's go through and talk about the create feature. In the create feature. You can tap to type something, and so you can put it in there, type it out, and while you're there also you can change font types, so you can, oh, that's weird. So yeah, so here's all your different font types when you are in here. And so I'm typing one out right now, hybrid ministry.

(05:47):
So you can change the font type, you can adjust the background, you can take the background off, you can change the, there's all kinds of different things that you can do. But now I got all these kind of graphics, I got all these different options, and I have just a story. It's created, you can see it here on the side of the screen. If you are wanting to use it on Instagram, you would post it right here with my stories, but if not, you can go up here to these three little dots and you can, in addition to drawing on it, like annotating or whatever, you can also save it to your device and that's where you can save it and go out and use it in different spots. And so the way that this one currently, this hybrid ministry one is clipped, I could clip it down in a PowerPoint maybe, or Photoshop or even just the phone editor.

(06:43):
The photo editor on my own phone. I could crop it down to a 16 by nine, export it and use it on screen. I don't know how crisp that's going to be narrowing it down and zooming in that much, but it is conceivably an option. It's probably not optimal to do it that way. Another thing is you could flip your phone sideways and design this way, design on the side, and then save it. It's going to save as vertical, but once you have it in your photo editor, you can flip it and you could use it that way as well. I've actually never done that, but as I'm talking it through, that could be an option. So beyond the create feature over here, we also have, looks like it's giving me, oh, those are just filter types beyond the create option. Like I said, you also have a few other options over here.

(07:31):
And one that I want to point out is the layout feature. So when I click layout, it gives you a handful of different layout type options, and that's a grid based thing. So you can do four by four, two by two, you can do side by side three, or you could do six all on here. So that's something that could come in handy at a time as well. They have hands free, that's mostly just for, that's mostly just for filming stuff on stories, so you're probably not going to use that as a design feature. And then right here they have the dual feature, which is them. Instagram is notorious for ripping features off of other social platforms. So this is them ripping off of B reel and they're front facing camera and self-facing camera. So you may use that again, you could use that if in your church or student minister you're looking to do some sort of series that is talking about being real and you want to use the features or the looks of the BeReal platform, you could use that one right there on Instagram. So that's all the menu options there on the side of the Instagram stories

Nick Clason (08:54):
Editor. Now, once you are ready and willing to start uploading, so I'll go to my hybrid ministry thing here, and now that I'm ready to upload, you can also add more text on the screen. You can adjust how big it is. You can adjust the left center, right center, all those things. You can also go here to the stickers thing. And there are all kinds of different locations. And so I'm just going to show you this graphic here on the screen. And some of them are more for social media for sure, but you can do little sticker things, little slider things. And if you download them as, and if you're using this as a design tool that you're going to also post on social media or on your screens, they're not going to be interactive like this. But this is also one of my favorite features for just hybridizing your ministry because you can do a lot of things here on the Instagram Stories editor or even in some of these you can use in reels.

(09:55):
And that's one of my favorite ways, like I said, to hybridize my ministry because I may preach a sermon on Wednesday night and then I may post a clip on Thursday and I may add a slider bar or a voting option or something like that, just letting students interact with the piece of content that I have created. So that's just a little pro tip, bonus tip for you. So, so far, if you've learned something about Instagram in this video, would you just hit that like button and maybe even that subscribe button because we're going to be dropping all kinds of stuff, not just about design, but about hybrid ministry for you and in your future. So go ahead, do that now and let's move on after this. And let's start talking about different ways that you can implement these graphics from Instagram in your student ministry and in your ministry in your church.

(10:42):
All right, so here are a few ideas of ways that I have implemented the Instagram Stories editor into just my day-to-day life in student ministry. Here are also some ideas that you could use in your ministry, and there are going to be things that I'm not thinking of. So even as I'm just stream of consciousness, giving out some thoughts, it might spark within you ideas. So I want to encourage you, be thinking, be creative, take notes. But I use the Instagram stories editor a fair bit just for social media posts. If I'm doing a carousel type post or something where I'm just going to post a text-based type of thing to my Instagram feed or Facebook feed, I'll go into the stories editor if I am in a pinch for time, and I'll throw something together and I'll download it from my device, and then I'll just go in and I'll post it.

(11:29):
And because when I download it, it's a full 16 or nine by 16 vertical based graphic, it's going to crop out a fair bit at the top and bottom, but that's okay. And so just when I'm building that design, I know that another thing I use is every single week on Monday, we do a meme Monday post and I post nine to 10 memes in an Instagram carousel based post. But the thing that is interesting is that on the first post of that, the first photo of that, I post just a static graphic that says Meme Monday. And I have a little design, I use the little calendar emoji, and I do meme all big and Monday with a background color on it and then the calendar in there. But I do a little bit of a different one every single week. And I literally, right before I post all the memes, I go in there, I create a graphic in the Instagram stories editor, I download it, and then I post it along with my carousel posts.

(12:29):
So that's another way that you can just use it. And again, I could sit down and design something in Photoshop, but quite frankly, I forget every single week and once Monday rolls around, I'm like, oh, snap. I need a graphic. So I just hop into the Instagram stories editor and do it. Now, since I'm already in the Instagram stories editor, I do it on my student ministry account. That way when I'm done creating it, I actually post it. I literally post the full slide, it says me Monday. And then to link it to make sure that they know to link it, I will post on the next Instagram stories slide. I will, after I have posted the post on the feed, I will go to that post on the feed. I will share it to my stories. I'll share the second one because the first one's going to be that exact same slide.

(13:16):
So I'll share the second one. And so it'll basically be the me Monday slide in stories. And then the next slide in stories is that post that's clickable. So you can click on it and then they can go actually to the feed and see all the different memes. Another kind of tip that I do in there is I'll post a question sticker sometimes and I'll ask them, which one was your favorite meme this week? And that's just a way to bring about some engagement. I'll be honest with you, Instagram's actually one of the least used platforms in my current context. In my student ministry, we have a lot more engagement on TikTok and a lot more engagement on YouTube. So I shy away from doing that sometimes just because I don't get a lot of interaction on Instagram. So the third and final kind of way that you can utilize this is I actually created a full theme feel of a graphic for our January series that we were doing called Habits.

(14:10):
I created it in Instagram in the stories editor. And then after that, I started to use that same feel and theme on all of our graphics. And I went and I did that in Photoshop or in PowerPoint or whatever later. But I was sitting in a Sunday morning sermon, and it was January 1st, and I was like, I need to get some sort of post out today. And while the pastor was preaching, sorry, pastor Craig, I made a graphic on my phone and then I posted it. And so I didn't use Instagram exclusively in that series for graphics, but because of the limitations with which I had for Instagram, I made that graphic. And then that is what drove and dictated how and what I did for all my graphics. Moving forward in the rest of that series. We're working pretty far ahead these days, so that's not as much of a problem, but if you ever find yourself in a pinch, you can use it and utilize it.

(15:03):
Again, I built a graphic for social first and then I retrofitted it in other programs after for widescreen type of things, but it can make those things for you. So let's go ahead in this next section, let's look at the downside of Instagram. So the downside of course of Instagram is that that stories editor really only is vertical based. And so as I was saying, you could clip it down to screen, but it's a lot more work. Probably any one of the other three tools that we've offered for you is going to be a better advantage for you, especially if you're looking for just screen-based graphics. The way I would say to think about Instagram is in a pinch on your phone, social media graphics, that's your place to go, and you can make some cool looking things. But for full scale screen-based things, it's probably going to be more work for you than just applying for a pro account at Canva or just using PowerPoint, excuse me, or Google Slides on your computer that's already installed or even trying out Adobe Express.

(16:03):
And so if I were to rank these, honestly, I'd probably go Canva, PowerPoint, Adobe Express, and then Instagram. But it is a nice one to just know about and have as kind of a hack on your phone. You're out and about with a family, you forgot to post something, someone needs a graphic from you real quick. You can create something really seamless. And I think there are Canva Mobile. There's mobile for Google Slides, there's all these other things, but Instagram is a phone-based app design for phones. And so it's just the most easy to use with your thumbs. And to make it real quick, the other shadow side of it is that if you are building out a full social media strategy on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram reels, it's really only good for static type posts and JPEGs and PNGs. It is not really for video.

(16:53):
And right now vertical video is king. And so that's actually what I talk about in my episode, Instagram versus TikTok versus YouTube. So I'd love to actually have you check that out. It's going to fly up here on the screen as you're navigating how to build out a full and robust social media strategy for your church and for your youth ministry. We're going to rank those three platforms and tell you how to use them. And make sure you check out the other videos in this playlist if you haven't seen those yet. And make sure and subscribe, like Share with a Friend. We are on a mission to help the church understand that digital is a valid option. We're making digital discipleship easy and accessible. Don't forget, and as always, stay hybrid.