Instagram Stories are among the most popular type of social media content. Short and punchy, featuring high quality graphics and cool filters, this form of disappearing content features high in the content mix of many top brands. Of course, these large companies have a team of skilled designers to create professional looking Instagram Stories. So, what can small businesses and marketers do?
The solution is one of the many design tools created with one single purpose in mind: to help anyone create great looking Instagram Stories. They are simple to use, with intuitive and user friendly interfaces. You don’t have to know any principles of digital design.
How to Select the Best Design Tools for Instagram Stories?
First of all, you must know what you need to create. If your brand is focused on visuals, then you need to create complex Instagram Stories that have that wow factor. Otherwise, crisp images, smooth transition elements and adequate background music are enough to create branded content for Instagram.
Thus, you don’t necessarily need to pay a lot of money for advanced and complex design tools. You need to have the right tool, the one that satisfy your needs. We analysed some of the most popular apps and software tools for Instagram tools and made this selection for you:
1. Easil
This is one of the design tools that have something to offer to anyone, from start-up owners to established small businesses. You can choose from three types of accounts: Basic, Plus (US $7.5/user per month) and Edge (US $59/user per month).
Even with the Basic account, you get over 2,500 Instagram Stories templates, covering a wide range of topics and domains, such as:
- New product or service
- Behind the scenes
- Breaking news or Event announcement
- Special offer or discount
- Teasers
Apart from these templates, you also enjoy a lot of helpful features, from stock photos to various text effects.
2. Kapwing
Kapwing is one of our favourite design tools, because you can do so much with it! Besides Instagram stories, you can create memes, add subtitles to your videos, and edit videos in various ways, such as:
- Trimming
- Looping
- Adding audio
- Resizing
- Converting to various formats.
But let’s go back to Instagram Stories. Kapwing offers over 10 different basic templates and over 10 colour schemes to help you create great looking branded Stories. Also, you can use the collection of special borders for Instagram photos to spice up individual posts, as well.
Kapwing is free to use, but it only stores your projects for 7 days. The Pro account offers you unlimited storage time and the option to download captions as SRT files for US $20/ month.
3. Storrito
If you want maximum convenience, Storrito is the ideal tool for you. In a few clicks, you can create and share your Instagram Stories directly from the web interface of this design tool.
Some of the key features of Storrito are:
- Custom fonts
- Emojicons
- Curated collection of stock photos
- Story templates
- Scheduling Instagram Stories.
You can use the Free account which allows you to create and post 10 Instagram stories per month. If you need more, you can choose between the Standard account (100 Stories for EUR 15month) and Professional account (over 500 Stories for EUR 50/month).
4. InShot App
If you prefer working on your mobile phone, InShot is the right choice for you. It is available both for iOS and Android. InShott helps you create a great variety of video content:
- Vertical videos – very popular on IGTV
- Instagram Stories
- Facebook videos
- Square or landscape videos.
The app is free to use and allows you to create your videos in many ways: by recording, by editing and pre-recorded video or by creating a collage of photos.
5. Unfold
This iPhone app is free to use, but offers in-app purchases – 75 premium templates. However, you have 25 free templates to choose from if you don’t want to start spending from the start.
The app allows you to create video or photo collages and then export them in high resolution, ready to share as Instagram Stories.