Summary
Making Instagram story video using PowerPoint can be a big advantage. In this guide, we take you through some crucial features to understand how PowerPoint can help you to get started. We cover the steps on fixing Instagram story dimensions and length, adding music and multiple photos to Instagram story template, and finally producing HD video for publishing. For many companies, maximizing returns on video advertising will be a priority in 2021 and in coming years. This guide offers a fresh look at how PowerPoint can be the tool you can depend upon for making eye-catching Instagram stories for your campaign. Let us begin.
Main Topics
Instagram Demographic Statistics
Before delving into the main topic of Instagram story video using PowerPoint, let us look at some vital Instagram demographic statistics (collated from this August 2020 study) to understand its reach among global social media audience.
Key global Instagram users’ stats
A bird’s eye view of Instagram’s popularity in the global arena can be had from the infographic & the stats below. Putting in a nutshell, daily active Instagram users (DAU) equal to –
- 11.01% of the world’s 4.54 billion active Internet users,
- 11.96% of the world’s 4.18 billion active mobile Internet users,
- 13.15% of the world’s 3.8 billion active social media users, and
- 6.43% of the world’s 7.77 billion population.
Instagram penetration rate among smartphone users
The graphic below shows the top six Instagram users’ nations starting with 120 MM in USA, followed by 80 MM in India, 77 MM in Brazil, 63 MM in Indonesia, Russia with 44 MM and Turkey with 38 MM users.
Two more vital stats are shown here. So, for example, the USA has 79.1% smartphone owners in its total population (260 MM out of 329 MM). And out of them, there are 120 MM Instagram users, which comes to 46.2% of total smartphone owners.
From the above stats it can be safely said that countries like India that have huge populations but low number of smartphone owners will likely see the most growth in years to come.
Instagram user demographics by gender
More females use Instagram than males. Globally though, the percentage users are nearly equally split between the genders, 50.9% of females versus 49.1% of males using the app. This number however skews in favor of the latter in the US, where 31% of men and 43% of women use the Instagram app.
Among the age groups, 75% of people aged 18–24 have active Instagram accounts in the US, as against 57% of people aged between 25 and 30. The percentage of active tapers off with the increase in the age groups.
Okay, now that we have a general idea about Instagram’s reach and popularity, let us take a deep look at videos for Instagram stories, and how the use of PowerPoint is a good idea for creating them.
What is Instagram Story Video?
Launched in August 2016, an Instagram story video allows anyone to share video snippets of selected moments of your day with your followers. Businesses, small and big, often use videos for their Instagram stories as an interactive arm of their regular Instagram posts.
Easy to do and upload, it has occupied a big part of social media outreach campaigns of businesses of all hues that want to use video for maximum engagement with audience.
The other interesting feature of Instagram stories is that the photo and videos posted by users disappear 24 hours after they are posted. This means that they have to be really engaging to derive benefits from visitor viewings.
Why Instagram Story Video?
Despite being limited to a 24-hour ‘shelf life’, the Instagram story video feature has been simply lapped up by users ever since it was rolled out. According to a study, there were 500 million daily active Instagram stories users worldwide in January 2019, up from 400 million global DAU (Daily Active Users) in June 2018.
The latest post-Covid figures are not available as of now, but from the above trends it can be easily said that this is a mass of audience no business dependent on social media exposure can afford to ignore.
So, would you consider using videos in Instagram stories for business? If you have not done before, or are in two minds for any reasons, here are 3 factors that should help you take a positive stand on this.
Increase engagement
Remember, Instagram story videos are not only shown to your followers, but also to the users that may be interested in your brand. In a sign of encouragement to post more stories, Instagram actively gives preference to users that do. Seen in that perspective, Instagram story videos are a great help to reach out to and engage with more viewers over time.
Experiment with variations
Since story videos are visible for just 24 hours, you have little option but to remain active with new videos if only to stay fresh in the consumer’s mind. This is a good opportunity to experiment with different variations in your story videos, thereby getting to know what really works for your brand to stay at the top.
Advertise adroitly
Instagram shared information about how businesses saw success with story videos. For example, Airbnb ran a series of 15-second story video adverts in stories to build awareness and buzz around its largest product launch. In a similar way, smaller businesses can cleverly use Instagram Story video ads to boost cognizance of their products.
Why Use PowerPoint for Instagram Story Video
Few people will argue the ease of creating videos for Instagram stories. All you need is use the native Instagram app, tap on the camera sign or your avatar with the “plus” sign located in the upper left corner. And you are ready to record and create your video.
So, what’s the deal with PowerPoint?
Well, the point is, when you are using Instagram stories for business, this method of using the native app has very limited scope. That’s because you don’t have control over the quality of the video.
This is where PowerPoint comes to action.
With PowerPoint by your side, you can create stunningly beautiful, sophisticated Instagram story video that will unmistakably add buzz around your products.
Other than creative designing, which surely is a big plus, how else PowerPoint help you make story videos?
We will now look at some crucial pointers with respect to PowerPoint’s usefulness for making Instagram story videos.
Crucial PowerPoint features for Instagram Story Video
There are two big reasons for our putting faith in PowerPoint for Instagram stories.
One, it is a hugely familiar design tool among professionals and companies across the world. More than 500 million people and entities use PowerPoint, and according to some estimates, more than 30 million presentations are made every day with PowerPoint.
Presentations are almost synonymous with PowerPoint, and for many people, they are also its nemesis.
Is that true?
Well, a widely shared belief is that PowerPoint is just not good enough to create classy design works.
And they are wrong!
They are wrong because they perhaps never happen to use the fantastic video making features that PowerPoint has to offer.
So, the second reason for our liking PowerPoint is essentially twofold –
- its versatility and
- its ease of use.
Few people would disagree on them no matter how much they like or dislike PowerPoint for what it is.
We at VidBazaar are fortunate to have made conscious efforts to harness PowerPoint’s prowess for design works, and the proof of that is evident as you glance around and shop our video ads templates we have on offer in this website.
On that note, let us list out some of the crucial features that you easily glean from PowerPoint for your Instagram story video.
Instagram story dimensions
The Instagram story dimensions are 1080 by 1920 pixels. What this means is that your video or photo will have to be 1080 pixels wide and 1920 pixels in height. This is the classic 9:16 format, and you can do this easily with PowerPoint.
But wait. What about other formats? I mean formats for Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and so on. It’s quite likely that you’d use videos for other social media platforms, right?
And here the good news is, PowerPoint makes it equally easy to make videos for other popular social media video formats, like
- 1:1 square,
- 9:16 vertical,
- 4:5 vertical,
- 16:9 rectangle,
- even 4:3 rectangle, or anything, any random size.
Watch the GIF below.
The icing on the cake is that, as of March 2018 update, even Instagram story video can be a square or a rectangle positioned in the middle of the screen, while the upper and lower part is made of gradients of colors that Instagram takes from the video itself.
Instagram story video length
The maximum length of Instagram Story video is 15 seconds, as against just 7 seconds for a photo. This is both a boon and a bane for users. Boon … because you can be more creative when making a story video.
For many users though, 15 seconds is a bit long time to make proper use of, because that calls for design talent for creative content. If you can manage that, it does not matter what length you choose – 7 seconds, 15 seconds, anything. PowerPoint is there for you.
How to add music to Instagram story
This undoubtedly is music to many a user’s ears. When you use PowerPoint, it’s easy to insert music to your Instagram story video from your computer. Watch the GIF below.
There is however a small downside, which is that you have to get hold of music that you want to add to your video. Unlike other online tools, PowerPoint does not provide stock music as of this writing.
How to add multiple photos to Instagram story
PowerPoint makes it super-easy to add multiple photos to Instagram story. I’ve got this video below to illustrate this.
To do this, the first step is to have a 9:16 video format as explained above. Once you have it, in the next step, just go ahead, and select a graphic or an image from the Design Ideas that PowerPoint provides. This you may want to use as a background.
In the third step, all you now need is to add the photos on to the template on top of one another. Finally, the 4th and the last step is to suitably animate the photos for making your Instagram story video.
As added attractions, don’t forget to give a heady slogan in the space above, and a CTA button in the space below.
This is what I have done in the Instagram story template as you can see in the video above. I have added 4 pictures to this Instagram story video that come one after the other in simple animation.
This is a 20-min work, easy to make yet superbly designed to attract attention!!
How to produce HD video
When it comes to producing HD video with PowerPoint, you have some really good options.
- Ultra HD (4K) – Ultra-high quality, 3840 x 2160 pixels
- Full HD (1080p) – Full high quality, 1920 x 1080 pixels
- HD (720p) – Moderate quality, 1280 x 720 pixels
Normally, you may not need 4k ultra-HD video because among other things, the file size can be gigantic. Most social media platforms ask for 1080p full-HD video, even though 720p video can be a good one depending upon input quality.
Note one important point here.
If you are making a 9:16 vertical Instagram story video, the dimensions for 1080p full-HD output will be 608 x 1080 pixels.
In a similar way, it will be 1080 x 1080 pixels for 1:1 square video, 864 x 1080 pixels for 4:5 vertical video, and 1920 x 1080 pixels for a 16:9 rectangle video.
In short, PowerPoint makes it easy to produce super high quality HD video for any dimension.
How to Post a Video on Instagram to Your Story
We have discussed how PowerPoint can be a big help for making Instagram story video and outputting in HD video format.
When it comes to posting a video on Instagram to your story, there are mainly 3 ways to go about.
- Using Instagram itself to record video, or
- Posting video from your mobile library, or
- Using 3rd party posting apps on your PC, iphone, or Android mobile phone.
The most common and convenient way of doing this is to use the native Instagram app for the purpose. Instagram gives you some nifty options for story videos, including Live Video, Boomerang, Superzoom, Hands-free, and Reels.
Using native Instagram app is the fastest and the easiest way to upload your videos for Instagram stories. The downside to this is that it is more suitable to create personal profiles or make casual postings.
You don’t have control over the quality of the video. And so, if you plan to use videos for your Instagram stories, using the native app is not going to help you much.
For 2nd and 3rd options, there is ample scope to design creative and effective Instagram story video with a software of your choice, like PowerPoint, as you can see in the example above.
The difference between them is about ‘the place’ where you ‘store’ the video before you post it on Instagram to your story.
Posting video from your mobile library
After you produce the story video in 9:16 MP4 format say on your PC, you can transfer it to your mobile phone via Google Drive or Dropbox. In either case you can do this with a free account, so no big issue there.
You can also email the video to yourself, and then open the email on your mobile phone to add the video to the library.
Finally, to post your video story from your phone, launch Instagram, and select the Add Photo icon for posting. Your video should be visible in the gallery. If not, check the other folders such as Video, Instagram, Camera, or Downloaded. Refer the screenshot below.
Since the aspect ratio of your video should already be 9:16 if you made it with PowerPoint, all you now do is simply go ahead and post it to your Instagram story.
If the aspect ratio is not 9:16 vertical, select the crop button to ensure your video is displayed correctly before posting.
Using 3rd party posting apps
There are a good number of tools, both free and paid, that help you post your Instagram story video straight from your PC or other device.
For example, if you are posting from PC, you can check out the scheduling apps from Hootsuite, Later, Eclincher, or Hopper HQ.
A free desktop software app called Gramblr (64 bit), which you need to install on your PC, allows you to upload pictures or videos to Instagram.
If you are a Mac user, then consider using the popular app Continual that lets you post videos of any length to Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories or WhatsApp Stories. If your video has longer duration, Continual will auto-split it into segments of 15 segments.
Carrying a price tag of $7.99, Continual ranks #21 under Social Networking in the App Store as of this writing.
Instagram Post vs Instagram Story
A large volume of considered opinion is out there for use as reference about the efficacy of Instagram posts vis-à-vis Instagram stories for business. There are favorable views on each side, but we believe Instagram stories, especially Instagram story videos, are steadily gaining traction since its launch.
We don’t have ready stats to prove our point, but we often refer to this study (though 3 years old) for a comparative analysis of posts vs stories. Here is the graphic below that summarizes two main findings from the study.
Looks like there is a paradox here in the sense that brands are using more stories (46%) in sharp contrast with the impressions (19%) that the stories get at Instagram.
However, if you look at the growth of Instagram stories users (DAUs) between October 2017 and January 2019 (see chart at the top), there is little doubt that Instagram stories, and more particularly Instagram story videos, will continue to make big splash in the years to come.
So, that marks the end of this post. Do leave your comments below, and if you have any query with regard to using PowerPoint to make videos for Instagram stories, do not hesitate to get in touch with us.
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Top image courtesy, Ceidrik Wesche, Unsplash
Founder at VidBazaar.com | PowerPoint & Canva Video Ad Maker | Guest Speaker
