Instagram’s Insta Stories just got extremely powerful.
There are 5 new Insta Stories features:
- Insta Story Hashtags
- Insta Story Location Tags
- Face filters like Snapchat
- Eraser brush
- Use the text tool.
- Use the hashtag sticker.
- Add the hashtag as part of your sentence and the hashtag will work
- Put in a box
- Change the color of the box
- Change the color the text of the hashtag
- Once you have typed a sticker hashtag, you cannot change the hashtag. You have to delete the sticker and create a new one.
- To delete a hashtag sticker, drag it to the bottom of your screen. A rubbish bin icon will appear. Place the sticker on top of the icon.
- Which hashtag should you use?
- How can you attract the right people?
- How can you grow your audience?
- Photos (one tap on Normal)
- Videos (hold your finger on Normal)
- Boomerang (slide left)
- Rewind (I’ll explain below)
- Hands-free (to take a video without holding your finger down)
- Drop something
- Pouring a drink in a glass
- Showing your feet while walking
- Writing
- Behind the scenes (logo design, painting, lettering,
- Food
- Dominos
- Jump off something in reverse
I will now explain how to use each new feature. For each, I will include cool tricks and tips:
Read: Schedule Insta Stories using Preview App
1. Insta Story Hashtags
This is the feature I’m the most excited about and a total game-changer.
In this section, I’m going to show you how Insta Story hashtags work and how to pick the best hashtags for your Insta Story.
Similar to location stickers and tagging people, you can now add hashtags in Insta Stories.
How many hashtags can you add on Insta Stories?
You can add up to 10 hashtags in one Insta Story.
There are 2 different ways to add hashtags in your Insta Stories:

How to use Insta Story hashtags?
Option 1: use the Text tool to write a hashtag, as you normally would.
What you can do with an Insta Story hashtag as a text :

Option 2: use the Insta Story Hashtag Sticker .
What you can’t do with the Insta Story sticker hashtag:

How do Insta Story hashtags work?
There are 3 things you need to know about Insta Story hashtags:
Let me show you how this works.
First, you can tap on an Insta Story hashtag .
This means that your followers will be able to tap on the hashtag to see all the posts on Instagram using that hashtag.
Tip: If you are a business, you can redirect your viewers to a specific branded hashtags (for example, I use #ThemeTip to show my people all my Instagram theme tips).

Second, other people can find your Insta Story via hashtags.
For example, I search for #travel. I can see the Insta Stories of people using #travel.

Lastly, you can view how many people found your Insta Stories using hashtags (see the screenshot below).

Now the big question is:
Start by reading this blog post: 7 Tricks to Find Instagram Hashtags That Grow Your Account.
2. Insta Story Location Tags
The same logic applies for the Insta Story location tags.
You will hear people talking about Geotagging or Location Stories .
There are 2 things you need to know about Insta Story locations.
First, Instagram will show your Insta Story based on your location, on top of the Explore page.
You need to have your Location turned on in your phone settings for this to work.
As you can see below, I am based in Brisbane . Therefore Instagram shows me Insta Stories of people located in Brisbane.

Second, you can search Insta Stories for any location in the world.
For example, I searched for New York:

3. Face filters
Snapchat’s face filters have landed in Insta Stories.
You can add bunny ears and butterfly crowns on top of your Instagram photo, video and boomerang.
There are 8 face filters.

Instagram face filters work on:
You can also send private photos and videos to your friends with the face filters on.
What you can do after you have recorded with a face filter:

4. Rewind
As the name suggests, it will play videos in reverse.
Drop a microphone and watch it fly up into your hand.
Cool Insta Story Rewind ideas:
5. Eraser brush
This is how to use the Eraser tool in Insta Stories:

That’s it for the new Insta Story features
Leave a comment below if you found this article useful.
Which feature are you the most excited about?
Until next time, see you all on Instagram ( @preview.app ) for more tips and tricks.
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