Your Social Team GIF Guide

H O W T O W O R K W I T H G I F S I N G I F A N D V I D E O F I L E S A N D U S E T H E M I N Y O U R D I F F E R E N T M A R K E T I N G P L A T F O R M S

I have been using GIFs in my However they can be tricky to use, so marketing since I started this I created this guide to help you use business in 2017 and even before that GIFs without surprises, like your GIF in my past jobs. not moving once you post it!

GIFs are a great type of content to Important to mention that GIFs may add to your marketing for a few be subjected to copyright. So consult reasons: it's fun, relatable, animated, a lawyer to see if you qualify for fair highly engaging and it's free. use or use them at your own risk.

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Go to giphy.com and do a search to find the GIF you want.

We recommend searching for a specific emotion, or show, movie, character or actor. You can also look for animal gifs or funny GIFs. After that, it's time to save. You will want to save them in two formats, .gif (GIF file) and .mp4 (video file)

SAVING AS A GIF FILE

Right click or CTRL+click on top of the image.

Save Image As

Name your file in a way that you can search for it later and save

SAVING AS A Saving as a video file is a little more complicated VIDEO FILE and less intuitive, but follow the steps and the arrows and it you will be able to easily do it too. Click on media on the menu on the right side of the GIF and a window with 4 links will open

copy the link to the mp4/video file option

paste it link the file in your browser and you will see the video

Right click or CTRL+click on top of the video

So now that you have your GIF in both .gif and .mp4 (video) files, you will learn when you need each and how to use it in different platforms.

Go to the Giphy app and search for your gif. Once you find it, tap and hold on the image and save to camera roll. Easy!

YOU CAN ONLY SAVE AS A GIF FILE ON YOUR PHONE

There are a few ways you can edit your GIFs to make it "fit" your brand and content better. Here's how you can do it:

How to edit the length of your GIFs

Using an app called ImgPlay, open your either your GIF or video file (images below), click next to save it as a video file and choose how many loops you want, 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10.

As you click the options, the app gives you the final length.

Pick one that makes your GIF around 8-10 seconds and save to photos -- remember for a video to be posted to Instagram it requires a minimum 5 seconds of length.

How to crop or adjust the image of your GIFs

If you need to crop your GIFs to make them square or narrower or get rid of unwanted margins, you have a few options. You can use:

the pro version of the ImgPlay app, the editing tools in your iPhone or iPad's camera roll (and possibly other phones too) use the free version of A Color Story app or any other photo editing app that allows short video editing.

Note that on ImgPlay you can work with either the .gif file and the .mp4/video file. On the others you will need to work with the video file (this is when things get tricky and there will be some back-and-forths but bare with me!)

Color Story app ImgPlay app iPhone editing tools

To use animated GIFs in Canva, they need to be .mp4 (video format) and not .gif.

You can upload your own GIF file to Canva as a video (if you use .GIF files, they will be static) or you can use Canva's integration with Giphy.

If you use the integration, notice that you can't drag and drop it into your design. You will have to manually adjust it.

Important:

Once you're happy with your design and want to download it, make sure you select to download it in video format .mp4 and only one video page of your project at a time. If you select all pages of your project, instead of one video per page you will get one big and useless video.

If you don't have Canva Pro, click here to get it (it's a game changer)_

There are a few ways to use your GIFs on Instagram and also different rules for posts and stories!

POSTS

GIF files will show as still images in your posts, so you need to use the video file of your GIF.

Instagram requires at least 5 seconds of length to post a video on the feed, which is why it's important to edit your GIFs for length.

IG POSTS REQUIREMENTS

Video file (GIF files would show as a still image)

Minimum 5 seconds of length

STORIES

You have a few options for stories:

1) Upload the video version of your GIF to stories.

This is the simplest option, however GIFs are usually not vertical and most likely you will have the top and bottom of your story be a random color (usually a brown or grey).

2) Use the stories built-in GIF integration.

Open your stories camera and instead of "normal" mode on the bottom, choose "create". IG STORIES When you're on create mode, REQUIREMENTS swipe to find GIF and choose your Video file to upload GIF. directly This feature will repeat the GIF 3 times on your screen to get rid of GIF to use as sticker the background issue (see images on the next page)

Instagram stories built-in GIF integration:

Once your GIFs are up you can add text, swipe up links and stickers as you wish.

3) Use your GIF file as a sticker.

You can do this using your GIF file (.gif) with your iPhone camera roll. Here's how to do it:

open your story and add the image you want as the background for your GIF. You can also create a solid background directly in sytories by taking a random photo, clicking the pen option to pick a color, then tap and hold your image on your story to make it a solid color.

Leaving your story with the background open, exit Instagram, go to your iPhone camera roll and go to the .gif file of your GIF.

Click the bottom left share icon and select copy photo

Exit your camera roll, go back to stories and your sticker will pop for you to tap it and then it will be placed in your story

If you miss the sticker popping up, just go to text tap like you're about to write and click paste.

With your sticker in place, you can make it bigger, move it around or even place it right in the middle, save the story as a video file and use it to create a meme.

Share and copy from iPhone camera roll... to your Instagram stories

Adding some GIFs to your newsletters and website makes your content more fun and attractive to your audience, especially when you find GIFS with reactions and emotions that they can relate and laugh about.

The good news is that using GIFs in your emails and website is a lot more straight-forward than using it on Instagram. Your email platform may also have an To use GIFs in your website and integration with Giphy, so you can newsletters, you can just use the search the whole library directly, like .gif file the same way you'd use a MailChimp does. photo. Check out an email I "wrote" only On my website, I use GIFs instead of using GIFs! photos as covers for my blog posts It's important to note that when you On newsletters, you can just copy use lots of GIFs on your emails and your GIF file from camera roll or even website, they can slow thing down directly from giphy.com and paste it and maybe even take a minute to in the text, or upload it as a regular load, so do it at your own risk. photo, depending on how your email marketing platform works.

When working with GIFs you may find yourself needing to transfer them from phone to laptop.

I recommend saving them all on a Google Drive or Dropbox GIF folder, so you can access from either devices and have them handy for future use.

Notes

1) All the tips in this guide also work for GIFs you create yourself using images or video you took --you can use ImgPlay app to create GIFs from your own photos or video.

2) If you edit your GIF files using your website or email built-in editing tools, like Squarespace and MailChimp for example, the GIF will turn into an image (the horror!). So to edit, follow the steps in this guide.

Ironically, when you save PDFs, your GIFs show as a still image (unless you use InDesign), so no moving GIFs in this guide!

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Hi, I'm Manu, founder of Your Social I taught the guys over at MailChimp Team. I help marketing professionals how to create their GIF stickers, and and entrepreneurs use Instagram to created a Instagram strategy for the grow their businesses. guy who is possibly the first person ever known to do a sponsored social I bring 20 years of experience to the post (on Twitter in 2011!). Instagram world, working in Creative, Marketing and Strategy for brands Oh, and want to hear a secret? My such as the Cartoon Network and biggest corporate *dream* client King of Pops (if you're in the South, found me on Instagram when I had you know!) . only 500 followers! Proof that you don’t need thousands of followers or I've taught over 200 classes, created the swipe up feature to benefit from several online trainings and started a Instagram. So what are you waiting membership. for?

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