Even just looking at Facebook Story Basics can be a little overwhelming, especially if you have been creating Stories with the EXTREMELY limited Desktop version. In this post, I am going to cover a lot of the controls that are available to you as you create Facebook Stories on your Mobile device. The screenshots here were taken an an Android device. THe iPhone version is very similar.
Facebook Stories Basics – Tips About Reaching More Viewers
In a previous post (Recruiting with Facebook Stories – Part 1), I covered some of the things you can do to increase your reach and went over the Desktop Story building options. There will be one more post in this series where I cover using the tools covered here to create stories the sell or recruit people for your Network Marketing Team. The third post in this sequence goes over the hows and why of what you put in your Facebook Stories.
There were several Facebook Story Basic key points made in the previous post:
- Even though they only last 24 hours, Stories can reach beyond your current circle of friends and friends of friends.
- The Metric the Facebook uses to determine how many people see a Story is the percentage of people who watch a Story for longer than its natural length. The viewer must pause a Story or go back and watch a Story more than once to view it for longer than its natural length.
- The metric Facebook uses to determine which stories are share first for an individual viewer is the engagement they have had with previous stories by the person who posted the Story.
- The four types of Stories that people watch the most are all Video..
- 84% of viewers watch Stories with the sound off, so you should make your point with text. This can be in addition to saying something, but always add text.
Given these points, this post will focus on Selfie Videos with text. Here we go
Facebook Story Basics: Start a Story on an Android Mobile Device
When you open Facebook on a mobile device, the screen will look something like this.
#1 – You start the to create a new Story by clicking on the BLUE PLUS sign
You will see a number of colored boxes. Each of these is a kind of story
There are two more colored boxes that are not shown: Text and Music
#1,- Greenscreen allows you to take an image from your camera roll and place it behind the photo or video that you use to create your story. I will cover this more in the next post.
#2 0 Boomerang allows you to record a short segment and then Facebook will add a segment that plays your video segment backwards. For example, you may lift a cup and drink and then Facebook will play the segment as if your hand is going away from your mouth.
#3 – This option is where you take videos and photos (they don’t have to be Selfies.) I’m going to start with #3 since Selfie Video with Text and Selfie Photo with Text are the two kinds of stories that generally have the most reach
There are a couple of other types not shown. They are Text and Music.
#1 and #2- Choose photo or video
#3 – Take a photo or start taking a Video.
#4, #5. #6 – All kinds of special effects.
# – Switch Cameras (Front facing or Rear facing)
#8 – Go Back
#9 – Turn Flash On, Auto or Off
10j – Settings (All I see this doing right now is placing a camera icon on your home screen)
Here are a few of the special effects.
The image of the left is Greenscreen. The beach scene is an image on my camera roll.
The one in the middle is an animated sequence where the face gets smaller and the boarders get larger and then the sequence reverses (like the Boomerang option).
The one of the right is also animated. The star burst rays around the head change colors and ,move. There are lots of other options.
Facebook Funny Faces: To get the funny Faces and other special effects you usually click on a happy face or the magic want. On some Android phones, you scroll through the filters you are provided until you get to the Magnifying Glass Search Icon. Clicking on it gets you access to the Effects Gallery where you will find lots of special effects, including the funny faces.
Scrolll through the effects. The last one is the magnifying glass.
The Effects gallery.
One of the effects added (along with some timed text).
Facebook Story Basics – Enhancing Photo or Video
Once you have taken the photo or video, there are a lot of options.
#1 – Go Back
#2 – Stickers – I’ll show more below.
#3 – Type Text
#4 – Draw – Scribble
#5 – More Special effects
#6 – Trim – This lets you cut the beginning and/or end off a video.
#7 – Sound- Add Music to a video
#8 – More – On my phone the only item is Tag People
#9 and #10 – Stickers that come from your Avatar
#11 – Add Music
#12 – Save the image or video to your mobile device (This is a good idea. It makes it easier to reuse laster.)
#13 – Privacy – who can see this Story – Public is what we want for Recruiting
#14 – SHARE – This publishes the Story
Here are some of the STICKERS that you can choose from. You can resize them (by oinching your fingers) and drag them where you want then on your photo or video.
#1 – We ae ready to take a Selfie Video – The option at the bottom is set to video
#2 – The Record button will have a red dot to indicate that is will recod a video and not a photo. You can stat the video and stop the video with this button.
Once we have our video, it is time to add text.
Facebook Story Basics – Timed Text
Click on the Aa tet Icon to type text. There are a number of options for changing what the text looks ike. Think about a Word Processor. Today they let you cahnge the font, the color of the letters, the color of the background, the size of the font and more. The options here are similar. How you activate them is different, but they are still there.
#1 – The Text we are creating
#2 – Timer for when the text appears and disappears. I’ll cover that below.
#3 – – Text Color When you click on this, the row of options appears at the bottom of the screen (#7).
#4 – Background color for the text
#5 – Alight the text to the left, right or center, This is handy for longer texts.
#6 – Click this when you are Done working with this text.
NOTE: You can use the two finger pinch motion to resize the text AFTER you click the DDONE link. You can also drag the text and rotate it, but not until after you have click the DONE button.
#7 – The color option. There are similar options here when you click #4 to change the background color.
Here I changed the size, location and orientation of text 1 using my fingers to pinch and drag.
Here I clicked the Aa Text icon and typed another line or paragraph of text.
Okay – We have two text paragraphs (lines). Let’s do the Timed Text Magic.
I clicked on the first text that I want to show. Then I clicked o the Timer icon (At the top, the one at the left end of the controls at the top.
You are going to use your finger to drag two heavy blue bars (#2 and #3 above.)
#1 – The white bar moves and indicates where in the video you are.
#2 -The heavier bly bar on the left indicates where the text should START Showing
#3 – The heavier bkue bar on the right shiws where the tet should Stop being show;
Click DONE where you have dragged the blue a=bars to the place on the timeline that you want them
Click DONE at the Top
Follow the same procedure for the second (and 3rd and 4th) text
In the image above you can see that the two heavy blue bars define an area to the right. This is later in the video.
Here is the sample.
That covers the basic controls and how to add timed text to a photo or video. Next we will use these tools to create a recruiting story.
Facebook Story Basics – What’s Next
Now that we have covered Facebook Story Basics on Desktop and Mobile device, we will look at creating a Sales or Recruiting Story
Until next time – have a Great Day! Oh Hale Yes!
About Temp Worker
Very well-written tutorial, Hale. Thank you for these tips on creating a Facebook Story the right way.