Jun 26, 2019
The undulating library of animated stickers is familiar to anyone that interacts with Instagram stories on a regular basis. But the stickers that appear in your feed aren’t provided by Instagram. They are made possible through a Giphy API that builds its library from user submitted content. That means anyone willing to go through the process can make stickers that will be available to Instagram’s 77 million users.
With Instagram nearing its 10th birthday, most marketing teams have gotten comfortable with harnessing the platform to promote their brand. But few brands have realized the potential of creating a bespoke set of giphy stickers.
Having your own stickers gives your marketing team a way create branded content on the fly. Any story can be accented with branded elements directly in the app.
Making stickers available to your audience gives them the opportunity to be brand ambassadors with little effort on their part.
Giphy provides tools for brands to track impressions on each sticker. This helps you understand what content is most interesting to your audience and how often your stickers are being seen.
.jpg)
While you are required to go through a somewhat difficult approval process giphy brand accounts are completely free.
Once your brand account is approved you can create content for Facebook and Twitter too.
Sign up for a giphy account using a corporate email address. Fill out the profile as your brand or business. (Not as yourself!) Make sure to include your company’s website, social media accounts, and upload an avatar. This is important to becoming a verified account.
Making stickers is the fun part. Giphy provides detailed guidelines to make sure your stickers will pass their approval process. It’s crucial that your stickers have transparent backgrounds, animation, and are not perfectly rectangular or circular. You need at least five to become verified.
When you upload be sure to include tags for each gif so you and your audience can find them on Instagram.
Once your account is created and your stickers are uploaded, you’re ready to apply for a verified Giphy account (you can do here). Read over Giphy’s tips for submitting applications before you apply so you have the best shot at success.
This part takes some patience as the Giphy team reviews your application. The process can take between 3 to 10 business days.
Getting verified on Giphy is a huge step towards getting your stickers on Instagram but the wait isn’t over yet. Each sticker has to go through an approval process to check if it aligns with Giphy’s guidelines. If you delete a sticker and reupload the approval process will reset. So, only reupload if you really need to!
Once your stickers are showing up on Instagram’s gif search you can promote them through your own social media to encourage your audience to use them. Keep adding fresh stickers to your account and track their views using the Giphy dashboard.
So how do we know all of this? Well we just launched our own set of stickers on Instagram! Check them out by searching Mission Media on the Instagram gif search.
