Using Custom Animated GIFs with your Branding in Text Messages and Instagram Stories
Giphy is a GIF publishing platform, which many apps and sites integrate to allow users to add GIFs and GIF stickers to their posts, chats, and stories. Here at LCM we felt that our Yeti mascot would be a fun addition to our social presence, and in texts with our friends, partners, and mothers.
For your stickers to appear in Instagram Stories and elsewhere, you need to have an Artist or Brand account. To get one of those accounts you need to fill out your profile, add some gifs and send in an application. We can’t speak for everyone, but our application was accepted within about a day.
Giphy has a great page with recommendations on how to ensure your application is accepted, but the basics are, fill out your profile as much as possible, and upload at least 5 GIFs. We think it’s a safe bet to follow their guide to make sure your gifs are high quality, and think about how they might look on a variety of background colors and textures. We also picked some specific hashtags to add to our GIFs, so that they can be searched easily! Once you’ve been accepted you still have to wait for each of your GIFs to be verified, at which point you can find and use them wherever Giphy is integrated. This was fairly quick as well, the longest we waited was a few days.
Now that you’ve been accepted and your GIFs have been verified, you can use them in several places. Instagram Stories has a search feature where you can add Giphy stickers on your posts. Search for your GIF, select one, and once it’s on your story you can move or resize it however you’d like!
iPhones allow you to either send a sticker as an image, or you can drop stickers anywhere in an iMessage conversation when you download the Giphy iMessage sticker app.
You can find our collection of stickers by searching “y3t1”, “lastcallmedia” or “LCM”. You can also check out our Giphy profile to see them all. Have fun stickering!
P.S. even if you don’t have a Brand or Artist account, you can access your own GIFs with the iMessage app under the heart “Favorites”, then click Uploads.
