Best Ideas for Your "Year In Review" Instagram Story
As this year and decade comes to an end, I thought it would be cool to share some "year in review" ideas and tools that you can use to gather data from your social platforms and post on your Instagram Stories. This is always a fun time for me as I look back on this year and see which photos performed well on Instagram, which photos were my favorite ones that I took this year, which songs I listened to the most, and more! So without further ado, here are some great apps and websites that you can use to create your own “year in review” Instagram Story.
Top Nine for Instagram
Since its inception in 2016, Top Nine has become more than an app that generates your top nine most liked photos of the year. It has become a worldwide Instagram trend where millions of users, celebrities, and influencers share their best moments from the year. Simply enter your Instagram username on the mobile app or website, and it will automatically generate a collage of your top nine Instagram posts from this year. For accounts with a larger following, Top Nine may ask them to input their email address since it will take a while to analyze their account. Don’t wait until the last day of the year to generate your top nine! I had a situation where it took a few days for Top Nine to generate my top photos because so many users were using it at the same time.
Year of Colour
Created by Stef, a designer and software developer based in the UK, Year of Colour shows you your most used colors based on your Instagram posts from this year. As a photographer, this is one of my favorite “year in review” tools because it shows which specific colors I incorporated the most into my feed as well as what kind of editing style that I frequently used in my photos. Once you enter your Instagram username and generate a report, Year of Colour works its magic and analyzes which colors are dominant. The algorithm then groups similar colors together and counts the pixels from all of the images to determine which colors you used the most. Once completed, Year of Colour comes back with a nice circular bubble with all of your most used colors of the year. If you like this Instagram tool, please help support Stef by purchasing a physical print of your Year of Colour.
Fohr
Fohr is another great “year in review” tool but you have to sign up in order to receive your report. Once you’re a member, they will send you a detailed, comprehensive report on your Instagram through email. The report shows how many followers you gained throughout the year, the time that your followers are most active on your posts, your top 9 most engaged posts, your most used colors in your photos, and which words and hashtags were used the most in your captions. The other cool thing that Fohr does is that they create a carousel of your top 9 most engaged photos so that you can easily post it on your Instagram feed or story.
Spotify Wrapped
Have you ever wondered how many minutes you spent listening to your favorite podcasts or your favorite songs? Well now you can with Spotify Wrapped. You can go to Spotify’s website or app, log in with your account, and scroll down to see your statistics from this year. With Wrapped, you’re able to see how much time was spent streaming songs, what genres you listened to the most, and the top artists that you listened to over the year. At the time of writing this blog post, Spotify has also included a new decade feature in Wrapped (because it’s the end of a decade obviously) that lists your favorite artists and songs from this past decade. This year, Spotify has made it incredibly easy to upload your stats in the form of sharing cards that you can upload to Instagram Stories, Facebook, Twitter, or Snapchat.
Create Your Own “Best of This Year” Using Instagram Story
If you don’t want to use these “year in review” apps or websites for whatever reason, you can always create your own “best of this year” visuals in Instagram Story. Instagram has been updated with so many features over the years, such as GIFs, stickers, tags, and music, that it’s very easy to create your own Story now more than ever. For example, take a look at my friend’s “Best of 2019” Instagram Story. To get you started, here are some “best of the year (or decade)” ideas that you might want to include in your Story: food, restaurants, musical artists, songs, movies, tv shows, apps, or favorite Instagram accounts that you discovered this year.
If I had to choose one "year in review" app to use, I would go with Year of Colour. It’s so different from your usual "year in review" app, and I find it fascinating to see all of my most used colors in a huge bubble that is aesthetically pleasing to the eye. It’s interesting to compare my colours from last year to this year so I can tell how my editing style has evolved since then. However, you can’t go wrong with any of the "year in review" apps and websites mentioned above. If you used any of my suggestions in this blog post and upload them to your Instagram Story, make sure to mention me (@makeetz) so that I can see them! I’ll be posting my 2019 favorite moments at the end of this year so follow me on Instagram to see it.