How To Use Instagram Stories: Tips and Examples for 2024

Get the most out of Instagram Stories with these tips on how to create short, interactive content that will help grow your audience on Instagram.

Instagram Stories has millions of daily users tapping, viewing, and interacting with short, temporary videos (and likely Stories ads as well) of the people they follow. That’s a solid group of people who could potentially see your Story or Story ad.

And those that do see your Stories are invested. Research has found that the median tap-forward rate (the name given to how often someone will click through to your next Story frame) is nearly 90% if you have five or more Stories up at one time. 

Dive deeper into what Instagram Stories are and how you can use them to increase your reach and engage your audience.

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What is an Instagram Story?

An Instagram Story is a disappearing post. It will stay on your profile for 24 hours, unless you add it to a highlight category (more on that later).

You’ll know if someone has a Story posted by the bright circle that appears around their profile photo:

Davids Tea has a Story available to view.

To view the Story, simply tap on the profile photo, then tap through each Story to see them all:

The Story pops up when you click the brand’s profile picture.

Why use Instagram Stories for business?

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about Instagram Stories:

• An active user base. Instagram reports there are more than 500 million daily users of Stories.
• Low stakes. No one expects you to invest half an hour on a post that’s not going to be around after tomorrow. While Instagram posts require the perfect lighting, angles, and hashtags, a good Story just requires a quick idea or an interesting moment and some creativity.
• A testing ground for ideas. Instagram Stories aren’t as exposed as regular Instagram posts, making them great for testing ideas. If it’s received well (you get positive replies and people watch your entire Story without dropping off), you can consider re-posting it as a permanent Instagram post or adapting the idea for another marketing channel.
• An armory of features. There are various Instagram tools for drawing, placing interactive Instagram stickers on your content, adding augmented reality filters, and more.
• The opportunity to drive traffic. Add links to your Stories, advertise your products, and take advantage of Instagram’s latest feature: shopping on Explore. This makes product discovery and reaching new audiences easier than before.
• Another way to get discovered. You can hashtag and geotag Stories for the chance to appease the Instagram algorithm and amplify your reach.

How to use Instagram Stories: a step-by-step guide 

1. Plan your Story
2. Consider the goal of your Stories
3. Upload your Story
4. Edit your Story
5. Use Instagram Story Highlights
6. Post consistently
7. Use Instagram Live
8. Link to your Instagram bio
9. Add links in your Stories
10. Run Instagram Story ads

Here’s a quick guide to incorporating Stories into your Instagram marketing strategy: 

1. Plan your Story

Just because Stories don’t stick around forever, that doesn’t mean they don’t require some thought and planning. Brands should think about their Instagram Story as they would any other content channel: ahead of time.

Think less about “posting,” and more about “programming.” Consider treating your Story like a TV network with scheduled programming for the week, or even recurring “episodes” that happen on certain days. Thinking in advance about what kind of content you’ll be sharing and how your Story will flow will help you craft a more addictive and consistent experience for your viewers. Tease what and when you’ll share in your Instagram Story.

Make sure what you share is optimized. Unlike the dimensions for standard square Instagram posts, Stories are shot vertically. Your photos and videos should be sized accordingly, at 1080 pixels wide and 1920 pixels tall. You can resize your photos and videos before posting by pinching your phone’s screen.

2. Consider the goal of your Stories

For best results, share Stories that align with your goals. For example, if you want to sell more products, use the link feature to direct shoppers to your product pages. Or, if you want to increase engagement or learn more about your followers, ask questions or share funny memes. 

According to HubSpot research, 18% of marketers said Story content that reflects their brand’s values produced the greatest return on investment (ROI). Stories that center around quizzes or poll stickers were second in line, with 15% of votes. But the research found that 35% of consumers actually prefer short narratives with a mix of photos, text, and videos. 

3. Upload your Story

You can only upload a Story from the Instagram app—you can’t do it from a browser. To upload an Instagram Story, follow along with these steps:

1. Tap the + icon at the bottom of the Instagram app (next to the search button), swipe your screen to the right, or tap and hold your profile picture from your feed page or profile. 
2. If you’ve tapped the + icon at the bottom, swipe along to the “Story” option.
3. Take a photo, record a video, or swipe up to access your camera roll to upload a photo, graphic, video, or Boomerang that you’ve already made.

Once your Story is uploaded, you can start editing it or save it as a draft and edit it later.

4. Edit your Story

Instagram provides several features you can apply to your posts, including:

• Type. Text-based posts in a variety of styles against a colored background.
• Layout. Choose to include four images in one Story. 
• Boomerang. Create one-second looping videos.
• Dual. Include what both the front and back camera sees in one image or recording. 
• Rewind. Record a video that will play back in reverse.

Outside of the Instagram app, you can design title cards and other graphics in Canva or other free design tools that you can upload as the intro, call to action, or individual slides within your Story.

Have fun experimenting with different Instagram Story ideas until you find a format that suits your business goals and schedule.

5. Use Instagram Story Highlights

The Instagram Story Highlights feature groups Instagram Stories into themes or categories and displays them on Instagram permanently (instead of expiring after 24 hours).

A Highlight appears on your Instagram profile page, giving you a chance to show off your brand’s personality. They let businesses save Instagram Story content and curate it, presenting it to followers on their profile pages like a navigation bar on a website. 

Paper Wrld keeps its Story Highlight covers on brand.

To create your own Highlights, follow these steps:

1. Head to your Instagram profile and click the + button under the empty “Story Highlights” section to create your first highlight category.
2. Select from your past Stories to start bulking up your new Highlight category, then tap Next.
3. Edit the cover by uploading a graphic from your camera roll that represents the theme of the category (such as products, FAQ, or behind-the-scenes content).
4. Name the Highlight category, keeping in mind that titles get cut off after 10 characters, then tap Add.
5. Create as many different Highlights as you want by repeating Steps 1 to 4 until you’re done.

6. Post consistently

Posting consistently is a key component of any social media platform’s strategy, and the same goes for your Instagram Stories. The more you post, the more chances your audience has to interact with your brand. 

That said, aim for a sweet spot to avoid burning out your audience. HubSpot’s research found that 63% of consumers will tap through six Stories or less, with 34% saying they tap through four to six pages on average. Only 20% will tap through 10 or more, so consider how many Stories you’re sharing each day. 

A recent report from RivalIQ found that the most active brands publish Stories around 20 times a month. 

7. Use Instagram Live

One of the advantages of Instagram Live is that your followers receive a notification when you start one (unless they’ve turned off notifications). Once you’ve finished your livestream, you can upload it to your Story, giving your audience another 24 hours to see what they missed.

If you have 1,000 or more followers, consider giving Instagram Live a try. After your Live session, uploading it to your Story changes the place and icon to differentiate it from the rest of the Stories at the top of that app, as these Live videos generally happen less frequently. 

Remember this is interactive, and that means regularly acknowledging comments from your live audience and inviting them to participate. It might also take some time for your audience to join before you can start, so prepare for a preamble to buy yourself a few moments.

Some Instagram Live ideas include:

• Running a contest
• Hosting a Q&A or AMA (ask me anything)
• Covering an event or sharing an interesting moment
• Hosting a talk show
• Influencer takeovers

8. Link to your Instagram bio

Your Instagram bio was once the only place to add a clickable link, and many brands still use this approach. Luckily, you can apply two basic conversion principles to get the job done: affordance and a call to action (CTA).

Affordances provide sensory signals to the user indicating where their attention should be and what action they can take. Beyond just telling your audience to check the link in your bio, consider mentioning your account handle (@yourhandle), or using an arrow to point to your avatar in the top left of your Story, both of which lead to your bio.

A CTA is a direct instruction for what you’d like your audience to do. Without an explicit CTA, your audience’s default action will likely be to continue swiping to the next post. As a standard, you should always be looking to add a CTA, whether that’s on your Instagram captions or your Stories. Here are a few examples of CTAs you can use:

• Check out more pics at #yourcampaign
• Swipe up to scoop this product
• Tap now to snag XX% off

9. Add links in your Stories

You can also add links to your Instagram Story posts, driving users to your homepage, blog, or product pages.

You can also leverage shopping in Instagram Stories to create clickable posts that drive your audience to purchase pages. Use the product stickers to show off the products in your Story. Your audience can tap to learn more and make a purchase.

Instagram also recently announced plans to incorporate shopping into its Explore tab. The Explore tab is where Instagram users go to discover new content and accounts, curated to match their interests, hashtags, and in-app behavior. This can put your products in front of audiences who don’t even follow your account.

10. Run Instagram Story ads

If you’re looking to bring even more attention to your Instagram account, consider creating Story ads. 

Story ads are photos, videos, or graphics that promote your brand and its products or services. They appear between organic Stories and can be a single image, single video, or multi-frame combination of the two.

An example of a Story ad by Papaya Reusables.

While organic Stories are great for experimentation—sharing behind-the-scenes videos, educational graphics, links to blog content, etc.—your Story ads should focus on gaining sales or followers.

Instagram Story features to increase engagement

Generally, you can increase your exposure by using stickers, location geotags, and trending Instagram hashtags. In the stickers menu, you can add a location, sticker, or hashtag to your photo or video.

The Instagram Story features section has plenty to choose from.

Instagram stickers

Whenever you share a photo or video to your Story, you can add stickers to encourage different types of engagement. Simply look for the smiley face in the top right of your screen to pull up the menu. 

Link stickers. Direct people to your website or a specific page on your website with a link sticker. This makes it easy to link to a blog post, product page, or any other page on your website that you want to mention in your Stories. Note that you can only add one link per Story.

Hexclad links to a list of recipes.

Poll stickers. Poll stickers allow you to ask your audience for their opinion—a great hack for gathering data on customer preferences.

Use the poll sticker to get feedback on different product options, let your followers pick the next limited-edition product line, or give your audience a fun way to engage with your brand. This is exactly what Magic Spoon did in the example below, asking its audience when they eat their cereal.

Magic Spoon quizzes its audience.

Question stickers. Use your Instagram Stories to talk directly to your audience. Overlay the question sticker onto a photo or video to let your audience ask you any burning questions they might have.

Flaus encourages its audience to ask them anything.

You can then place their questions onto a new Story while you record yourself answering or write out answers that you place on top of a different photo or video. Bonus points if the photo or video corresponds with the question they asked.

Mention stickers. Want to mention a user or another brand? While you can do so with the type feature, there’s also a mention sticker designed for this purpose.

You can see it in use below when Fresh Start, a health and wellness brand, tagged a user who completed a challenge it was hosting:

Fresh Start tags the winner of its giveaway.

A strategy like this is perfect for recognizing your loyal followers and customers. Fresh Start tagged this follower, then asked them to direct message the brand to snag their prize.

Music stickers. Want to add background music to a photo or video? You can easily do so with a music sticker. Simply tap the “Music” option in the sticker library then select or search for the song you want to add.

You can browse the most popular songs on Instagram.

Countdown stickers. Countdown to a product launch, event, Instagram Live video, or other exciting news with a countdown sticker. This type of content will ramp up anticipation, and it even lets your audience set a reminder on Instagram for when the countdown ends.

The Nue Co counts down to its upcoming event.

GIF stickers. GIFs are another fun way to spice up your Instagram Stories. Tap on the GIF option in the sticker library to explore all of the various options, or search for something that is relevant to what you’re posting.

Choose from a huge library of GIFs.

Shoppable stickers. If you’ve already set up your Instagram shop, you can link to products from your Stories and sell on Instagram, making it that much easier for your customers to make a purchase. If they see something they like in your Story, they can immediately tap the product link and buy.

Mignonne Gavigan includes a product link in its Story.

Emoji slider stickers. The emoji slider sticker allows viewers to engage directly with your Story. You can use the emoji slider to ask how much someone loves a product you’ve featured, or simply place it on a Story to gauge your followers’ excitement, as we see in the example below. The farther right viewers slide the emoji, the bigger it gets, making for a fun way to share their opinions. 

Chomps encourages its audience to share their excitement.

“Add Yours” stickers.“Add Yours” stickers encourage interaction by asking your audience to share something of theirs, like their last meal, their favorite outfit, or the last place they traveled. Your audience’s response posts to their own Stories or Reels. A “started by” credit appears that links back to the original “Add Yours” prompt. 

Davids Tea uses the “Add Yours” sticker to encourage engagement.

UI of AI-generated stickers in Instagram that can be sent via a chat or used in an Instagram Story.

AI-generated stickers. When you send a sticker in a chat or add stickers to your Instagram Story, you also have the option of using a custom AI sticker. Your sticker is generated by a text prompt you enter in the stickers’ search/artificial intelligence (AI) field.

UI of Frames sticker, your followers “develop” an image by shaking their phone or tapping “Shake to reveal” to see the framed photo.

Frames stickers. The Frames sticker added to your Story is interactive, meant to suggest shaking an instant camera (Polaroid). Your followers will see a blurry image and can shake their phones, or tap “Shake to reveal” to “develop” the photo in the frame. You can write a caption and the date and time the picture was taken will automatically be added.

Geotags

Geotags will help you get discovered in location-centric Stories (e.g., New York City or a popular restaurant in your neighborhood). Regularly tagging your location in your Story when it’s relevant can put you in front of people also checking in at that particular spot.

Poketo uses a geotag to help people find its store location.

Hashtags

While they’re typically used for discoverability on social media, hashtags are more likely to take Story viewers away from your Stories and to others’ posts.

Instagram hashtags in Stories are best used only if you own them—if you’re running a contest or you’re getting customers to submit photos of themselves using your product under a branded hashtag. This way, if you use the hashtag in a Story and viewers tap on it, it’ll take them to a collection of posts related to your brand.

Milk Craft tags itself in a Story.

Analyzing Instagram Stories’ performance 

It can be hard to tell how your Stories are performing with a personal account. You don’t have many signals to work with except for views (you can see who has viewed your Story by swiping up on it) and replies (when a viewer messages you through your Story). But with a business account, you can access a wide range of metrics for a more meaningful feedback loop from your Stories.

View metrics like impressions and reach, but also actions taken on your Stories, such as how many people tapped through, replied, or bounced away.

Use this insight to figure out where you’re getting the most engagement and where you’re losing attention. If your Stories are too long or too short, you can make your content better over time.

How to use Instagram Stories FAQ

How do I use Instagram Stories effectively?

To use Instagram Stories effectively, focus on regularly posting engaging content that showcases your brand personality. Use the interactive features available, like polls and questions to boost audience engagement and hashtags and location tags to increase visibility. Experiment with different content types, lengths, and styles to see what works best for your brand.

What is the difference between Instagram Stories and posts?

Instagram Stories are temporary; they appear at the top of followers’ feeds and disappear after 24 hours. They’re great for timely, casual content and offer interactive features like polls to encourage direct engagement. Posts, on the other hand, are permanent fixtures on your profile grid. They’re typically more polished and curated.

Can I see an Instagram Story without them knowing?

It’s not possible to view an Instagram Story without the creator knowing, unless you use a third-party app like Inscognito, through a browser, or the Airplane Mode hack trick.

What is the point of Instagram Stories?

Instagram Stories are best for engaging with your followers and sharing timely content. Their 24-hour lifespan encourages you to post spontaneous, authentic content that helps build closer connections with followers. Stories appear at the top of users’ feeds, keeping your brand visible and top of mind. Plus, Stories offer a range of creative tools for expression and storytelling, allowing for diverse content types that go beyond traditional posts.