Are you a Feed-commitment-phobe? Do you love stickers and gifs? Or perhaps you’re just a super savvy and charming marketing professional or content creator. Either way, Instagram Stories are most definitely for you.
Instagram Stories have all kinds of built-in tools and functionalities. But they can be tricky to find and even trickier to use.
Read on to learn everything you need to know about how to use Instagram Stories, from basic navigation and features to creative tips for business users.
We’ll answer Instagram Stories questions like:
- How do stories work on Instagram?
- What are the Instagram Story guidelines I need to know?
We’ll also provide a general “Instagram Story how-to” guide. Let’s make the most of the powerful real estate at the top of the app!
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What are Instagram Stories?
Instagram Stories are vertical photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours.
They appear at the top of the Instagram app interface rather than in the news feed.
What is an IG Story doing for me, you ask? Well, IG Stories are pretty popular, with approximately 500 million daily active Instagram Story users. That’s roughly 1/3 of Instagram’s total audience that can potentially have eyes on your content.
Stories can include interactive tools like stickers, polls, and AR filters to make your content really pop. Here’s how to get started with the format.
How to post an Instagram Story
- In the mobile app, click the plus icon at the bottom of the screen or on the top left.
- At the bottom of the screen, choose STORY from the menu.
- Tap the white circle at the bottom of the screen to take a picture, OR…
- Press and hold the white circle to record video, OR…
- Tap the switch-camera icon on the bottom right to switch to the selfie camera, OR…
- Swipe up (or select the square camera roll icon on the left) to use pre-existing photos or videos.
On the left of the screen, you can select a format to experiment with: Create, Boomerang, Layout, Hands-free, or Dual.
Before you start flexing your new Story skills, find out how many IG stories per day are ideal.
How to check your Instagram Story views
If your Insta Story is still live (meaning less than 24 hours have passed since you posted it), just tap the Your Story icon on the app’s main page to see a viewer count for your Story.
Tap the number in the bottom left to get a list of the people who make up those Instagram Story views and see any likes your Story got.
Pro tip: You can also access your story stats in this view. Just hit the graph icon beside the eye icon.
After 24 hours (which is the answer to the question: How long do Instagram Stories stay up?), you can still access insights, including reach and impressions.
For the uninitiated:
- Reach is the number of unique accounts that viewed your Story.
- Impressions are the total number of times your Story was viewed.
Here’s how to access Story insights:
- On the app’s homepage, tap your profile photo at the bottom right of the screen.
- Tap the menu icon in the top right and select Insights.
- In the top right corner, tap Last 7 Days to choose the time period you’d like Insights for: 7, 14, or 30 days, the previous month, the last 90 days, or a custom timeframe. Click Update.
- Scroll down to Content You Shared and tap on Stories.
- Tap the Sort & filter icon to choose your metric and sorting options.
- Click on any of your Stories for more details.
You cannot, however, see how many times or how often someone looks at your Story.
How to schedule Instagram Stories
Posting Stories regularly is a good way to keep your audience engaged. But having to interrupt your workflow throughout the day to create and post Stories can become pretty disruptive.
Scheduling Stories into your social media posting schedule allows you to use your time more effectively. You can also plan your Stories content to complement your other social posts and integrate effectively into any ongoing campaigns.
To schedule an Instagram Story using Hootsuite:
1. Head to your Hootsuite dashboard and select Create → Post from the left-hand menu.
2. In the Composer window, select the account you want to post your Story to.
3. In the Content section, switch to the Story editor using the dropdown menu on the right side.
4. Click on the upload icon to add your image or video. Or click on the library icon to choose assets from your media library.
Videos must be between 1 second and 60 minutes long, and images must be less than 30MB. Both have a recommended aspect ratio of 9:16.
Note: If you want to add text or stickers to your Story, make sure they’re part of your image or video file. Text included in the caption field of Composer will not be included in your Story.
You can easily edit your images using Canva without leaving your Hootsuite dashboard.
To get started, click on the Canva icon in the bottom right of the Composer window. Then, select Instagram Story.
Once you’re done editing your image or video, simply click the Add to post button in the top right corner of the screen, and your file will be attached to your post draft.
5. Preview your Story and click Schedule for later to select a time for it to go public. Then, click the yellow Schedule button, and you’re done!
Now, onto the juicy stuff: Here’s how to make an Instagram Story really pop using features.
25 cool Instagram Story features you should be using
If you want to sit with the cool kids at Instagram’s lunch table, then you need to be using cool Instagram Story features.
Create mode
With Create Mode, you can create an Instagram Story without any photos or videos. Just like for other Story types, you can still use stickers to customize your media.
Dual
Instagram’s Dual camera mode lets you capture photos or video using both your rear and front cameras, at the same time!
You can move each of the front- and rear-camera pieces of media around independently, too. This feature is a game-changer for recording reaction videos.
Stickers
We could write an entire blog on Instagram Story stickers alone. There are so many different things you can do with them!
We’ll highlight a few notable ones below, but we wanted to point out that there are tons of options when it comes to stickers.
Notify
The Notify sticker is an awesome tool for content creators and marketers.
Viewers can click on it to sign up to be notified of your content. This way, eager followers will be among the first to know when you post something new.
Get orders
The Get orders sticker lets you add an easy link for people to find product details and to send you an order request.
Content creators and marketers who sell merchandise and other products online will find this sticker particularly useful.
Food orders
If you’re a restaurant, a catering company, a grocery store, a bakery, or any business that sells food, you’ll want to know about this one.
Use the Food orders sticker to make it easy for your customers to order food online.
AI Label
Instagram Stories are encouraging people to label realistic content that’s made with AI with an AI Label.
This can help combat the spread of misinformation and lets your viewers know if what they’re looking at is real or not.
Stories captions sticker
Making your content more accessible to everyone is always a big thumbs up in our books! Captions are available for Reels AND Stories, and they can make a huge difference.
