Instagram Stories

Tips and Tricks

Over 250 million users use Instagram Stories to get their message out. Through disappearing content and live streaming, Instagram Stories is the perfect tool to get creative and showcase in-the-moment material.

Stickers — use them and use them often

Location stickers = potential exposure

Over the summer Instagram introduced location and hashtag stories, making the use of location and hashtag stickers more important than ever.

Now adding a location or hashtag sticker can make your story discover-able under the location tag or in a hashtag search.

Flagstaff, Arizona

#NAUMoveIn

Once there, it may be selected to be part of a larger Instagram Story that anyone can view. When you click the location sticker on a posted story, you’ll be taken to a page full of posts from the same location.

What does this mean for you?

It means your story can be seen by potential followers. A post to your story that would typically have 50–100 people viewing, can have over 300 if you tag the location or specific hashtag in it!

How to use this: events, campaigns and contests

In our coverage we typically add the Northern Arizona University location sticker. However, by using Flagstaff as our location it provides us with an opportunity to put our story into a larger one.

As a result, we plan our stories to make sure we cover specific campaigns i.e. #MyNAUview while also tapping into larger ones at hand like #PhotoFriday, #Flagstaff and Arizona too.

Bonus tips — up your Instagram game

Create a color post

Looking to emphasize your text or have a clean background? Create a color block screen.

Add a link

#ICYMI Instagram stories now have the ability to add links. This means from one snap or story, you can direct your call-to-action. With this tool, there comes responsibility to not spam your audience. Here’s your go-to guide to sharing links on Instagram.

Repurpose live video

The life of an Instagram Live has been extended. Rather than disappearing right after the livestream ends, you can now add your livestream to your Instagram Story!

When a live broadcast ends, you’ll see “Share” at the bottom of the screen. When you do, the video will be available for 24 hours, just like all other Story content.

Did your livestream not go as planned? You can tap an option to discard the video instead.

Tip: Make sure to save your live video. You can edit it and share on your other platforms as well.