Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (2024)

The trend that’s been sweeping Instagram in recent months, let’s talk about the Instagram Story Template…

Some of you may remember a time on Myspace when you’d copy questionnaires and fill them in on a bulletin to tell your friends the last thing you ate or that you prefer dogs to cats:

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (1)

Well, friends, we’ve come full circle, because it’s been reborn for Instagram!

What Is An Instagram Story Template?

Story Templates are well-designed images with graphics and text, including spaces left blank to be filled in by the user. Here’s what I’m talking about:

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (2)
Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (3)

The main purpose of these templates is to share information about yourself with your followers. On a social platform that is almost completely visual, Story Templates provide a new text-based way of getting your personality out there. (You can’t deny it, it looks a lot better than it did on Myspace, sorry Tom).

Thanks to Story Highlights, these templates can stay at the top of your profile and become an extension of your bio, ready to tell anyone who lands on your page some fun stuff about you! Search ‘templates’ on Instagram and you’ll find loads of accounts creating templates for users to screenshot and use. Upload to your Story, fill in and share!

How Can Story Templates Work For Businesses?

At the moment, Instagram Story Templates have been predominantly used on a consumer-to-consumer basis, or created by influencers to increase their reach.

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (4)
Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (5)

As you can see, whoever makes the template includes their name and potentially any trademarks or recognisable branding. Once they start getting shared, their account will be discovered by people outside of their current network. This is fantastic marketing because their followers are doing the distributing for them!

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (6)

Branded Story Templates are a great form of #InstagramMarketing because when your followers screenshot and share them, they will reach people outside of your network 💡 Click To Tweet

So you can probably see that there’s a real opportunity for businesses and brands to get involved here.By giving away something cool that your followers can use and share, you’re increasing brand awareness and growing engagement.

By making your own branded Story Templates, your business has the opportunity to be seen by thousands of new people who are likely to have similar interests to your target audience! Not to mention, if your templates look amazing, users will go to your profile to see if they can get their hands on any more.

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (7)

Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling ✨

Visually plan your social content. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn + Pinterest

Try Hopper HQ Now

💡 Instagram Story Template Ideas 💡

1) Stay relevant to your audience 🌎

Think about what your business does, and ways that Story Templates could apply to your target audience.For example, if you’re in the travel industry, you could share templates around themes such as:

  • Countries I Want To Visit Next…
  • Pin Places You’ve Been On The Map!
  • Travel: This / That

Because that’s the kind of thing people who like travelling or who go on holiday are lot are likely to want to fill in and share. Similarly, if you’re in the fitness industry, you could share templates like:

  • Today’s Workout
  • Weekly Progress
  • Favourite Gym Equipment

Encouraging your audience to share their routines and progress on their own Stories. Get into the mindset of your audience and produce templates relevant to your industry!

2) Top Trends ⭐️

You could also create Story Templates around the top trends for the week – which you can get direct to your inbox by clicking here!

Think of templates you could create around important events or trends. For example, Mother’s Day sees hundreds of people take to Stories to complement their mums and share memories. This would therefore be a great opportunity to create a template such as: ‘Reasons My Mum Is The Best‘ (or something to that effect) because it’s likely to get a lot of engagement in a short space of time.

Other recurring trends like #WCW (Woman Crush Wednesday) and #MCM (Man Crush Monday) could be a good thing to make templates around depending on your audience. They are guaranteed to get traction every week and if your template looks appealing to your target demographic then it will get shared!

Here are some other good examples:

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (8)
Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (9)

Subscribe to Hopper HQ Trending to get emailed every week’s top trends

3) Current Affairs 📰

Similarly, if you’re looking to appeal to a large proportion of people, you could jump on to current affairs such as news, politics and sports to encourage interaction amongst your followers. This is a great example of a Story Template that is likely to be shared amongst football fans, with space at the bottom to include any further opinions:

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (10)

The only problem with these kinds of templates is that they expire very quickly, and will not continue to be used once the event has passed. However, if done well they have the potential to get a huge amount of reach!

4) Drawings, Emojis, GIFs and Stickers 😍

Story Templates don’t have to be solely text-based! There are loads of ways to be creative on Instagram Stories, such asusing emojis, GIFs stickers and pen tools.

Think outside the box for ways your brand could engage followers by utilising emojis in Story Templates – it’s easier and quicker than writing answers out, so this type of template might appeal more to certain people. If your audience is creative, why not encourage them to let artistic license reign and draw something on a template?

For example, if you sell trainers you could create a blank trainer template and ask your followers to design their dream pair and share it on their Instagram Story. Minimal work at your end but great potential to get a lot of reach and engagement!

Here are some other examples:

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (11)
Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (12)

As you might have noticed from the number of examples of theirs I’ve used in this blog, @storytempsare all over this trend. Check them out for some inspiration — they have covered all areas and genres of Story Templates for people to screenshot and use.

If you want to test out Story Templates in your marketing strategy before spending lots of time creating your own, I’d recommend heading to their Instagram account. Have a look through the different topics and screenshot ones that are relevant to your target market!

💡 Remember: hold a finger down somewhere on the Story before screenshotting, as it will remove the username and countdown bar from the top 💡

How To Create An Instagram Story Template?

When using Story Templates as part of your Instagram marketing, it makes sense to make your own so you can design them on brand and get your company name out there.

Creating Story Templates can be done from within Instagram, for example, I just made this one in 5 minutes:

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (14)

It’s obviously a bit rough around the edges, but due to the newest range of fonts you can actually do a lot within Instagram Stories itself. If (like me) you don’t have a steady enough hand to use the pen tool, use different forms of blown up punctuation to create the blank spaces!

You can also use the colour-picker tool to make sure everything matches, like how I chose the pink from the flag for the text. It does a job, and if you’re pressed for time or want to test Story Templates out before allocating time and budget to them, then it’s probably best to make them from within the app.

However, if you want to make Story Templates that stand out and look really high quality, make them using a third-party tool such as Canva.

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (15)

Once you have set the dimensions for Instagram Stories, which are 1080px X 1920px, Canva will bring up loads of potential designs that you can customise and repurpose for your perfect Story template!

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (16)
Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (17)

From here making Instagram Story Templates is simple, and you can let your creativity flow to create magazine-worthy images!

If you have Adobe Creative Crowd it’s also possible to make Story Templates in Photoshop and Illustrator.

💡Remember: when making Story Templates don’t hashtag or tag locations or accounts. While this is a great strategy in normal Stories, when the intention is for them to be screenshotted they will lose their interactiveness 💡

Story Templates For B2B Marketing?

So far, we’ve only talked about Story Templates in a B2C context. When we saw this trend arise a few weeks ago we wondered if there was potential for them to work on a business-to-business-to-level. Without any inspiration out there, we decided to give it a go and make our own!

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (18)
Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (19)

The reason Story Templates are so popular is because people like getting to know each other in fun and interesting ways. Another reason why Stories, in general, are so popular for businesses, is that their followers get to see behind the scenes and get to know the people behind the brand.

So why not combine these 2 trends and let people learn a bit more about the companies they follow on Instagram? The boring facts can be found on websites and LinkedIn pages, but what I actually want to know is what kind of company culture businesses have and what their employees enjoy doing!

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (20)
Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (21)

The people likely to use these Story Templates will be social media managers or marketers, hence the reason for the digital marketing questions! There’s a great business community on Twitter and LinkedIn with people sharing ideas and experiences, so why not try and bring a touch of that to Instagram?

Parting Words 👋

There’s so much potential to integrate Story Templates into your Instagram marketing, and it’s still a really novel trend!These Hopper HQ templates are now up on our Instagram @hopper_hqin a Templates Highlight – I’d love to see your answers so go ahead and screenshot them 📸

If you also end up creating your own Story Templates after reading this blog let me know!

Happy posting😍

✨ Can you think of any more ways businesses could make the most of this latest craze? Let me know or tweet me @Nicola_HHQ ✨

Get on the hype early and create branded Instagram Story Templates for your audience! Read how here: Click To Tweet

Liked this post? Pin it for later!

Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (22)

Hopper HQ is an Instagram content scheduling tool that saves social media managers and agencies time. Start your 14-day trialtoday!

Share on X (Twitter)Share on FacebookShare on LinkedInShare on EmailShare on WhatsApp
Instagram Story Templates: Everything You Need To Know (2024)

FAQs

How to find trending templates on Instagram stories? ›

Open your Instagram app and navigate to the Reels tab. Look for the camera button on the left or right side of the screen and tap on it. Once you're in camera mode, you'll see various options at the bottom of the screen. Swipe through them until you find the “Templates” option.

What is the best layout for Instagram stories? ›

If you're going to DIY your own Instagram story template, you're probably going to want to know the dimensions. Instagram Stories are 1080 pixels wide by 1920 pixels tall. For best results, your Instagram Story should have an aspect ratio of 9:16, and a minimum width of 500px.

What is the best format for Instagram stories? ›

Instagram Story dimensions are 1080 PX by 1920 PX. That means the ideal image or video for Instagram Stories is 1080 PX wide and 1920 PX tall — enough to fill a typical smartphone screen. It's also an aspect ratio of 9:16, which is the relationship between the width and height of the image.

What happens when you use a template on Instagram? ›

Instagram Reels Templates do exactly what they say on the tin: they provide time-stamped templates to guide your content creation. Previously, you'd have to guess the clip lengths required to sync with a specific audio track, and manually adjust your clips.

How do you use real templates on Instagram? ›

Create a reel with a template

Tap Reel at the bottom, then tap the image in the bottom left to open your gallery. Tap Templates. Swipe through the available templates and tap one you'd like to use. Tap Add media, then tap the photos or videos in the order you'd like them to appear.

Where can I find the best Instagram templates? ›

Canva has a library of thousands of eye-catching templates for Instagram Stories, feed posts, and even Reels.

How do I explore Instagram templates? ›

Option 1: Browse the template library

You can do this by clicking the Reels icon on the bottom right of your screen. Next, tap the camera icon button at the top right of your screen. This will open up a new camera window. At the bottom right of the screen, you'll see a Templates option.

How to layout an IG story? ›

You can add multiple photos to the same story and create a collage using Layout. Before taking a photo, tap the Layout icon. You can tap “Change grid” to change the layout of your photos. Then, you can take a series of photos with your camera or select pictures from your camera roll.

How do I make my IG stories stand out? ›

Instagram Story Stickers are cartoons, GIFs, or text you can place over your stories to make them more engaging and interactive. You can use stickers to add some text to your videos to tell a story or add a poll to a photo of your new products to ask your followers which ones they're most excited about.

How should I organize my Instagram stories? ›

Go to your profile and tap Story highlights below your username and bio. You might see some suggestions Instagram has already made for you there. Tap the + and you will see all of the Stories you have posted over the years. Select the story or stories you want to group together into a highlights reel, then tap next.

How do I choose a story template on Instagram? ›

Step 1: On the Instagram Stories camera screen, swipe left or right at the bottom of the screen to move into the “Create” mode. You want the word “Create” to be directly below the capture button. Step 2: Swipe left on the circles near the capture button to switch to the “Templates” option.

How to use other people's Instagram story templates? ›

Tap the Add Yours sticker on someone's story. You can also tap the profile pictures on the left of Add Yours to see who has used the template. Choose a photo from your camera roll or take a new photo, then add stickers, text or effects on top of the template. in the bottom right to post the template to your story.

How to use Instagram layout stories? ›

Combine multiple photos into one on your Instagram story
  1. Open the Instagram app.
  2. Tap .
  3. Tap Story at the bottom.
  4. Tap Layout on the left. Tip: You can change the layout of the photos by tapping the grid on the left.
  5. When you're ready to take your photos, tap .
  6. Tap .
  7. Finish creating your Story and share.

Can you post templates on Instagram? ›

Engage your followers visually with attractive Instagram posts that you can create to boost your brand or business. Choose from ready-made, customizable templates or start from scratch, all within our beginner-friendly Instagram post maker.

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Lidia Grady

Last Updated:

Views: 5969

Rating: 4.4 / 5 (45 voted)

Reviews: 84% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Lidia Grady

Birthday: 1992-01-22

Address: Suite 493 356 Dale Fall, New Wanda, RI 52485

Phone: +29914464387516

Job: Customer Engineer

Hobby: Cryptography, Writing, Dowsing, Stand-up comedy, Calligraphy, Web surfing, Ghost hunting

Introduction: My name is Lidia Grady, I am a thankful, fine, glamorous, lucky, lively, pleasant, shiny person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.