Getting the most out of Instagram Stories for your marketing takes more than compelling content - you also need these three magic elements...
Getting the most out of Instagram Stories for your marketing takes more than compelling content - you also need these three magic elements...
Instagram Stories continue to represent one of the most dynamic tools in the 2025 social media marketing landscape. With over 500 million daily users, this ephemeral content format offers a unique intersection of authenticity, immediacy, and interactivity.
If you don’t already use Instagram Stories, you’re missing out on an abundance of opportunity to boost engagement, brand awareness and build trust with your audience. It’s also just a lot of fun!
With vertical video and short-form content dominating digital spaces and the Instagram algorithm, Stories remain one of the most powerful formats on the platform for real-time engagement, product discovery, and authentic storytelling.
If you’re not actively incorporating Instagram Stories into your 2025 marketing strategy, you’re missing a key opportunity to connect, convert, and stand out.
Instagram Stories: A Quick Refresher
Although most marketers are familiar by now with the core mechanics of Instagram Stories, it is critical to revisit the format as the algorithm and Instagram landscape evolves.
These vertical, disappearing-after-24-hours, photos and videos have become a ubiquitous part of the social media platform since 2016. From behind-the-scenes content to user testimonials and influencer takeovers, there are countless ways to leverage IG stories to keep your audience engaged and your content fresh. Their temporary nature promotes urgency, while their interactive features provide unparalleled opportunities for audience engagement.
Interactive elements like stickers, polls, quizzes, and link swipe-ups transform passive scrolling into active participation. These features are now essential components of any successful Instagram Story strategy in 2025.
The Must-Know Details
While many of us are familiar with IG Stories, we may not always know everything there is to know about how to use Stories for social media marketing. So here’s a quick rundown of the basics of creating stories for Instagram.
How to create Stories
- Open the Instagram app
- Tap the + icon or swipe right
- Select Story
- Capture new content or upload from your camera roll
- Add text, stickers, music, filters, GIFs, and interactive elements
- Tap “Your Story” to publish
The dimensions
Instagram story dimensions are 1080px by 1920px i.e. your image or video should be 1080 pixels wide and 1920 pixels in height. The aspect ratio for Stories is 9:16.
If you upload an image or video that doesn't fit within these dimensions, your content will be cropped or lose quality due to being too zoomed in.
Length
As of 2025, videos on Stories can be up to 60 seconds long, however the standard story length is 15 seconds. Previously, longer videos were automatically split into 15-second clips, but the updated limit allows for a continuous 60-second video to be posted as a single piece.
Stickers
Instagram stickers are more powerful (and plentiful) than ever. In 2025, using stickers is an essential way to optimize engagement and work with the Instagram algorithm. After uploading your photo or video to Stories, tap the square smiley icon at the top to begin adding stickers to your Stories. FYI, stickers can also be added to Instagram Reels.
Sticker options include:
- Location tags
- @ Mention
- Add Yours
- Frames
- Hashtags
- Captions
- Question stickers
- GIFs
- Music
- Cutouts
- Link stickers
- AI stickers
- Polls or Emoji slider
- Quizzes
- Donations
- Countdowns
- Product tags
- Time and weather
Analytics
When you use Stories for marketing on your Instagram account, you will also have access to Instagram analytics that will allow you to analyze how your content marketing efforts are performing.
Instagram Insights allows you to dive into the data and understand the performance of your Stories better (within 14 days of posting).
While Instagram Insights are great, they can sometimes be limiting for brands looking for a bit more. Sked Social’s robust analytics features pull all your Instagram data into one centralized platform and deliver what you most need – insights! With Sked, you can see in-depth Story analytics such as reach, impressions, completion rate, taps back/forward, replies, exits, and plenty more!
Instagram Stories highlights
Highlights are a popular way to save Stories on a profile so that they can still be viewed after the initial 24-hour period has passed. Use them for things like FAQs, product tutorials, new product launches, and compiling testimonials. Stories highlights appear underneath the bio on your Instagram profile.
To create an Instagram Stories highlight:
- Click your profile picture on the bottom right to go to your profile.
- Click the plus (+) at the top right and select Story highlight.
- Enter a highlight name for your highlight, then click Next.
- Click to select the story or stories you want to add to highlights, then click Next.
- Choose a cover photo and click Done.
Once you’re done, your highlight will appear as a circle on your profile that plays as a stand-alone story when someone taps it. Highlights stay on your profile until you remove them, and you can have as many highlights as you’d like. Just tap and hold that highlight on your profile to edit or remove a highlight.
Why Use Instagram Stories for Marketing?
Despite the constantly evolving platform, one thing that remains constant is Stories are the most popular content format for a sense of authenticity. They’ve always been a way for Instagram users to peel back the layers, go beyond the perfectly curated image and showcase engaging content that feels a bit more real.
In addition to building authentic connections with your target audience, making Stories a critical part of your social media marketing strategy can also be helpful to:
Reach more people
Every time you post a new Story, your Instagram account appears above your followers’ Instagram feed with a brightly colored ring around it. Sometimes your followers may also get a notification when you publish a new Story. This makes Stories content much harder to miss than your Instagram feed posts.
You can post several Stories in succession or at various times during the day, and further improve your reach on Instagram. In fact, posting up to five stories per day ensures a retention rate of over 70%, according to a SocialInsiders study.
Interact with your audience
Instagram Stories are designed to be interactive and a great way to truly engage with your target audience in a more human way. Some quick ideas:
- Conduct polls using the Poll stickers.
- Invite followers to send you direct messages in response to questions.
- Ask for feedback on a new product.
- Host team member Q&As by using the Questions sticker or via DMs.
For more ideas, check out: 21 Instagram Interaction Post Ideas.
The more your audience interacts with you on Instagram, the more it boosts your overall engagement rates on Instagram as well. It sends the Insta algorithm all the right, warm fuzzy signals (read: story views) that your followers like you and your content and want to continue to see more of it.
Drive traffic to your site
You already know that you can’t share clickable links on your Instagram posts. But, you can definitely share links on your Stories so make the most of it. Use links whenever relevant and possible to drive those all-important conversions.
For example, if you’re an ecommerce brand and you’re sharing images of your products in use, be sure to add a product sticker to your Stories so your followers can click through and check out the exact product being featured.
Run Instagram Stories ads
Instagram ads can target users based on various parameters like age, gender, location, interests, and behaviors, making it a powerful platform for businesses looking to connect with potential customers. Instagram Stories ads are integrated in between regular Stories which makes them look like normal Stories and can be very powerful for generating leads and/or driving sales and traffic. Picture posts (78%) and Stories (73%) are viewed as the most successful kinds of content by people who engage in shopping from influencers
Increase your engagement
Last but definitely not least, Instagram Stories matter because ultimately they affect one of the most important metrics on Instagram—your engagement. Stories are fun, interactive and a great way for brands to build brand awareness and create engaged online communities.
If you’re not sharing on Stories yet, your Insta engagement could be taking a huge hit.
Collaborate effortlessly, save time and spend less
Why settle for a lackluster social media management tool when you could be using Sked Social? With unlimited collaborator access, streamlined approvals and advanced auto-post technology that lets you schedule to all major platforms, Sked Social offers everything you need.
7 Tips for a Killer Instagram Stories Strategy
So if Instagram Stories are really as important as we insist (we do!), how can you make the most of them for your digital marketing plan? Here are some tips:
1. Determine your visual identity
Most importantly, think about what you want your brand to look like on Stories. This isn’t set in stone obviously (nothing ever is, in the social media world). However, consider whether you want your brand’s personality to be on Stories.
For example, you may only want to post real time and raw behind the scenes content on Instagram Stories. Or, on the other hand, you may prefer a much more curated look, using premade templates to post Stories content. You can even create and save story templates to save time and keep things consistent.
Spend some time considering how you’d like your storytelling to look on Instagram first. Then begin, creating Stories to suit this visual identity that you have in mind.
2. Post consistently
Simply sharing one Story every other day and waiting around for Insta fame to arrive isn’t going to work. If you truly want to make Stories a key part of your marketing strategy, you will need to post consistently.
This may sound pretty basic, but it’s one of the easiest ways to get more people watching your Stories. As we mentioned above, every time you post a Story you will appear at the top of a user’s Instagram feed, and therefore increase your chances of getting seen.
If posting repeatedly throughout the day is getting too much, Sked Social can help you automate the process. You can bulk upload your Stories content to Sked, set a time and rest easy that Sked will take care of your posting schedule for you. Learn more here: How To Schedule Instagram Posts [and Stories]: The Ultimate Step by Step Guide.
3. Invite interaction (use stickers)
Instagram Stories already come built-in with lots of great interactive functionality like Stickers. To really make Stories work for you, you should really make use of Stickers to invite interaction from your followers, and in so doing increase your engagement too. Some ideas:
- Use poll stickers to conduct useful or completely random polls.
- Ask questions to get to know your followers better or you could even get them to ask you questions.
- Use GIFs to add a bit of fun.
- Keep up with trending audio and content formats and utilize these on your stories.
- Use product stickers to link to products and drive click throughs to your website.
4. Include CTAs
Including clear calls-to-action in your Stories so your audience knows exactly what you want them to do after watching your Stories. This could be as simple as getting them to click on a product link or asking them to DM you.
5. Schedule your stories
Feeding the beast that is Instagram can become a full-time gig. That’s why using a scheduling tool to plan, organize and post content on your Instagram account can be a huge timesaver.
Instead of creating your Stories content one at a time, get into the habit of batching your content creation. Planning and creating a bunch of content in one sitting will actually save you much more time.
In addition to saving time, it also helps you plan ahead and tell better stories with your content. Sked Social can help you schedule your Stories (and other types of Insta content). Plus remember how we said consistency matters. Well, planning ahead and scheduling can definitely help you stick to a more consistent Story posting schedule as well.
6. Include user-generated content
Many brands don’t have the time or bandwidth to constantly create new content for Stories. That’s fine. Your followers are probably creating content about your brand that you could share to your Stories. People love to see other people like them featured on brand social media accounts so make use of your user-generated content if your followers are creating it.
7. Make use of Instagram Stories highlights
Want to extend the shelf life of your 24-hour Stories? Don’t forget to make use of highlights. Adding your Stories to highlights helps increase their visibility and further enhances their reach. Highlights are also great for saving content that can be useful for your audience over and over.
8. Don’t forget to tell a story
Finally, don’t forget Instagram Stories are ultimately about storytelling. When thinking about how to use Instagram Stories for marketing, remember to put storytelling first, selling second.
Ask yourself what story you want to tell about your brand through Stories and how you want to tell it. Great storytelling cuts through all the mediocre content that gets shared everyday by brands online. So if you want your audience to engage and interact with you, use creative ways to tell your story to them instead of doing the same old thing every other business is doing.
Take Your Stories to the Next Level with Sked
Needless to say, Instagram Stories are a vital part of any marketing strategy. However, managing all the different types of content on Instagram can sometimes feel like an overwhelming, never-ending task.
Sked simplifies Instagram Stories by automating the process for you. All you have to do is upload your content and select a time, and Sked will automagically post it for you! No intervention needed, whether it’s 2 am or 2 pm, Monday or Sunday – and no matter the time zone.
Learn more about how Sked can help you streamline your Stories (and more!) with a free 7-day trial today.
