Marketing on Instagram has evolved from an occasional promotional tactic into a serious funnel for generating potential customers, sales, and brand awareness. Therefore, creating a strategic marketing plan for Instagram is essential to set your brand up for success on this platform.
Tips and Tricks for Instagram Stories in 2026
Building a community on this platform is an important step, and using Instagram Stories is an easy way to continue connecting with your audience. In this article, you’ll find tips and tricks for your Instagram Stories strategy in 2026.
- What makes a “good” story on Instagram?
- 7 Tips and Tricks for Instagram Stories in 2026
- Add your own and templates
- Collage layouts
- Solid backgrounds
- Turn live photos into boomerangs
- AI stickers
- Frames
- Backgrounds
Stories are truly the easiest content on the platform, and for brands, it’s generally easier to design, upload, and publish them. However, what many brands don’t consider is creating a thorough plan for this content format, which can limit account reach and promotion.
Don’t worry, though. By the end of this article, you’ll have a clear idea of how to perfect your Instagram Stories strategy and continue creating fresh and engaging content for your followers.
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What Makes a “Good” Instagram Story?
We often talk about “improving” your content to reach a larger audience and increase your online presence. But what makes a “good” Instagram Stories piece of content “good”? This Instagram content is unique because of its spontaneous nature.
Since Stories only last 24 hours, they serve as an ideal platform for providing quick updates, asking questions, creating polls, sharing limited offers, reposting content from other users, and driving traffic to an important link or registration. Therefore, your Stories content strategy should differ from Reels, feed posts, and so on.
Storytelling should always be the main goal of your content, and while it may seem that IG Stories are a type of “post anything” content, intentionality is key. When posting a story on Instagram, think about your message, event, or offer you’re promoting, the resource you’re providing, industry knowledge you want to share, or questions that sparked your curiosity.
Ultimately, your audience will prefer authenticity over carefully curated content that sells. Stories are unlikely to be your highest lead-generating content, but content that supports your community over time.
7 Tips and Tricks for Instagram Stories in 2026
Instagram is constantly innovating Stories features to give creators, brands, and businesses more tools to communicate with their audience. If you want to improve your Instagram Stories content strategy, here are 7 tips and tricks:
Add Yours and Templates
The first tip is to use the native feature within Instagram Stories, which was launched in 2021 and is called “Add Yours” stickers. You can choose whether you want to customize your own “Add Yours” sticker or select from public responses. The purpose of this feature is to create a thread of responses with your individual content. These stickers are public and can be shared by anyone on the platform.
You can also use “Add Yours” templates on Instagram and add text, GIFs, or images to your content. You can also click on the cube icon to view pre-made templates as inspiration. These include templates to get to know you better, a song you’ve been playing recently, “this or that” challenges, and more.
Collage Layouts
Want to add multiple images to a single story and complete the month in pictures? The Layout feature allows you to select or capture multiple images into a single grid. By default, there will be four squares, but you can also select the “Change Grid” option and change the number of photos included in the story.
You can upload images or videos for the grid using Instagram’s native camera or upload images directly from your device.
Solid Backgrounds
You no longer need to use the pen function to color the background of Instagram Stories. Yes, there is a way to fill the back of a story with a solid color while layering elements on top of it. How can you do this?
- In the app, you can upload your story or take a photo.
- Tap the three-dot icon and tap “Draw”.
- Select a background color.
- Press and hold the screen to fill the color.
Want to choose a custom color? Click on the eyedropper tool and select a color from the story. After filling with color, you can layer photos, videos, stickers, and other elements.
Turn Live Photos into Boomerangs
If you take live photos with your camera, you can turn them into boomerangs directly in the Instagram app. When uploading from your device, live photos in the camera roll will display an infinity symbol, indicating that you can convert them to boomerangs.
After selecting the photo, click on the boomerang symbol and your live photo will appear as a boomerang. Select the length, speed, and effect of the boomerang.
AI Stickers
Turn your ideas into stickers using Instagram’s AI sticker feature. Enter your sticker idea into the text field and the AI tool will generate a unique sticker. You can let your creativity run wild and create stickers based on your imagination.
Frames
Another sticker option in the Stories app, the Frames feature, allows you to transform a photo into a framed image. You can layer these frames on videos, images, and backgrounds. To access this feature, find the “Frames” sticker and select the image you want to frame. You can even add a caption to this framed image for more context.
Backgrounds
Instagram has another artificial intelligence tool that creates AI-generated backgrounds. After uploading or capturing a story, click on the Background icon, which will be the first option on the icon panel. Similar to AI stickers, enter your design and the feature will generate the background for you.
After the image is generated, you will be offered two options. If you don’t like either of them, you can modify your prompt and generate new backgrounds.
Conclusion
As you can see, Instagram continues to innovate its Stories features to inspire creativity and fun for creators, brands, and businesses. This is just a few tips and tricks to refresh your Instagram Stories and continue to encourage your audience to develop their imagination alongside you.
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Michal Záruba je specialista na digitální marketing a konzultant v oblasti sociálních médií a SEO. Více než 8 let pomáhá značkám růst online prostřednictvím strategického obsahu, optimalizace pro vyhledávače a efektivní komunikace na platformách jako LinkedIn, Instagram a YouTube.
Na svém blogu sdílí praktické tipy o tom, jak propojit SEO, sociální sítě a brand building do jedné funkční strategie. Zaměřuje se na to, jak firmy mohou využít moderní nástroje a algoritmy k tomu, aby jejich značka nezískala jen dosah, ale i důvěru.
Když zrovna netvoří obsah, přednáší o digitálním marketingu, školí týmy a sleduje nové trendy v AI a vyhledávání.