5 General Instagram Story hacks

It’s just basic math: If a picture is worth a thousand words, an Instagram Story post must be worth a million, right?

And these Instagram Story hacks will make you the best Story-teller in town.

1. Create a patterned backdrop for sharing a feed post

Is adding a custom backdrop necessary when you share a feed post on your Story? Goodness, no. But like wearing lipstick to a Zoom meeting, sometimes it’s just nice to add some pizazz to something routine.

How to do it:

1. Find the feed post that you’d like to share and screenshot it, cropping so it’s just the post
2. Next, click the paper airplane icon on that original feed post and select “Add post to your story”
3. Stretch the feed post to fill the whole screen—this seems wild, I know, but this will make the final post into a tappable link to the original post
4. Next, open your camera roll and add in the background pattern of your choice
5. Then, paste in the cropped screenshot of your post on top and arrange or resize as you’d like
6. Upload the whole thing

2. Add a link to a story for Instagram Story Hacks

Unfortunately, links are only available to users with over 10,000 followers. (A shame for those of us with a more, ahem, exclusive followers list.)

How to do it:

1. Make sure you have 10,000 or more followers to access this feature
2. Create a new Story post
3. Click the “link” icon at the top of the page
4. You can add an IGTV video link or a web link URL
5. Click Done, and a “Call to Action Added” message will appear to confirm
6. If you need to edit or delete the link, just click the link icon again
7. Finish editing or creating your story and upload

3. Fill the background with a solid color

The default gradient backgrounds are nice and all, but sometimes, you’ve got something to say that can only be framed by a wall of blinding chartreuse.

How to do it:

1. Tap the draw icon
2. Select a color from the palette (Tip: swipe right to see addition color options, or press and hold down on any particular color to open up a rainbow gradient of choices)
3. Once you’ve chosen a color, press anywhere on the image or text part of the screen and hold two or three seconds to fill

4. Share with a select group of VIPs

Now that your boss and your Uncle Steve and your strata council president are all following you on Insta, the pressure to be a professional employee/niece/neighbor can really put a damper on your best, stupidest Instagram thoughts.

Instagram’s Close Friends feature is a chance to share more intimate, exclusive content to a select group (sorry, Uncle Steve!). For businesses, maybe it’s a way to offer some special treatment to members or VIPs (which, again, probably does not include Uncle Steve).

How to do it:

1. Go to your Instagram profile, click the three lines in the top corner
2. Select Close Friends
3. Search for your BFFs and click “add” (there’s no limit right now on how many people this can include)
4. To remove people, click on Your List and hit the remove button (don’t worry, they won’t be notified if they’re cut)
5. Now, when you go to post a story, the option to share to Close Friends will be at the bottom of the screen next to Your Story

But once you’ve hit that sweet spot, you can include one link in each Story and your lucky, plentiful followers will be able to swipe up to visit that URL and understand Instagram Story hacks.

5. Schedule your Instagram Stories in advance

We know Stories are supposed to be a spontaneous medium. But are you really at your desk or on your phone all day? No! You’re living life so that you have something to make Instagram Stories about and Instagram Story hacks.

Luckily, you can prep your Instagram Stories in advance with Hootsuite’s dashboard.