What To Do (and What Not To Do) on Instagram Stories

If you are not a part of the generation that grew up using the internet and feel a couple of steps behind when learning how to use social media for your business, or personal brand, I am here to demystify the features, and inspire you to keep trying at it until you feel more confident!

We all love a good Instagram story and this is the place where the majority of your audience is hanging out anyway. Some varying research says over 90% of IG users view stories, while the time they spend on stories varies greatly. First, let’s explore the purpose of IG stories for different industries, then what to share and how, and finally wrap up with ways to make your stories more branded to you! My goal is to help you come up with best practices on social media platforms so that you are able to increase brand awareness while also staying on message.

Reposting to your feed vs. to your story

First, some education on the platform. In 2025, Instagram rolled out a new feature similar to its counterpart, TikTok, that allows users to repost and reshare content. Content that is reshared will show up in their followers’ feed, even if the followers aren’t following the same accounts. Reshared content also lives on your feed under a new tab, as seen below.

Historically, resharing a post had to be done through an app, or posted to your story, but no longer! Reshared content lives on your feed for as long as you want it to!

Resharing content to your story lasts 24 hours.

Reposting something to your story is where we want to hone in but wanted to make sure you knew about the other features!

To reshare a post on your story, see below.

Reasons to repost to your feed:

• Content is directly about you! (You are being interviewed on a podcast, you are being featured singing at an event, or your product is being showcased)

• Content is made by you on other sites! (This is how I personally use reposting to feed - as someone who helps others with their social media and web design, I will often repost reels or content that I have helped make or taught someone how to make to act like a portfolio of sorts)

• Content feels relatable to you or your audience! (This could be for personal brands, or cross-posting between similar accounts, like if the business has multiple handles)

Reasons to repost to your story:

• You are tagged in something and are resharing in the moment

• You are supporting a creator or their work

• A reel or graphic is specific to what is happening in real time

• You are sharing about an event or upcoming engagement (add a ticket link, or sign-up form link!)

Fonts

You want your font choice to add to, not subtract from, your messaging! If I weren’t afraid to hurt your feelings, I would tell you that these fonts in IG’s editor should never be used on a story: Bubble, Deco, Squeeze, Meme

Better but still not my favorites:

Modern, Classic, Signature, Poster, Strong

If you are looking for classic fonts that don’t distract your audience, stick to:

Literature, Directional, Elegant (as a secondary typeface), Editor

Use the background features sparingly and don’t go wild with your colors. Pick a few brand colors that you can pull for

Resizing

Do: Resize posts so they have negative space on either side. Center posts or text in the middle of your story.

Don’t: Make text so large that borders get cut off on the sides or by the reply bar.

If you were tagged in a story that is being reposted, you can tap the story so it takes up the full screen, or tap again, and it will be able to minimize a bit too.

While these are some basic tips to keep you going and starting your own best practices, there are so many other things we can try together too! If you want to talk through branding templates, how to make your stories feel like collages, how to not look dated or behind the times online, what to say on stories, coming up with a signature series or how to convert to link clicks we can talk through all of these things as a part of office hours. Message me for availability and we can brainstorm together a plan to keep you in the game when stories feel daunting and ongoing.