Instagram story dimensions, best practices: Your Essential Guide

Instagram story dimensions – the first thing to know before your first post. When done right, can boost your feed engagement by 100x.

Run a blog?

Instagram story – the most valuable feature you can use to understand your subscribers. Using this feature, you can experiment and boost engagement by many folds. Knowing Instagram story dimensions is the first step towards creating stunning, engaging stories. Read on to know everything you need to get best out of Instagram story feature. When done right, stories will let you know your subscribers, boost engagement, show variation in your content.

Instagram stories feature - screen shot taken from
Screen shot taken from : https://about.instagram.com/features/stories

Here are the quick facts about the Instagram stories:

Technical points you should keep in mind

  • The Instagram story dimensions are 1080 by 1920 pixels.
  • Aspect ratio of stories is 9:16. 
  • There is no limit on number of stories you can post.
  • Only first three stories will show on your profile. Followers can click on view more.
  • You can group stories and make them curated stories

What are Instagram stories?

  • The Instagram Story feature lets you to share photos or videos that vanish from your profile after 24 hours
  • Lets you to share the story with all of your followers or only with your close friends.
  • You can create a story from scratch and upload it. You can also re-share a post from another Instagram page to be featured in your profile.
  • You can share your stories for more than 24 hours by posting them as highlights on your Profile.

How can you use Instagram story feature?

  • Make a call to action by adding a link sticker
  • Create a poll to gather feedback
  • Re-post your followers post that act as a testimonial for your work

What is Instagram story highlight feature?

  • Instagram Highlights are curated collections of Stories displayed as tappable circles at the top of your personal or business profile.

What works on Instagram Stories

  • Information posts with out self promotion
  • Posts with minimal text yet informational
  • Hashtags that complement the text information
  • Posts that resonate overall well with your profile
  • Balance between posts and stories. Do not over post one form more than other.

Want to boost your social media productivity by 1000X?

What are Instagram Story dimensions?

The dimensions for Instagram Stories are 1080 pixels by 1920 pixels, resulting in a 9:16 aspect ratio. This means your photo or video should be 1080 pixels wide and 1920 pixels tall.

Instagram story dimensions - 1080 width by 1920 tall pixels
Instagram story dimensions – 1080 by 1920 pixels

Instagram stories support images, videos under 30mb and 4gb in size respectively. The feature supports all popular image and video formats. The most important thing to consider while uploading media to a story is Instagram story dimensions.

If you upload media with incorrect dimensions, you risk loss of quality or unprofessional appearance of your story. Many video editing programs allow you to crop your video to 1080 x 1920. This ensures it meets the correct dimensions for Instagram Stories.

If you run a blog, socialDapr lets you create stories directly from your articles. It automatically pulls article feature image, headline, other meta data like author automatically. This makes creation of stories for your blog/ website extremely easy in a sustainable, repeatable and consistent way.

  • socialDapr lets you create social media stories/ posts from your blog directly
  • socialDapr lets you create Instagram stories/ posts from your blog directly
  • socialDapr lets you create facebook stories/ posts from your blog directly

Consider leaving certain portions of the story real estate to let other creative elements to render properly. Here is the recommendation from Meta on creating story ads.

Consider leaving roughly 14% (250 pixels) of the top and 20% (340 pixels) of the bottom of the video free from text, logos, or other key creative elements to avoid covering them with the profile icon or call-to-action.

Have questions on Instagram story dimensions or any related topic? you can refer to Instagram help center.

Instagram story dimensions - Margins to be left for other creatives
Instagram story dimensions – Margins to be left for other creatives

Instagram stories – How to leverage them, tips and actionable points:

Create stories that lead users to engage more

When creating a story, pick those media assets that promote user engagement. The stories should create curiosity. Take Cnet for example. They include latest reviews, videos with catchy text prompts.

Cnet - follows Instagram story dimensions recommendations while leveraging their original reels.
Image – screenshot taken from cnet Instagram

Organize your stories into collections

Cnet organizes their posts/ stories into collections in a logical way. The collections show how varying Cnet’s content is.

Instagram Stories - Shown as collection

Just like their website categories, Cnet’s stories are organized into collections indicating how varying and interesting Cnet’s work is.

  • Cnet stories invite users explore their articles on the blog
  • Cnet stories call for action with well written article titles in the stories.

Other helpful links to let you create your next stunning Instagram story

How to add a call to action in your Instagram story by adding a link?

How to add a poll to your Instagram story?

Share posts from Instagram feed to stories

How to tell if some one viewed your Instagram story?

You can find answers to lot of important questions and useful tips on making stories – here on Instagram directly.

One response to “Instagram story dimensions, best practices: Your Essential Guide”

  1. […] Pro-tip: Before posting, know the best practices to follow for posting Instagram stories. […]

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