How long can Instagram stories be in 2025? The answer may surprise you.
The social media giant recently increased its story duration to 60 seconds for videos. Photos still last for just 7 seconds.
The change comes along with other content length changes aimed at keeping more people on the platform.
Knowing the max length for a story can help guide your content creation, but it doesn’t matter how long your stories are if your followers don’t find them engaging.
5 Ways to Make Your Instagram Stories More Engaging
When your stories resonate with your followers, they’re more likely to watch them from start to finish. But creating engaging stories can be tough, especially if you’re still new to IG.
Here are five ways you can start making your stories more engaging today.👇
1. Reshare Your Popular Reels 🔁
Take a peek at your old reels and look at their analytics data. Which ones were your top performers?
Start resharing them to your stories to see if they can capture your followers’ attention again. Because these reels already have a history of appealing to your audience, you’re likely to get more views and engagement from your stories.
2. Add Captions
Have you tried adding captions to your stories? Subtitles can help boost a story’s reach and engagement rate because viewers can interact with your content without sound.
Captions make your stories more accessible and easier for everyone to enjoy, no matter where they are.
3. Integrate Stickers into Your Posts
One of the simplest and most effective ways to make your stories more engaging is to add stickers. Interactive stickers are the best choice because they give viewers a chance to share their opinions. You can add polls, quizzes, emoji sliders – whatever stickers are most relevant to your content.
4. Focus on Adding Music 🎶
Music can instantly transform your story to make it more engaging and incite emotion from the viewer. Whether your story is exciting, fun, silly or sad, music can make viewers feel something.
How do you add music to your stories?
Step #1: Head to your profile and tap the “+” button.
Step #2: Choose a story and tap Next
Step #3: Choose the photo or video, or record your story.
Step #4: On the next screen, tap the stickers button at the top of the interface.
Step #5: Tap the Music sticker.
Step #6: A list of songs will pop up. You can tap the play button to preview each track.
Step #7: Once you’ve chosen a track, you can drag the slider to choose which part of the song you want to use.
Step #8: Once you’re happy with everything, tap Done at the top right corner of the interface.
You can also choose to display the song in your story along with its lyrics. Choose a font and aesthetic that fits your brand and account.
5. Edit Your Stories Like a Professional
Instagram’s interface makes it easy to record and edit videos, but if you want to improve the quality of your stories, try using a third-party app for editing.
What Apps Should I Use to Edit My Stories?
Tools like Canva and Veed make it easy to create high-quality, eye-catching stories that will stand out to your viewers.
These are two of the top apps for editing stories and Instagram content in general, but many creators also love:
- Lightroom CC
- Inshot
- Adobe Express
- Mojo
- CutStory
- Unfold
- PhotoGrid
Many of these apps have free versions, so you can experiment to see which ones work best for your stories and style.
What’s the Best Length for Instagram Stories?
Stories can now be up to 60 seconds long, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they should be that long.
In the social media world, a 1-minute video is pretty lengthy.
Aim for 15-30 seconds to start. Experiment with different lengths and check your analytics to see which stories are getting the most engagement. You may find that your audience actually prefers longer content. On the other hand, your followers may prefer stories that are just 10-15 seconds max.
Use your analytics data to guide your content.
How Often Should You Post Instagram Stories?
How often you post to your stories will depend on a few different factors, including your niche and audience.
But as a general rule of thumb, you should be posting at least 1-2 new stories every day.
The great thing about stories is that they can be off-the-cuff and more lighthearted than reels and regular posts. So, you can easily post a few times a day without having to spend too much time on your content. If you can plan ahead and batch-create your story content ahead of time, you’ll be in even better shape.
Just keep in mind that you can only post up to 100 stories per day. You shouldn’t ever reach this limit, but it’s something to remember in case you were thinking of going all-out on a posting spree.
How Long Do Your Instagram Stories Stay Visible?
No matter whether your story is 15 seconds or 60, they all stay visible for the same amount of time: 24 hours.
The only way to keep your story around for longer is to add it to your highlights. Stories that are made into highlights stay on your profile indefinitely unless you remove them.
Now that you know how long an Instagram story can be, it’s time to get out there and start creating. Experiment with different lengths to see which ones resonate best with your audience.
