Instagram Stories, unfiltered 24-hour snippets, offer a transparent view into the lives of influencers, the ongoing journeys of brands, and the behind-the-scenes events that make everything tick. They flawlessly intertwine the curated identity of a profile with the authenticity of its journey.

According to me, Stories hold more impact over your audience because they disappear. That’s why what you deliver in your stories is awarded more respect. But many times you have the need to download or save the instagram stories. Right? Well I got you. There are multiple ways to achieve success with saving Instagram Stories to your Mobile or within Instagram.

 

Saving Instagram Stories Before You Post

In the process of creating a Story, it's possible to save it before posting, ensuring no loss of effort and creativity. Well, there is no loss of effort, but it is easier to save the story before hitting publish.

Whether you're on iOS or Android, saving your Instagram story pre-publication is straightforward.

 

Simply click on the 'More' option, represented by three dots, before hitting 'Publish', and then select 'Save'. This option shows up while you are in Instagram story creation tab.

Another method that I recommend is auto-save. Go to your instagram settings, Click on “settings & Privacy Tab”.  Scroll down to visit a section named “Your App and Media”.

The First tab will be archiving and downloading. From that section you can enable the feature to always auto-save your instagram stories content to device camera roll. Absolutely no need to go through different saving options.

 

Saving Your Stories After Posting

You've created a high quality Story, it's live, and now you want to keep it beyond the 24-hour timeframe. You can easily save your already published Story.

Open your last Story, click on the 'More' option, and select 'Save'. This process will download your Story to your device, allowing you to repurpose it later.

If you enabled the settings mentioned in the first method. You don’t need to use this tactic as your content was auto-saved.

Saving Other User's Instagram Stories

Respecting privacy and copyright, you might occasionally want to save another user's Story. I do it all the time, screenshots are also cool but they get messy sometimes.

You can download Stories from others by copying the IG Stories link, achievable through the 'Share' icon represented by the paper plane.

 

After clicking 'Copy Link', you will need to navigate to a third-party 'Instagram Story downloader'. You can find 100s of story downloaders available on Google, the only tip I have for you is Ad-disturbance. Every single Instagram story or content downloader is buried with popup & unskippable Ads.

If you are frequently looking to save Instagram stories, find a tool with less Ads and better user interface. You can then go to that downloader regularly. After pasting the link, you will be able to  download Instagram Stories from others.

 

Using Instagram Highlights to save Stories

Instagram offers an in-built feature, 'Highlights', that allows Stories to have an extended lifespan.
Highlights remain on your profile permanently unless removed manually.

 

After posting a Story, you can add it to your Highlights by clicking the 'Highlight' icon at the bottom.

If you don't have a current Story but want to add old ones to your Highlights, navigate to your profile and click on the 'Plus' icon.

From there you will have the ability to create a highlights tab using old archieved instagram stories. Now, if you are a creator or business try not to randomly save instagram stories to highlights. You can be strategic with your highlights tab and showcase the best content & products to the audience. How?

Your Instagram Strategy with Highlights. 

As Instagram Trends continue to change, the significance of Stories for building a genuine brand identity grows. Understanding how to save and repurpose your Instagram Stories, both your own and others, offers an additional touch to your content strategy. Use Instagram Highlights in Instagram marketing and now you ask how?

 

First, Always have a list of highlights tab on your Instagram profile expressing what your content is about and why you create that type of content. Second, Try to have a instagram highlights tab that showcase your offers:

 

• For Creators, Highlight your media kit, Paid sponsorship prices or affiliate marketing offers using this evergreen tab.
• For Business, Use these tabs to highlight your latest product launch, events & testimonials.

What not to do is saving Instagram stories with polls and interactive stickers to your highlights tab. The new audiences that might see your highlights can’t interact with those piece of content. Because the polls and interactive stickers are impossible to use after 24 hours.

How to choose Instagram Stories that need to be saved?

You should save stories for repurposing & Highlights tab based on two different factors. The number one factor is engagement, Calculate how well your stories content performed by checking your Instagram story analytics. When your stories perform better than usual, download/save them and repost after few weeks or months.

Instagram Stories are like Advertising. David Ogilvy once said you should use an Ad until it stops working. Your Story isn’t even an Ad, what’s an Ad? People hate them.

Your stories are loved by the audience. For that reason, I suggest feel free to repurpose your high performing stories after few weeks or so.

 

The Second factor is Impact. As shared earlier the stories that are meant to share an important piece of advice, offer or insight are the best. Often these aren’t your best performing stories. But you know these hold more value than all other attention seeking posts.

For that reason, You need to save these type of Instagram Stories to your Highlights tab to impress the new audiences. As a great highlights tab acts as social proof and makes the buying or following decision easier to make.

Jaskaran’s Take

 

Saving Instagram Stories, I said bye bye to screenshots few years ago. I prefer to use story downloaders for saving content from other instagram users. Other than that, Saving Instagram stories to highlights tab is what I have recommended a lot to my instagram marketing clients.

Your  Instagram Profile is very identical to landing page of your website. Everyday new visitors land on the website and they leave.

 

Why? Because everyone knows Instagram feed is content. Your new profile visitor already saw a post from you and now the person is interested in more of what you share. Your highlights & stories play a major role in that situation.

An Instagram profile with no highlights or Stories can sometimes decrease the impact on your followers. But alongside nailing your Instagram profile and I will say you have to focus on capturing the style of content that works for industry & how to market that content on Instagram. To learn that, 10,103+ marketers recommend subscribing to the newsletter I write.