Instagram Stories is such a fun and interactive way to engage with your followers. The IG feature has been on an uphill climb ever since its launch in August 2016. By October 2016, Instagram Stories had 100 million active users, and Snapchat's user rate started to slow down. Many users seem to gravitate more towards Instagram Stories because of its easy accessibility, clean design, and the fact that it plugs into an existing social network. Currently, Instagram Stories has 150 million daily users, and we can expect more growth as they roll out new features and ads in the coming months.

Why We Added Stories Planning

We always design and build features for ourselves, and we found it tough to plan ahead for Instagram Stories, especially with a full editorial calendar. That's why we decided to add this new feature to PLANOLY--to streamline the planning process even more! You can only add content to your Stories from within the last 24 hours. This makes traditional methods of adding images to Stories using Dropbox or Camera Roll more challenging because there is a time stamp on the media. With our new Story feature, you can go beyond the 24-hour rule, which means you'll have more time to plan out your Stories depending on what upcoming campaigns, news, tutorials or even Insta Stories "Takeovers" you have to share!

Planning Instagram Stories on PLANOLY works similarly to the regular grid planning on PLANOLY. With our clean, beautiful and user-friendly design, you're able to add content, draft captions, and drag and drop to your heart's content! Let's go through this simple process step by step.

How to Use PLANOLY's Instagram Stories Planner

1. When on your GRID VIEW, tap on the STORIES (S) ICON located on the top left corner. You will be taken to your STORIES VIEW.
2. Tap the plus (+) button located on the bottom screen to upload content to your "STORIES" planning view. You can upload any media (images, gifs, boomerangs, videos) from your camera albums, Dropbox or Google Drive; then DRAG and DROP to arrange the order of your stories (top to bottom, first to last).
3. Tap on content to add notes or draft captions.
4. Schedule your story or tap "POST NOW" to post right away.
5. When you get the push notification, the caption will be copied for you to paste into your story. We open IG for you, but you have to open stories manually.
6. Tap on your Stories icon on your IG.
7. Swipe up to add media.
8. Select your media that was just saved on your camera roll for you.
9. If you have a caption, tap on the TEXT (Aa) icon and paste.
10. If you have a "mention" or want to tag someone, make sure to tap on that name, select the correct user options that come up from, and the username will become underlined. Only underlined @username's are tappable and work as a mention.
11. If you have the Swipe-Up feature, put a link in your caption, and then copy and paste it by clicking the link icon. The Swipe-Up link feature is available for verified accounts and accounts that have over 10,000 followers.

• Pro tip: Changed your mind on the actual image/video but have your captions already saved? You can SWAP out your Stories media by tapping into desired media, tap preview image, then tap on SWAP icon (top right corner).

Planning for Instagram Stories is not available in any other app, so you heard it here first! Our Stories Planning Feature update is available on iOS, Android and Web dashboard! Watch our tutorial videos on our youtube at youtube.com/planoly! We hope you find this new feature to be helpful and time-saving and love it as much as we do!