Instagram Stories is a unique format that helps build trust, reach new people, and nurture your existing audience. These are the top content ideas to grow right now.
Bonus: Claim your free pack of 30 Instagram Story background templates created by Hootsuite’s professional graphic designers. Easily customize them in Canva, and take your Story game to the next level today.
11 Instagram Story ideas for beginners
1. Share a product photo
Video is great for Instagram Stories, but a simple photo works wonders too. You don’t need a fancy photoshoot. Hold up a product, snap a pic, name it, and share.
Share a recent shot from a photoshoot or product photo and add a link sticker.
Bonus: Add a link sticker to shop that product on your website.
2. Feature a review
Share customer testimonials to your Instagram Story, either one directly from a customer’s Instagram feed post or create your own with a photo, the customer’s review, and their name (if applicable).
Pair a review with a link to the product or another call to action.
3. Share new Reels and posts in a Story
Add a touch of mystery to your Instagram Story and direct people to your latest content.
Personally, I notice a substantial increase in likes, comments, and shares when I share one of my Reels or Instagram posts to my Instagram Story. It’s a basic idea, but highly effective at boosting engagement.
No one can resist a one-tap, multiple choice poll sticker. No one!
It only takes someone a moment to answer your poll and each click counts as engagement. Plus, it’s a great opportunity to subtly drop product features to educate your audience.
Mega engagement Instagram Story idea: Link to a product page, then use a quiz to ask questions. Enter those who got the correct answers into giveaways.
7. Celebrate milestones
Reached 50,000 Instagram followers? 100,000? Sold your 100th or 10,000th order? Thank your audience with a quick Instagram Story to commemorate the occasion and express your gratitude.
If you’re posting about an event, be sure to use that event’s hashtag to be added to the content people are finding for it.
Encourage your audience to share UGC content using a specific hashtag to make it easy for you to find.
9. Feature a customer
Start a weekly or monthly series to highlight your V.I.P. customers, or as Tourism Kelowna does here, members of their business community. It’s a great way to share your values without being self-promotional.
Use question stickers, polls, or even ask people to message you to gather opinions. The information you gather could help make merchandising decisions, identify upcoming trends, or crowdsource new product ideas.
Not sure what to ask? Start with asking for product reviews or your audience’s opinion on current trends, then branch out into specific questions designed to get customers involved in your creative process.
Save the Story as a highlight as a virtual “suggestion box” people can use anytime.
11. Use location tags
Along with your Story’s content, the Instagram algorithm uses location tags to target who it thinks will be interested in your content to expand reach.
People can also search Insta posts and IG Stories by location tag. Tags can be cities, businesses, public areas like parks, and more.
Hosting a company dinner? Meeting a client for coffee? Traveling to a new city? Tag the places you go to be added to the Instagram Stories of those locations in the app’s map.
If you have a physical business location, tag it often in Stories.
18 more creative Instagram Story ideas
12. Use custom font colors
You’re not limited to the default text or brush colors Instagram gives you. When adding text to your Story, tap the eyedropper icon at the bottom left. Drag it around your image to use that color for the text or drawing tools.
Font colors help your Stories appear on-brand, but as Instagram expert and travel blogger Helene Sula says, authenticity is much more important:
“To create a truly powerful Instagram I believe in creating an Instagram theme or aesthetic. But sometimes your content doesn’t always fit your theme. That’s why you can use IG Stories to share. You also have the opportunity to share your personality.”
Swipe this idea:
Stand out with only a few seconds of effort by matching your Story text to your brand color(s), or to colors within the photo.
13. Add a countdown
Generate buzz about an upcoming event with the countdown sticker.
Countdown to a product launch, sale, or other event.
Pair it with a sneak peek video for more excitement.
14. Share behind-the-scenes content
No matter what industry you’re in, you have some kind of “behind the scenes” teasers to show your audience. You can show everything from your warehouse and the team members who keep your deliveries going out or the creative processes of the people crucial to your success, such as this feature on the prop master of a TV show.
Curiosity gets engagement: yes, even the most boring-seeming behind the scenes content can be interesting to your customers.
15. Host a Q&A
Use the Instagram Stories question sticker to get your audience to submit questions that you can answer in Stories. Answer questions about your products AMA style, or “Ask Me Anything.” Or bring in an expert for a special Q&A, such as Truly’s example below. The skincare brand had a dermatologist answer audience questions.
After the Q&A is finished, save it as a highlight so your audience can access the valuable information anytime.
Share commonly asked questions in a FAQs highlight.
16. Tag other brands
Build bridges and potential collaborative relationships with other brands by tagging them in your IG Stories. This can encourage the other brand to share your Story to their own, and even potentially reach out to collaborate further on campaigns.
Start with brands you use in your business, such as one of the paint brands you use for your work.
Share your honest review of the brand’s product or how it contributes to your own success.
17. Offer Stories-only discounts
If you’re specifically looking for creative Instagram Story ideas to grow engagement on Stories, there’s no better way than offering an exclusive discount in Stories.
Start a series on IG Stories you can save as a highlight and keep updating, such as the TSA’s prohibited items one above which is informative and often funny.
19. Use interactive stickers
Punch up your Stories with one of Instagram’s built-in interactive stickers. They are quick and easy for people to engage with. For example, this “emoji slider” sticker only takes one tap and drag for viewers to respond to.
Question stickers are great, but require more effort for someone to fill out. Make life easy for them (and make it more likely they’ll engage with you) by swapping a “long answer” ask to an emoji slider.
20. Offer a sneak peek
Post a sneak peek of something exciting and ask your audience to guess what it is. This is one of the best Instagram Story hacks for saving time because you can publicly share the responses in Stories for great content all day.
Use a question sticker to collect guesses, or use other interactive elements like the emoji slider or a poll.
21. Show your process
Give your audience a glimpse into how your product is made with this Instagram Story idea for product-based organizations of all sizes. People love knowing what goes into making the items they buy, especially when those are hand-crafted or made by small businesses.
Create a video, GIF, or photo slides showing how your product is made, or the steps in delivering your services. Infuse your passion for what you do into it.
22. Share a collage
What’s better than one photo? More than one photo. Collages offer you an opportunity to creatively show off your products.
Using either regular emojis or Instagram’s emoji-style stickers can turn a basic photo into something hilariously memorable.
25. Make your Story shoppable
If you sell online, tagging your products in Instagram Stories is a huge opportunity to convert attention into sales. With one tap, a viewer can checkout without leaving Instagram.
Summarize the program, add a link sticker to sign up, and save it as a highlight.
27. Share a tutorial
Show your audience how to use your product or tips for the best experience. Or educate them on something related to your business, such as this hair tutorial from a hairstylist.
If you’re not sure what you could create a tutorial about, ask your audience what they want to learn.
28. Have a careers Story highlight
Finding top quality employees is a challenge for all organizations. Whether you’re hiring for specific positions or always on the lookout for talent, social media is a great place to get the word out. Share careers-related news on your Stories and save those as a highlight on your profile to make it easy for applicants to find.
Create Instagram Stories for open positions and save them to a careers highlight.
29. Try creative text
Instagram Stories has countless options for creative text, from color options to drop shadows, outlines, mixing fonts and sizes, add emphasis with stickers, and more.
7 experimental Instagram Story ideas for bold marketers
30. Always have active Stories
Always having active Instagram Stories means you’ll keep showing up near the top of your followers’ Instagram feeds when they open the app. That means you’ll have a higher chance every day of reaching your audience.
You don’t need to spend hours per day on Stories either. Our recent experiment found that posting just 1-2 Instagram Stories per day yielded the best engagement results. That said, find what works for you. Don’t be afraid to test out posting more.
No need to reinvent the wheel seven days a week. Mix easy-to-create content with more involved Stories to ensure you don’t run out of Stories to post.
Also no need to personally post daily: schedule Instagram Stories with Hootsuite for automatic publishing.
31. Use Instagram Stories as a menu
If you’re a coffee shop, restaurant, or other business where your products or services change often, consider using Instagram Stories as a main way to communicate those changes.
Instagram Story ads can be very effective and are easy to get started with (especially if you create an Instagram ad campaign in Hootsuite). Story ads appear periodically as users browse organic Stories and blend in very well, distinguishable only by the small “Sponsored” text under the Instagram account name.
The types of social media content people actually want can be simplified into two categories: educational and entertainment, as we found in our Social Trends 2025 report.
While educational content is important, it’s equally important to make it entertaining. Consider creating a video to communicate your information (and repurposing it for other channels).
Save tutorials as Story highlights to extend the life of them past twenty-four hours.
34. Share memes
Meme humor isn’t the best fit for all brands, but if memes resonate with your audience, add them to your Instagram Stories strategy.
Have an influencer partner with you for a full day of Stories content centred around their experience with your brand and unique viewpoint.
Cross-promote the Instagram takeover on both accounts for maximum engagement potential.
36. Get on camera
Don’t be shy! For a personal touch, get in front of the camera for authentically on-brand videos, whether you’re a solo business or large company. Instagram Stories are all about authenticity, and nothing is as powerful for building trust with your audience.
Instead of posting a photo of a new product, film a short video of you talking about the product as you hold it. Or, talk about why you started your business or lessons learned along the way.
Repurpose video used in IG Stories for Instagram Reels, ads, and more.
Plan and schedule Instagram Stories, Reels, and posts—and all your other social platforms—from a single dashboard. Try Hootsuite free today.
Palantir has emerged as a disruptive force in the AI realm, ushering in a wave of enthusiastic investors to the defense tech space.
Palantir Technologies was the top-performing stock in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 during the first half of 2025. With shares soaring by 80% through the first six months of the year — and by 427% over the last 12 months — Palantir has helped drive a lot of attention to the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and defense contracting.
Palantir is far from the only company seeking to disrupt defense tech. A little-known competitor to the company is BigBear.ai(BBAI -3.35%), whose shares are up by an impressive 357% over the last year.
Could BigBear.ai emerge as the next Palantir? Read on to find out.
BigBear.ai is an exciting company in the world of defense tech, but…
BigBear.ai’s share price volatility so far this year mimics the movements of a rollercoaster. Initially, shares rose considerably shortly following President Donald Trump’s inauguration and the subsequent announcement of Project Stargate — an infrastructure initiative that aims to invest $500 billion into AI projects through 2029.
While reduced spending from the Department of Defense (DOD) was initially seen as a major blow to contractors such as Palantir and BigBear.ai, the trends illustrated above suggest that shares rebounded sharply — implying that the sell-offs back in February may have been overblown. Why is that?
In my eyes, a major contributor to the recovery in defense stocks came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced his intentions to double down on a strategy dubbed the Software Acquisition Pathway (SWP).
In reality, the DOD’s budget cuts are focused on areas that are deemed non-essential or inefficient. For example, the Pentagon freed up billions in capital by reducing spend with consulting firms such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Accenture, and Deloitte. In addition, a contract revolving around an HR software system managed by Oracle was also cut.
Under the SWP, it appears that the DOD is actually looking to free up capital in order to double down on more tech-focused initiatives and identify vendors that can actually handle the Pentagon’s sophisticated workflows.
With so much opportunity up for grabs, it’s likely that optimistic investors saw this as a tailwind for BigBear.ai. This logic isn’t too far off base, either.
BigBear.ai’s CEO is Kevin McAleenan, a former government official with close ties to the Trump administration. McAleenan’s strategic relationships within the government combined with the DOD’s focus on working with leading software services providers likely has some investors buying into the idea that BigBear.ai won’t be flying under the radar much longer.
Image source: Getty Images.
…how does the company really stack up beside Palantir?
The graph below breaks down revenue, gross margin, and net income for BigBear.ai over the last year. With just $160 million in sales, the company tends to generate inconsistent gross margins — which top out at less than 30%. Moreover, with a fairly small sales base and unimpressive margin profile, it’s not surprising to see BigBear.ai’s losses continue to mount.
By comparison, Palantir generated $487 million in government revenue during the first quarter of 2025. In other words, Palantir’s government operation generates nearly triple the amount of revenue in a single quarter that BigBear.ai does in an entire year. On top of that, Palantir’s gross margins hover around 80%, while the company’s net income over the last 12 months was over $570 million.
Is BigBear.ai stock a buy right now?
Right now, BigBear.ai trades at a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of around 11. While this may look “cheap” compared to Palantir’s P/S multiple of 120, there is a reason for the valuation disparity between the two AI defense contractors.
Palantir boasts large, fast-growing public and private sector businesses that command strong profit margins. By contrast, BigBear.ai is going to have a difficult time scaling so long as it keeps burning through heaps of cash.
Not only would I pass on BigBear.ai stock, but I also do not see the company becoming the next Palantir. Palantir is in a league of its own in the defense tech space, and I do not see BigBear.ai as a formidable challenger.
Adam Spatacco has positions in Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Abbott Laboratories, Accenture Plc, Oracle, and Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Microsoft buys more than a billion dollars’ worth of excrement, including human poop, to clean up its AI mess — company will pump waste underground to offset AI carbon emissions
Microsoft has just signed a deal with Vaulted Deep, paying it to remove 4.9 million metric tons of waste over 12 years sourced from manure, sewage, and agricultural byproducts for injection deep underground. According to Inc., the current cost of CO2 removal with the company is $350 per ton. If you multiply that by Microsoft’s contract, that makes it worth more than $1.7 billion. However, neither entity has disclosed the actual terms of the deal, and its CEO, Julia Reichelstein, says that the company expects its costs to drop over time, and that the mentioned price isn’t the actual sum that the tech giant paid.
This isn’t the first time Redmond has paid another company to help offset its greenhouse gas emissions; Microsoft signed a deal with AtmosClear in April of this year to sequester 6.75 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. However, Vaulted’s technique is unique — instead of extracting carbon dioxide from the air or electricity production, it collects organic waste. It combines it into a thick slurry, which is then injected about 5,000 feet underground. This prevents them from being dumped at a waste disposal site, where they would eventually decompose and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
“Generally, what happens to these wastes today is they go to a landfill, they get dumped in a waterway, or they’re just spread on land for the purpose of disposal. In all of those cases, they’re decomposing into CO2 and methane,” said Reichelstein to Inc. “That’s contributing to climate change. And then oftentimes, especially when it’s spread on land, all those pathogens are going directly into people’s groundwater.”
Projects such as these enable Microsoft and other tech giants to offset the massive amounts of carbon emissions produced by data centers, particularly as they consume a significant amount of electrical power, often generated from fossil fuels. For example, Musk is facing legal action in Memphis, Tennessee, after his company, xAI, is accused of polluting the air by using under-reported power generators at the Colossus Supercomputer. Aside from that, many companies, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle, and others, are investing in small modular reactor research to establish their clean energy sources for their expanding data center businesses.
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After Plummeting Over $1 Trillion in Value, This Super Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Is Mounting a Major Comeback, With Analysts Predicting Gains of Up to 400%
Earlier this year, Nvidia lost more than $1 trillion in market capitalization. Now, it’s the most valuable company in the world.
For a few years now, the artificial intelligence (AI) movement has largely hinged on the performance of a single company: Nvidia(NVDA -0.42%).
Sure, if Microsoft or Amazon posted strong results from their respective cloud computing platforms or if Tesla managed to hype investors up over the prospects of self-driving robotaxis or humanoid robots, the technology sector might see a fleeting upward movement. At the end of the day, however, the focus seemed to eventually return to Nvidia — with analysts obsessing over how demand for the company’s chips and data center services were trending.
During the first half of the year, Nvidia’s ship was caught in an epic storm. Investors started to question the company’s long-growth prospects — inspiring prolonged periods of panic-selling in the process. All told, Nvidia’s market cap dropped by more than $1 trillion.
But now, with a market value north of $4 trillion, Nvidia has reclaimed its position as the most valuable company on the planet. Even better? Some on Wall Street are calling for further gains of up to 400%.
Let’s explore the tailwinds supporting Nvidia’s long-term growth narrative and detail why Wall Street sees such massive upside for the king of the chip realm.
One Wall Street analyst is calling for a $10 trillion valuation for Nvidia
One of the most bullish Nvidia analysts on Wall Street is the I/O Fund’s Beth Kindig. Kindig suggested that Nvidia could reach a $10 trillion market cap by 2030 — implying 140% upside from current levels. Let’s explore the main catalysts supporting Kindig’s forecast.
According to management from Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet, roughly $260 billion will be spent in 2025 alone on AI infrastructure. On top of that, Meta Platforms is expected to spend roughly $70 billion on capital expenditures this year — nearly double what it spent in 2024. Lastly, Oracle is beginning to make significant headway in infrastructure services — allowing companies to rent Nvidia GPUs from their cloud-based data center platform. From a macro perspective, rising capex from the cloud hyperscalers bodes well for chip demand.
Kindig takes these secular tailwinds one step further, suggesting that competition from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices does not pose much of a threat to Nvidia’s dominance. While it’s hard to know how vendor preferences could change over the next several years, current industry research trends suggest that Kindig might be right — underscored by Nvidia’s rising market share in the AI accelerator industry.
The area of Kindig’s analysis that I think is currently overlooked the most revolves around Nvidia’s software architecture, called CUDA. Since CUDA is integrated tightly with Nvidia’s hardware, developers essentially become locked into the company’s ecosystem.
Not only does this lead to customer stickiness, but it opens the door for Nvidia to be at the forefront of more sophisticated, evolving AI applications in areas such as robotics and autonomous driving.
Image source: Getty Images.
What about $20 trillion?
Former management consulting executive Phil Panaro is even more bullish than Kindig. By 2030, Panaro thinks Nvidia’s share price could reach $800 — implying roughly a $20 trillion market cap.
Panaro cites opportunities across Web3 development and evolving use cases around how enterprises and governments leverage AI to generate more efficiency and cost savings as the main pillars supporting Nvidia’s upside.
While these trends could eventually drive significant demand for Nvidia’s data center services, tech adoption within the government tends to move slowly. Meanwhile, Web3 remains an emerging concept that could take far longer to mature than Panaro is assuming.
Is Nvidia stock a buy right now?
Nvidia stock has been mounting an epic comeback over the last couple of months. This valuation expansion can be easily seen through the dynamics of the company’s rising forward price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple. Nevertheless, Nvidia’s forward P/E of 40 is still well below levels seen earlier this year.
Trying to model Nvidia’s peak valuation is an exercise in false precision. The bigger takeaway is that analysts on Wall Street are not only calling for significant upside in the stock, but they have outlined the foundation for Nvidia’s long-term growth. The important theme here is that Nvidia has opportunities well beyond selling chips — many of which have yet to make meaningful contributions to the business.
I see Nvidia stock as a no-brainer. Investors with a long-run time horizon might consider scooping shares up at current prices and plan to hold on for years to come.
John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Adam Spatacco has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Amazon, Intel, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short August 2025 $24 calls on Intel, and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
