Instagram Reels vs. Story: Key Differences Between Key Terms on Instagram

We’ve all used both sto­ries and reels on Insta­gram. They are both excel­lent fea­tures to use on your pri­vate or busi­ness pro­file, as they help you dri­ve engage­ment, share impor­tant updates, and more with your fol­low­ers and net­work. Still, do you know what the main dif­fer­ence is between a sto­ry and reels? In the reels vs. sto­ries debate, how can you get the most out of both to dri­ve more engage­ment to your Insta­gram profile?

In this arti­cle, the team at Rosy Strate­gies, your go-to social media agency in Flori­da, aims to help you bet­ter under­stand the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences between reels and sto­ries on IG.

Instagram Reels Vs. Stories: The Basics

Let’s do a quick run­down on the con­trasts between Insta­gram Reels and Stories.

Insta­gram Sto­ries: Sto­ries are brief videos or slideshows linked to your Insta­gram pro­file pic­ture. They remain vis­i­ble to your fol­low­ers (or any­one if your pro­file is pub­lic) for just 24 hours, after which they are archived. Edit­ing options are min­i­mal, and the dura­tion is lim­it­ed to 15 sec­onds. Sto­ries cap­ture can­did moments and cap­ture your dai­ly life or brand. Due to their loca­tion next to your pro­file pic­ture, fol­low­ers effort­less­ly dis­cov­er sto­ries. They appear at the top of the Insta­gram home­page as soon as you open the app.

Insta­gram Reels: Reels are short videos craft­ed pure­ly for enter­tain­ment, akin to Tik­Tok videos. They can last up to 90 sec­onds (60 sec­onds for most users) and do not van­ish after 24 hours like Sto­ries. Unlike the spon­ta­neous nature of Sto­ries, Reels are designed to be pre­pared and pol­ished. Reels come with a suite of built-in edit­ing tools, allow­ing for cre­ativ­i­ty and finesse in your content. 

The pri­ma­ry dis­tinc­tion between Insta­gram Reels and Sto­ries lies in their visibility:

• Sto­ries are vis­i­ble only to your fol­low­ers or those view­ing your pub­lic profile.
• Reels, on the oth­er hand, are acces­si­ble to all users. A viral Reel could lead to sig­nif­i­cant engage­ment and numer­ous new followers.

Under­stand­ing these dif­fer­ences can empow­er your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, ensur­ing you make the most out of Insta­gram’s diverse features.

The Difference Between Reels and Stories

These were only the basic dif­fer­ences when regard­ing sto­ries vs. reels. Below, we’ll go a step fur­ther and dis­cuss fur­ther key dif­fer­ences that can help you use these fea­tures to your advan­tage in your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strategies.

Instagram Reel vs. Story: Understanding Formats

Sto­ries will most­ly be vis­i­ble to fol­low­ers as video clips but aren’t lim­it­ed to video mate­r­i­al. You may also use sin­gle, sta­t­ic images, pho­to col­lages, or feed posts for sto­ries. You can also reshare sto­ries you’re tagged in, so cre­at­ing video con­tent is easy and can be done dai­ly or sev­er­al times a day.

Reels, on the oth­er hand, pre­fer video mate­r­i­al. IG is com­pet­ing with Tik­Tok in this aspect, so images and slideshows won’t real­ly cut it. Still, you can make a pho­to col­lage slideshow, but you sim­ply would­n’t be using the fea­ture to its full poten­tial. For­tu­nate­ly, pro­duc­ing a few reels a week can be enough to lever­age their benefits. 

Stories vs. Reels: Audio

Regard­ing audio, you can add back­ground music to your sto­ries from the platform’s music library, but that’s pret­ty much it.

In the case of reels, back­ground tunes are also an option, but you can also add voiceover (also a car­ry­over from TikTok).

Instagram Reel Vs. Story: Drafting

Sto­ries are more about cap­tur­ing moments, so you can’t draft them, but you can use sched­ul­ing tools to pub­lish them auto­mat­i­cal­ly if you wish.

Reels can be saved as drafts on the app, giv­ing you more con­trol over the mate­r­i­al before it goes live. 

Stories vs. Reels: Hashtags

Sto­ries may have around ten hash­tags, which should be more or less enough, as a sto­ry lasts only 15 sec­onds. Focus on rel­e­vant hash­tags, espe­cial­ly if you are pro­mot­ing a prod­uct, ser­vice, spe­cial offer, or some­thing similar.

In the case of reels, the hash­tag lim­it is around 30. Also, users can search reels pub­licly via hash­tags, so using the right tags may help you raise aware­ness and gain new followers. 

Reels vs. Stories: Placement

Your sto­ries are only shared with the peo­ple who fol­low you, as they are attached to your pro­file image. Not that peo­ple who won’t fol­low you can’t be able to watch your sto­ries (espe­cial­ly when your pro­file is pub­lic), but they can’t search for them as they would for reels via hashtags.

Reels have a ded­i­cat­ed tab on IG, and users can tap on it to see the video mate­r­i­al you have to offer. As men­tioned above, they are also search­able, mak­ing them eas­i­er to gar­ner a larg­er viewership. 

Stories vs. Reels: User Engagement 

Sto­ries make brand engage­ment a breeze as they are eas­i­ly acces­si­ble to your fol­low­ers but make rais­ing aware­ness a bit more chal­leng­ing. For­tu­nate­ly, the depth of the engage­ment makes up for the weak reach.

To get the most out of your sto­ries, you can always offer dis­counts, make polls, ask ques­tions, link to impor­tant pages, and more. 

Reels are stronger in terms of over­all stan­dard engage­ment, as view­ers can com­ment, like, and so on. Also, you can post reels as sto­ries, mak­ing them ide­al to max­i­mize both engage­ment and reach potential. 

Instagram Reels Vs. Stories: Getting The Most Out of Engagement 

Both of these are valu­able tools and have sim­i­lar pur­pos­es: com­mu­ni­cat­ing to your audience. 

Sto­ries are most­ly pri­vate con­tent that engages with your most loy­al fol­low­ers, while reels are pub­lic posts that can attract even new, poten­tial followers. 

So, how do you turn the dif­fer­ences between sto­ries and reels to your advan­tage? Below are a few great tips. 

Use Reels for Boosting Overall Engagement 

Reels are supe­ri­or when it comes to over­all engage­ment. They also have a stronger Google search inter­est than sto­ries. Reels are also repur­pos­able as sto­ries, and the entire com­mu­ni­ty on IG can find them.

Use Reels To Get Followers and Going Viral

As men­tioned, reels can be dis­cov­ered by non-fol­low­ers as well, and they can poten­tial­ly grow your Insta­gram base. 

Need­less to say, because they can be post­ed almost any­where, they also have a huge poten­tial to go viral. 

Use Stories for Product Promotion

Cap­i­tal­ize on your users’ inter­est in your brand and use sto­ries to pro­mote your ser­vices and prod­ucts. If that’s the case, don’t make things too sales‑y, but show the ben­e­fits of your ser­vices and prod­ucts. Sto­ries are also inter­ac­tive, so leave a link they can vis­it and encour­age them to repost for a spe­cial dis­count and more.

Use Stories to Maintain Your Base

Sto­ries are great for keep­ing your exist­ing fol­low­ers engaged. When­ev­er post­ing a sto­ry, tar­get your fol­low­ers with a more per­son­al­ized pre­ci­sion to build a stronger con­nec­tion. Make sure to encour­age inter­ac­tion with offers, timers, ques­tions, polls, etc.

Wrapping it Up

In the grand scheme of things, both sto­ries and reels serve the pur­pose of boost­ing engage­ment on your IG chan­nel. Both give com­pa­nies pre­cise tools to expand their fol­low­er base, improve their brand­ing, and even build social proof.

On that note, if you want to learn more about the ben­e­fits of these fea­tures, feel free to sched­ule an appoint­ment with us today.