Do you manage both a business and a personal Instagram account? And are differences between the two interfaces driving you crazy? I want to share one critical difference that made me bonkers for a long time: where to find the Instagram Stories Archive for your personal account’s expired Stories. Your personal Stories aren’t lost, they’re hiding!
Stories Archive for business accounts
The Instagram Stories Archive in a business account is a snap to find, because it’s in a logical place: the Archive, symbolized by this little clock, found on the top left of your account’s profile page.
When you click the Archive icon, you get all the Stories you’ve ever posted on the account, organized by date. From here you can choose any Story and add it to a Highlight. Easy, right?
Stories Archive for personal accounts
For personal accounts, the Stories Archive is not so easy to find. I couldn’t find mine for a year! There’s a little clock symbol, but when I clicked it, the Archive was empty.
I checked my settings to make sure Stories were set to save to Archive, and it said they were.
Even Instagram Support was no help – they just tell you to look in the Archive.
So where are they?
I finally solved the mystery today, and found my “missing” Stories. They were in such an unintuitive place, I figured I can’t be the only one who needed to know.
Here’s where to find your Stories!
- Go to your personal account’s profile page.
- In Highlights, click New.
BAM! There they are!
I hope I’m not the only one who had trouble with this. I felt super-dumb when I figured it out. And for a year – A YEAR! – I only made Highlights for Stories on my personal account within the first 24 hours. After that, I couldn’t find them!
The moral to this story is, don’t feel bad if you don’t know how to do something on social media. These interfaces are not perfect, and they change all the time. Even frequent users like me get frustrated. Ask questions, and keep trying things. You might stumble on some knowledge you can share with others.
Now if you’ve now just found your past Stories for the first time, enjoy – it’s like finding a lost photo album! ?
Were you on a similar treasure hunt for your Stories? Tell me in the comments.
Want more social media tips and inspiration? Read our other blog posts.
Need help with social media for your optical business? Contact us.
Peggy is the founder of The Social Eye, a social media agency for optical businesses. She led social media efforts at ZEISS Vision US for 4 years, and prior to that created digital marketing for the tech and music industries. She has far too many pairs of eyeglasses, but can always find room for one more.