What is a Story mention on Instagram?

1. Take or choose the photo or video for your Story.
2. Type @ in a text box and start typing the username, then pick the right account from the suggestions. Or open the sticker tray and choose the mention sticker.
3. Place the mention where people will notice it, and share the Story as usual.

Instagram’s Help Center puts the limit at 20 people in each photo or video you share to your Story. A mention made while you build the Story shows the username on it with an underline, and anyone who can see the Story can tap it to open that profile, so a mention also works as a signpost to the other account.

Tip: Check the handle before you post. Two businesses can have nearly identical usernames, separated by a dot or an underscore, and only the account you actually tag gets the alert.

• A push notification telling them you mentioned them in your Story.
• A direct message from you that includes a preview of the Story. Instagram says the preview disappears from the message thread after 24 hours.
• The option to add your photo or video to their own Story, unless you turned off re-sharing for people you mention.

Resharing is how most people acknowledge a mention, and it puts your Story in front of their followers as well as yours. Do it promptly. Stories are only up for 24 hours, so the mention is time-limited for both of you.

You also control who can mention you in the first place. Instagram’s privacy settings let you narrow mentions, for example to people you follow, or stop them altogether. That’s a common fix for accounts that keep getting tagged by spam pages hoping to be noticed.

A customer who mentions your shop in their Story is recommending you to their own followers without being asked. It also opens a door: Meta’s messaging API counts a Story mention as one of the ways a conversation with a business can begin, and from then on the business has 24 hours to reply.

• Thank people in words that prove you looked: “That window-seat photo made our morning, thanks for tagging us.”
• Reshare the best ones, then add them to a Highlight such as “Reviews” so they outlast the 24 hours.
• Ask before using their photo anywhere else. Resharing to your Story is built into Instagram; a feed post, an ad or a printed menu needs their permission.
• If you add a reward, such as a code for their next visit, make it a thank-you after the fact rather than a condition for posting.

DMFast can reply to Story mentions automatically on Instagram professional accounts, so the thank-you goes out even when nobody is holding the phone. Each person gets a given auto-reply at most once a day, so a fan who tags you in five Stories in one evening isn’t sent the message five times.

Choose by what you want from the other account. A mention asks for attention today, a tag keeps the post in the Tagged section of their profile, and a collab shares one post’s audience between you.