Social Rocket
Instagram Add Yours started as a simple interactive sticker: an account posts a prompt, and other users can respond with their own story or reel.
At the end of 2023, Instagram extended the principle with Add Yours Templates. These allow you to build reusable story templates from text, images and GIFs, which other users can complement with their own content.
2026 Add Yours remains a useful format for community content – provided the prompt is simple enough that people actually take part.
What is the Add Yours sticker?
With Add Yours, a story or reel becomes an open prompt.
Examples:
- "Show your workspace"
- "Your favourite product from us"
- "Your photo from this summer"
- "What your setup looks like"
- "Your first day at …"
Anyone who sees the sticker can create their own response. This creates a chain of posts around the same prompt.
What are Add Yours Templates?
Add Yours Templates go one step further.
When creating a story, fixed elements such as:
- text,
- GIFs,
- images,
- graphic elements
can be defined as a template.
Other users then adopt this structure and add their own content.
This is especially useful for formats where the basic visual idea should stay the same while each community member creates a personal version.
How to create an Add Yours template
The exact app layout may change, but the principle stays the same:
- create a new story,
- place the desired text, GIFs or images,
- select Add Yours Templates in the sticker menu,
- decide which elements remain part of the template,
- publish the story.
Followers can then open the template and add their own version.
Good brand use cases
Add Yours works best when participation is quick and personal.
Product in everyday life
"Show where you use our product today."
Event or community moments
"Your picture from the festival / store opening / meetup."
Before and after
Particularly for fitness, beauty, design or home projects.
Personal recommendations
"Your favourite song", "your go-to order", "your setup".
Challenges
A clear, easy-to-understand prompt can bring several creators and customers into the same content idea.
Why complicated templates are usually worse
The more work a response requires, the fewer people take part.
A good Add Yours prompt should ideally:
- be immediately understandable,
- work with content already in the camera roll,
- not be too private,
- not need lengthy explanations,
- work visually even without a brand logo.
Community content cannot be forced. The template only lowers the barrier.
Add Yours is not a guaranteed reach hack
The feature can encourage participation, but it guarantees neither virality nor additional distribution.
For brands, the goal should therefore not be "outsmarting the algorithm", but rather:
- making the community visible,
- collecting UGC,
- establishing recurring formats,
- activating creators and customers together.
For larger creator collaborations, the Meta Creator Marketing Hub is now the more professional level. How joint posts can perform is also shown in the current Instagram collab study.
Add Yours fits into Instagram's broader collaboration strategy
Already 2023 Instagram combined several collaborative formats:
- collab posts,
- music in carousels,
- Add Yours in reels,
- later Add Yours Templates in stories.
This gradually turned the classic single post into a format in which several accounts and communities can take part.
Our updated overview of Instagram music and collabs places this development in context.
Conclusion
Add Yours is 2026 no longer a new feature – but it remains a good tool for low-threshold community content.
The best templates are not the most elaborate. They give a clear creative direction and leave enough room for users to make something of their own.