Putting a plan
on your Story.

A Story is the best place to put a plan and the worst place to put a link. Instagram doesn’t unfurl link previews in Stories the way a chat does, so pasting a URL as text gets you nothing — a grey string nobody can tap. What works is an image people can read in two seconds, with a link sticker on top of it.

The Story, step by step

1. Make the plan and open Share. On the plan page, press 'instagram story'. WYA, mn? builds a 1080×1920 image of the plan — the right size for a Story, with the place, the time, how many spots are left, and a QR code.
2. Save the image. Press 'save the image'. On a phone this opens your share sheet; choose Save Image and it lands in your camera roll. The plan link is copied to your clipboard at the same time.
3. Post it and add the link. Open Instagram, start a new Story, and pick the image from your camera roll. Add a link sticker and paste the link that was copied. That sticker is what turns the Story from an announcement into something people can join.

A screenshot of the plan is not the plan. It has no link in it, so nobody can join.

That’s the single most common mistake, and it’s an expensive one: the Story gets seen, people are interested, and there is nowhere for that interest to go. Either add the link sticker or make sure the QR code is visible — WYA, mn? puts one on every Story image for exactly this reason, and it stays scannable even after Instagram recompresses the picture.

Why nobody can post it for you

No website can publish to your Instagram Story. There is no web API for it — not for us, not for anyone — so any product claiming to post to your Story from a browser is describing something that doesn’t exist. What is possible is everything up to the post: building the image at the right size, getting it into your camera roll, and putting the link on your clipboard so pasting it is one tap. That’s the flow above.

DMs and close friends

For a DM, paste the link rather than the image. Instagram does unfurl links in messages, so the plan arrives as a card with the place, the time and the spots left already visible — which converts far better than an image, because the recipient doesn’t have to tap to find out whether they care.

A close friends Story is usually the highest-converting surface of the lot. Fewer people see it, but they’re the ones who would actually come, and the plan reads as an invitation rather than an announcement.

What to write on it

Very little. The image already says what, where and when. The caption’s job is to say the thing the image can’t:

• “2 spots” — scarcity that’s true, because the plan enforces it.
• “leaving at 8, coming back late” — the logistics people are silently weighing up.
• “tap if you’re free” — a plain instruction beats a clever one.

Don’t ask “anyone want to come?” on the Story itself. That’s the question the plan exists to replace — you already said where you’ll be, and the sticker is the answer mechanism.

Timing

Post a same-day plan around when people check their phones and haven’t committed to anything yet: late afternoon for an evening plan, the night before for a morning one. A Story lasts 24 hours, which is roughly the useful life of a spontaneous plan anyway.

If a plan fills, post again saying it’s full. It sounds pointless and it isn’t — it’s the clearest possible signal that this works, and it’s usually what makes the next person make their own.

Everywhere else

Snapchat works the same way: save the image, post to your Story, and paste the link. In WhatsApp, X, Threads, Facebook and Reddit, just paste the link — all of them unfurl it properly. The share sheet on the plan page has a button for each and only shows the ones your device can actually complete. There’s more on that in how it works.