Social Media Templates

Social media templates for Instagram posts, stories and carousels

Anyone who has run a brand account knows the hard part is not the first post. It is the fortieth, put together on a Thursday evening by whoever has time, in whatever app they have open. Feed posts, stories and carousels each crop differently and get read differently, and after a few months the account risks looking like five different people made it. Usually, five different people did.

A template pack can fix that in the least glamorous way — which is also the way that works. Somebody with a designer's eye decides the type sizes, margins, color roles and photo crops once, and everyone after that fills in the blanks. A founder can post a client testimonial in ten minutes, and it still looks like the brand.

For a designer, a pack is also a hand-off tool. You can set up a client's social look in Photoshop or InDesign, and their team can keep posting from Canva or Affinity, because most packs here come in three matching versions. The layouts line up across apps, so nothing breaks when the work changes hands.

What is in a typical pack

• Feed posts for announcements, products, quotes and testimonials.
• Stories for promotions, polls, countdowns and behind-the-scenes content.
• Carousels, including seamless ones where one image runs across several slides.
• LinkedIn and portfolio layouts in a few packs, for personal branding and B2B accounts.

Choosing by niche

Many packs are written for one industry, with placeholder text and image crops that fit it. That saves time even if you change every word, because the structure already matches the content you will publish.

• Business, strategy and consulting
• Beauty, skincare and wellness
• Real estate and car rental
• Events, podcasts and education
• Fashion and personal branding
• Pet care, food, travel and sport

Layout details that matter on Instagram

Most problems with social templates come from the platform rather than the design. Check a few details before a pack goes into use:

• The profile grid crops posts. Since early 2025 the profile grid shows posts as vertical 3:4 tiles, so the sides of square posts and the top and bottom of 4:5 posts are cut off in the grid. Keep headlines and faces near the center.
• Stories have covered zones. The profile bar at the top and the reply field at the bottom cover part of a 9:16 story, so keep text and buttons away from those edges.
• Carousels are read swipe by swipe. The first slide has to work on its own in the feed, and each next slide should carry one idea. Seamless carousels need the image to continue exactly across slide edges, so do not move elements that cross a seam.
• Text is read on a phone. Body text that looks fine on a desktop preview is often too small on a screen; check every layout at actual phone size before posting.