How to Use Tier Lists as a Repeatable Instagram Story Format

Tier lists are everywhere on Instagram now, well outside the gaming corner of the internet they came from. Trader Joe’s fan accounts have been ranking seasonal snacks for years. Tier lists started life on fighting game forums as Super Smash Bros character rankings, made a long detour through Reddit and TierMaker, and somewhere around 2021 they crossed over into accounts that have nothing to do with games. The free Tier List generator inside the Storrito Toolkit will help you build one in a couple of minutes.

The reason the format expanded beyond its origins is that it works on Instagram Stories better than almost anything else you can build that fast. A ranked grid is an opinion you can share without writing a sentence, which is great for a primarily visual medium, like Instagram Stories. The format works as a weekly anchor for accounts that need a Story idea they can rerun without it going stale.

In this article

• Why some tier list topics earn reshares and others go nowhere.
• The Storrito Tier List generator, end to end.
• The follow-up Story slide that decides whether a tier list lands.
• The one rule I break almost every time I post a tier list of my own.

Why Tier Lists Travel Further Than Polished Story Posts on Instagram

The tier list works because it invites disagreement. A ranked grid invites the viewer to think “you got that wrong” and then to publish their own version with the items rearranged. That is reshare behavior, and reshares are the only Story signal that entices new viewers to look at the original post.

I have watched the difference play out across a few accounts I help with. Same niche, same audience, similar effort budget. The illustrated single-slide post draws compliments and a handful of saves. The tier list version draws screenshot reshares for two or three days and pulls a long tail of new followers off the back of those reshares. Creators in other niches are picking up the same playbook, which is how outfit tier lists ended up dominating the Oscars FYP this year with creators stacking red-carpet footage against best-dressed and worst-dressed grids.

Tier List Topics That Earn Reshares Versus Topics That Get Buried

The topics that work on Instagram Story tier lists follow a pattern. They sit inside your niche, they have widely held opinions, and they leave room for at least one ranking that will surprise the viewer. A coffee shop ranks common espresso drinks and puts the flat white in C-tier. A travel account ranks European cities for a long weekend and demotes Paris on purpose. A fitness coach ranks protein sources by ratio of price to grams of protein. A beauty creator ranks drugstore mascaras and puts the cult favorite in B-tier, knowing the comments will arrive.

Topics that fail are corporate or self-congratulatory. Ranking your own products in tiers is not a tier list, it is an ad with extra steps. Ranking generic categories nobody has an opinion about, like “ways to stay productive”, produces no reshares because there is nothing to disagree with. The Trader Joe’s snack tier list works because every shopper has feelings about the snacks. Your version works for the same reason or it does not work at all.

The other failure mode is being too neutral. The tier list works when the ranking is plausibly wrong. If every item is in the tier the audience expects, the slide is forgettable. The point is to provoke a screenshot, not to be polite or correct.

Building a Tier List in the Storrito Toolkit

The Storrito tier list generator is completely free and does not require a signup, though you'll be able to find it quickly and easily from your Storrito account.

Pick a starter topic or enter your own, add up to twenty four items, and choose between three, four, or five tiers. The tier labels are editable, so an account that wants Best, Good, Skip instead of S, A, B can run the format in its own language. Color palettes include rainbow, warm, mint, Instagram, blush, and monochrome, which means the slide matches the rest of your grid without manual color tweaks.

The export is a 1080 by 1920 PNG sized for Stories, and there is a shareable link option that lets viewers create their own ranked version of the same items.

Compared to other tier list generators, the Storrito tier list generator tool is sized for Stories from the start, and the shareable link points back at a generator your audience can actually use rather than a stitched-together image.

The Follow-Up Story Slide a Tier List Needs to Go Viral

It's really easy to forget a follow-up slide when you use a tier list. But part of the fun of participating in something like a tier list is to revel in the juicy insights on what others have shared or commented.

Schedule a follow-up Story in Storrito for thirty to sixty minutes after the tier list goes live. Use a question sticker that says “tell me which one I got wrong” or a poll sticker on the most controversial item from the list. The follow-up tells viewers explicitly that disagreement is welcome, and it gives anyone who already had an opinion a place to put it without having to compose a DM cold.

Follow-ups convert the silent screenshot reshares into actual two-way conversations, and conversations are what the algorithm uses to decide whether to push the next post. The mechanic behind the lift is the same one that runs through every interactive Story sticker pattern that drives engagement on Instagram, which is that two-way signals carry more weight than one-way ones.

The Rule I Break When I Post a Tier List

The rule I tell other people is to keep the list to twelve items or fewer so the slide reads cleanly on a phone. The rule I break, almost every time I post one of my own, is putting one ranking in a tier I genuinely think is wrong, just to see who notices. So far the people who notice are the people who eventually become the most engaged followers.

FAQ on the Storrito Tier List Generator

Is the tier list tool free?

Yes. You can find it here, no signup or payment required.

How many tiers can I use?

Three, four, or five tiers per list. Five is the common default. Three works for shorter rankings where you want to force a sharper opinion.

Can I rename the tier labels?

Yes. The default S, A, B, C, D labels are editable, so you can use whatever names match the way your audience already talks about the category.

What aspect ratio does the export use?

1080x1920, which is the standard Stories format and also works for TikTok, Reels covers, and other vertical Story slots without resizing.