Branded Story Template Image Prompt for Coaches

You want your Instagram stories to look like you, not like the same free template pack every other coach downloaded. But opening a design tool, matching your hex codes, and lining up a clean background eats half an hour you don’t have.

These instagram story templates for coaches start one step earlier: instead of hunting for a template, you generate an on-brand 9:16 background in your exact colors, with a deliberate empty zone for your text and stickers. You give the AI your niche, your palette, and what the story is for, and it writes you a clean image prompt to paste into any image model. By the end of this page you’ll also understand why the prompt is built this way, so your next one is even better.

When to use this

• You post stories regularly and want a consistent, branded look without paying for template packs.
• You need a backdrop for a Q&A sticker, a poll, a quote, or a “swipe up” link.
• You’re tired of backgrounds that fight with your text instead of framing it.
• You want every story to reinforce your brand colors so people recognize you in the feed.

The prompt

Copy this whole block into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini:

You are an expert brand designer and AI image-prompt engineer who specializes in social media graphics for coaches. Your job is to write a single, ready-to-paste image-generation prompt that produces an on-brand Instagram/Facebook story BACKGROUND (vertical 9:16).

Before writing, ask me up to 3 clarifying questions if anything below is unclear. Otherwise, proceed.

CONTEXT
- My niche: {{NICHE}}
- My brand colors: {{BRAND_COLORS}}
- The feel/mood my brand should give off: {{BRAND_FEEL}}
- What this story background is for: {{STORY_PURPOSE}}
- Where I need clear, uncluttered space for text or stickers: {{TEXT_SPACE}}

TASK
Write ONE detailed image-generation prompt I can paste into an image model (DALL-E, Midjourney, Gemini, or similar) that creates a story BACKGROUND, not a finished poster. The prompt you write must specify:
1. A 9:16 vertical aspect ratio for Instagram/Facebook stories.
2. My exact brand colors as the dominant palette.
3. A clean, deliberately empty zone in the area I named, so I can add my own text and stickers in the app.
4. A visual style that matches my brand feel.
5. Soft, even lighting and a subtle texture or gradient, so the background reads as premium and not flat.

CONSTRAINTS
- The image must contain NO text, NO words, NO letters, and NO logos (I will add those myself).
- Keep it simple and uncluttered; this is a backdrop, not a busy illustration.
- No stock-photo clichés (no handshakes, no lightbulbs, no generic arrows).
- Avoid faces, since they distract from my message and stickers.

OUTPUT
Return:
1. The final image prompt in a single code block, ready to copy.
2. One sentence on where to place my text once the image is generated.
3. Two short style variations I could try instead (one bolder, one more minimal).

How to customize it

Replace the five {{VARIABLES}} before you send it:

No hex codes yet? Just describe the colors in words (“earthy green and cream”). The prompt still works; hex codes simply make the match tighter.

See it in action (full example)

Here is the exact prompt, filled in for a nutrition coach. This is the whole input, nothing hidden:

You are an expert brand designer and AI image-prompt engineer who specializes in social media graphics for coaches. Your job is to write a single, ready-to-paste image-generation prompt that produces an on-brand Instagram/Facebook story BACKGROUND (vertical 9:16).

Before writing, ask me up to 3 clarifying questions if anything below is unclear. Otherwise, proceed.

CONTEXT
- My niche: nutrition coaching for busy professionals
- My brand colors: deep forest green (#1F3D2B), warm cream (#F4EFE6), soft gold accent (#C9A227)
- The feel/mood my brand should give off: calm, premium, grounded, a little editorial
- What this story background is for: a weekly Q&A sticker prompt where people ask me nutrition questions
- Where I need clear, uncluttered space for text or stickers: the middle third, so my question sticker and a short headline both fit

TASK
Write ONE detailed image-generation prompt... [rest of the prompt unchanged]

And here is the complete output the model returns:

A couple of quick checks before I write it:

1. Do you want the gold used as a thin accent only, or as small decorative shapes too? (I’ll assume a thin accent.)
2. Portrait phone-screen 9:16 at 1080×1920, correct? (Assuming yes.)
3. Any objects allowed, like soft botanical leaves, or do you prefer a pure abstract gradient? (I’ll include subtle botanical hints since it suits nutrition; tell me if you’d rather keep it abstract.)

Here’s your ready-to-paste image prompt:

Vertical 9:16 Instagram story background, 1080x1920. A calm, premium, editorial mood. Dominant palette of deep forest green (#1F3D2B) flowing into warm cream (#F4EFE6) as a soft, smooth top-to-bottom gradient, with a single thin soft-gold (#C9A227) accent line curving along the lower edge. Faint hand-drawn botanical leaf silhouettes in slightly darker green sit only in the top-left and bottom-right corners. The entire middle third of the frame is a clean, uncluttered cream area with gentle even lighting and a barely-there paper grain texture, deliberately left empty for text and stickers. No text, no words, no letters, no numbers, no logos, no people, no faces. Minimal, elegant, high-end wellness brand aesthetic. Soft diffused lighting, subtle film grain, no harsh shadows. --ar 9:16

Place your headline and Q&A sticker in the empty middle third; the corners frame them without crowding.

Two variations to try: – Bolder: Make the forest green the full background and use the cream as a single soft rounded panel in the middle third, so your text sits on a clean card with gold trim. – More minimal: Drop the botanical leaves entirely and use only a smooth two-tone green-to-cream gradient with a faint grain. Nothing but color and space.

Paste the code block into your image model, generate, then drop your headline and sticker into the empty middle third. Two minutes, on-brand, done.

Why this works

Three LLM principles are doing the heavy lifting here. Learn them and every prompt you write gets better:

1. Role priming. The opening line (“You are an expert brand designer and AI image-prompt engineer”) tells the model which slice of its knowledge to draw from. “Make me a story background” pulls from the bland average of the internet; naming a specialist role pulls from the language designers actually use, like palette, negative space, and aspect ratio. Always assign a role.
2. Specificity in, specificity out. An image model can only honor what you name. “Nice colors” gives you a guess; deep forest green (#1F3D2B) and warm cream (#F4EFE6) give you your colors. This prompt forces the specifics, niche, exact hex, mood, and the precise zone to keep clear, so the result is yours, not generic. The quality of the image is capped by the quality of your {{BRAND_COLORS}} and {{TEXT_SPACE}}.
3. Constraints are quality control. The “NO text, NO logos, no faces, no stock-photo clichés” lines aren’t filler. Each one kills a common failure mode: image models love to scribble fake garbled letters, and you don’t want them, you’re adding real text in the app. Telling the model what NOT to do is as powerful as telling it what to do. And the “ask me up to 3 clarifying questions first” line lets it resolve gaps (gold accent vs. gold shapes) by asking instead of guessing, which is the biggest fix for off-brand AI images.

Do this now

1. Copy the prompt above into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
2. Replace the five variables with your real niche, colors, feel, story purpose, and text zone.
3. Send it. If it asks clarifying questions, answer them honestly.
4. Paste the image prompt it returns into your image model, generate, and add your text in the middle third. Post it today.

Pro tips

• Always include hex codes. Color words drift; “#1F3D2B” does not. Pull your exact codes from your logo or website once and reuse them forever.
• Generate a set, not a single. Run it three or four times to build a matching pack: one for quotes, one for Q&A, one for polls. Consistency is what makes a brand recognizable.
• Protect the text zone. If the model keeps filling the middle, repeat “the middle third must stay empty and clean” in the image prompt. Restating a constraint strengthens it.
• Save your winning image prompt. Once you find a background you love, keep that exact prompt and just tweak the color or mood for future stories.

Related

• Personal Brand Visual Prompt for Instagram (Image AI)
• Instagram Feed Visual Pack Prompt for Coaches
• Coach Social Visual System: Auto-Generate a Full Week of Posts
• Coaching Brand Pattern & Background Generator