The ins and outs of Instagram Highlights

Written By Erica Hartwick

BY BIG CAT CREATIVE
 

 
 


Wahoo, new Instagram feature!

Yes, Instagram has an awesome new feature! We all love Instagram stories, right? Well now, you can “highlight” whatever story you please, and keep it on your profile as a feature until you want to remove it! How cool is that? Especially for us business owners.

The easiest way to set these up is to post series of videos/images to your story that you want to highlight, then once they’re uploaded, click the little heart on the bottom right to add to highlights

You can also add a highlight by clicking on the “+ New Highlight” in your profile. This will show you a list of your "Archived Stories". This is a new feature that Instagram rolled out with the update, yup, Instagram is archiving your stories now! You can turn this off, but it's super handy if you want to go back and highlight a story from a few days ago!

 
 

Super simple, right?

Here’s some tips and tricks that might be useful to you about Instagram Highlights:

 

Editing your highlight cover image

  • The first highlight you add automatically becomes your highlight cover image. If you want to edit your highlight cover image, head to your highlighted story and click “More” in the bottom right hand corner. Here you have the option to “Edit Highlight”. In this section you can "Edit Cover". When you’re choosing a cover, remember that you can pinch/zoom/drag to reposition the cover how you want it.

 
 

Naming your highlights

  • You have the option to name your highlights, but because the area is small, your highlight name will cut off somewhere between 8-10 letters, so keep your highlight names short and sweet! You can change the cover name by heading to "More" in the bottom right corner of your highlight. The picture below shows how your names get cut off on your profile.

Adding and removing frames from your highlight

  • In the same menu (bottom right “More” button, “Edit Highlight”) you can also remove frames by unchecking them and add frames from the Archive tab (top right) - this accesses your archived story posts, so remember it has to be on your story before it can be highlighted.

 
 

 TIP: You can only easily see 4 highlights across your profile, so keep your most important ones at the beginning of the highlight reel.

TIP: If you want to change the order of you highlights, it's not super easy. When you add a new highlight it ends up at the end of your highlight reel. What you'll need to do is re-upload the images/videos to your regular story in the order that you want them in, and then re-add them to your highlight. You can't just re-add them from archives as it will just stay in the same order. #annoying!  

So now you know how to use them, what can you really do with them?

This is such an exciting feature for business owners, because these story highights are front and center in your profile, they really have prime realestate. Potential customers are going to see these before they even see your feed, so let’s make it something great that they want to see.

First and foremost (as a designer I am obliged to say this) make sure you put some thought into how your highlights will look. Please make your highlight board covers cohesive and on brand! I understand that you can have some leeway with regular stories, because they disappear after 24 hours, but these highlights stay around as long as you want them there. This means that they are essentially a part of your curated Instagram feed, so you need to treat them that way. Along with being cohesive and on brand, we want them to be eye catching so people want to click on them.

Enough about what they look like, let's talk about what you can use them for.

  • What do you want people to know about your business? I specialize in Branding and Website Design, so I have examples of previous work so people can get a quick view of what I do and my aesthetic.

  • Another great option is to display all of your Freebies/Opt Ins/Blog Posts. The content that you’re continuously putting out there for your audience that tends to disappear down the feed, and doesn’t get as many views as you’d really like. Remember to clearly direct people to the freebies or to your opt in information.

  • Share ‘behind the scenes’. People love to watch a day in the life of what you do, or where you work. It helps them to get to know and trust you. Social media is all about putting yourself out there and bringing a real human aspect to your brand these days, this is a great way to do it.

  • You could promote an event or launch coming up and build potential attendees and customers excitement for it.

  • Sharing recent updates and what’s been happening in your business is great for showing people what’s going on.

  • Tutorials, tips and tricks. You can create highlights full of great content, infographics and little videos. These are great ways to target your ideal audience and get them following.

  • Sales! Have a sale that’s running for a limited time? Put all of the deets in your highlights! Remember to make the highlight cover eye catching, and to delete it when the sale is over.

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Erica Hartwick http://www.bigcatcreative.com
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