Posted by Just when we know how to keep our Instagram accounts active and engaging, Instagram comes up with new features. When we learn to create a perfect reel, Instagram fidgets with how their algorithm works.
Amongst all Instagram features, Instagram Highlights go unnoticed or are less frequently used on Instagram.
The idea of bringing highlights to Instagram was to extend the life of an Instagram story. Initially, Instagram stories would be up for 24 hours and then disappear. Now, they can go from 24 hours to perpetually sitting there on your profile through “Highlights”.
As a business, it’s important to keep your Instagram feed, stories, and reels on point, but, it’s also equally important to focus on other features like Instagram bio, hashtags, contact, and highlights.
Now that we know what highlights are, let’s look at how to-
- Create highlights.
- Get creative with highlights.
- Use highlights to grow your business.
How to create Instagram Highlights?
You can create highlights in two different ways. One is from your Instagram profile and the other is via your Instagram story that you’ve recently published.
Let’s dig deeper and go through these methods step-by-step.
Instagram profile method—
- Go to your Instagram app
- You’ll see a big plus icon (+) with the text “New” under the “Story highlights” option.
- When you tap the + icon, you’ll be redirected to all your stories that you’ve shared in the past.
- You can now select the stories you would like to add to your Highlight.
- Once done, then tap the “Next” option at the top right.
- You will now see an option to add a Title and Edit Cover.
- Once you’ve edited the text, choose one of these stories as your Highlight cover, or you can also add an image from your phone gallery.
- Then tap Done.
From your recently published story —
- Go to the story you’ve recently published.
- You’ll see 4 options at the bottom right of your screen- Share, Promote, Highlight, and More.
- Tap on highlights.
- You’ll now see a big plus icon (+) with the text “New”
- Edit the Title and then tap “Add”
- You can also go back to your profile and tap on the highlight you’d want to edit the cover photo for.
- For this, once you tap the highlight, then tap on the “More” option → Edit Highlight → Edit cover → Add the cover from your gallery or from the other options you see.
- And you’re done 🙂
How to get creative with Highlights?
While creating highlights, the default cover image and title may seem unattractive for anyone visiting your Instagram profile. In order to make a viewer or your potential customer’s experience better, we suggest you put serious work into making Instagram Highlights for your business stand out.
Here are 3 ways to get creative with Highlights –
- Creating Highlight covers.
- Choosing a crisp and descriptive title.
- Picking a theme.
Creating Highlight covers
Creating highlight covers are super simple and also a neat way of putting things in order for someone looking for specific things on your profile.
You can either use Instagram’s “Create” feature within the Instagram story option or you can use an app like Canva that has ready templates for the same.
Here’s how you can create Instagram highlight covers using Canva –
- Go to Canva.com and lookup for “Instagram story highlight cover”
- You can either choose from the templates or you can tap on the Plus icon (+) to start from the scratch
- Once you pick a theme, you can add specific icons from these themes.
- You can also change the colours according to your brand colours or a colour that resonates best with your business.
- Once done, you can download these individually or all at once and then add them as your highlight covers using the steps above.
Choosing a crisp and descriptive title for your Highlights
If you use only icons as your highlight cover images, it’s super important to add text under each of these highlights to give the viewer some clarity and ease to tap through what they’re looking out for.
Here’s how this new Instagram business – The Baesic Collective picked highlight covers to match their logo and then added crisp titles for each of them.
Let’s also look at how Sephora added a colour pop to their Highlight cover icons and added the titles in capslock to make it eye-catchy and readable.
Picking a theme for your Highlights
While you can let your highlights be raw without a highlight cover, we strongly suggest you pick a theme or a mood board for them. Adding icons or text to your highlight cover images is the best way to make it more aesthetically pleasing. These Highlight covers could be your brand colours, like the ones on Bombay Shaving company’s Instagram page.
Or, you could also pick pastels, gradients and even a colour pop like Stasher bag.
How to use Instagram highlights to grow your business?
You can use the Instagram highlights feature to grow your business in more ways than your posts on feed and captions on them.
Let’s look at different ways and business that use their highlights on Instagram to grow –
Freebies ( Alicia Souza)
Who doesn’t love free stuff?
If you are a business online or offline, freebies are always a good way to make someone smile and come back for more 😛
Adding these freebies to your highlight makes a viewer stay longer, look forward to benefiting more and gets them to dig deeper into what the business is about.
Here’s how Illustrator Alicia who curates cute stuff at Aliciasouza.com outpours freebies every once in a while in her stories and then adds them to the highlights –
Reviews (Brightside Journal)
When a viewer or a potential customer accidentally comes across your profile, they’re more likely to tap the “Review Highlight” to read through the reviews you’ve posted over time.
This not only builds more reasons to buy your product, but it also leaves a sense of confidence to invest in a product or service.
Let’s look through some beautiful bright siders sharing their reviews about The Brightside Journal.
Affiliate Program (Crowdfire)
If you have an affiliate or a referral program, you can share details about it on Instagram stories.
Once done, you can save these as a Highlight for everyone who visits your page.
This way, if an existing customer introduces someone to your business, or anybody who signs up for your affiliate program promotes your business, it’s going to help you grow 🙂
Let’s look at how Crowdifre – A Social Media Management Tool shares more on their affiliate program in a super easy to understand and fun way!
New launch (Dot & Key)
We’ve done this before, shared posts from our feed to our Instagram stories, used Instagram features to create fun stories to make an announcement!
Imagine all of those efforts to only let it vanish after 24 hours?
The product that is here to stay needs to be introduced to everyone who lands up on the Instagram page.
This is where creating a highlight of the new product you’ve launched works well.
You can add it with tiny details of the product, making it a nice way for someone to flip through.
Here’s how Dot & Key, a skincare brand takes us through their newly launched serum –
What are you selling? (Theobroma Patisserie)
Adding images of your products, a rate card or a menu to your highlights makes it easier for a potential customer to look through the products or services you offer.
It also helps them to make quick purchase decisions, take screenshots, discuss and connect with you to place an order as and when they’d like to.
Having this as your highlight also makes way for clarity in offerings and eases the pre-sales communication for a business owner. This is because all the details are available in the Instagram Highlights.
Let’s look at how this patisserie in India shares an updated menu in their highlights as and when they revise it. Here’s the latest one –
Bonus Highlight Ideas
Behind the Scenes– Raw content, like behind the scenes (BTS) is a great way to take your users through the real situation back at your warehouse, your manufacturing unit or your packaging space. This helps to build a stronger with your customer.
Meet the Team– This highlight is of your team members involved in the entire process from product ideation, production, promotions and to delivering it to your users.
Sharing more about your team members is a candid way of making personal connections with your viewers.
How To’s – This could be simple clips of “How to place an order” on your website or a fun “DIY” to try out and so on.
Other ideas are highlights with– Discount codes and coupons, QnA or FAQs, Promote your blog, Content educating your users, Fun Facts, Quotes or Memes.
That’s it, folks! 🙌
If you know of any more Highlight ideas, Let me know in the comments below 😁
With Crowdfire, you can find curated content, schedule your posts, engage with your audience, deep-dive into analytics and create custom reports. Try it for free.
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