First Impressions are the best impressions, right? This applies to any user who may stumble upon your Instagram account too. You want to dazzle them at first glance and what better way to do that than by using Instagram story highlights! After all, it is the first thing they see when they come in. So here is an ultimate guide on Instagram Story highlight to get you started!
What are Instagram Story highlights?
When Instagram started, the stories you post on your profiles only had a limited shelf time of 24 hours. But in subsequent years, Instagram rolled out a feature called Instagram Story Highlights where you can make your stories a permanent staple of your profile by marking them as highlights.
With Instagram stories’ reach rising each year, it is a no-brainer to make them a part of your marketing strategy.
And they are hard to miss too. We are sure, you all will be familiar with these cute little bubbles!
Another major pro of highlights is that you can segregate them. If your brand has multiple products, you cannot possibly segregate the posts you make for each product. And since there is no limit to the amount of highlights you can have, go ahead and create as many as your heart desires. This allows the user to pursue any part of your business they are most interested in.
Seems worth spending time on right? It definitely is! So, let us tell you how to create these cute mini-pages and how you can effectively leverage them for your business. Let’s get going!
How to Add Story Highlights on Instagram?
If you are thinking, about how to put highlights on Instagram without a story, the simple answer is you cannot!
An Instagram story highlight can be created in 2 ways: Either using a new story that is currently live or by using an old story that is in the archive.
That is right, even if your story is not active at the moment, it can still be added to an existing or new highlight. Let us go through the steps on how to do it:
1. Creating a Highlight from an Active Story
To highlight an active story, start by creating a new story. Once the story is live, go through the following steps:
- Open the story and see the Highlight option in the bottom right corner of the screen.
- You can choose an existing highlight or create a new one. When creating a new one, you will have to name the highlight.
And that is it. Your story is added to the Highlight section. You can go check your profile and you will see these highlights below the profile section.
2. Creating a Highlight from an Archived Story
To highlight an archived story, you can follow these steps:
- Go to your profile and click the three-dash button in the top left corner.
- Hit the Archive button in the Settings.
- Select the story you want to add to the highlights.
- Hit the highlight button in the bottom right corner
- Click the highlight you want to add this story to.
How to Make Your Highlights Aesthetically Appealing?
Aesthetics have become a huge part of Instagram. So much so that people make the effort to color-code their feed, plan their layouts, and do so much more. Therefore, having a nice aesthetic-looking Instagram feed has become the norm and Highlights are not exempt from this.
There are many instances where we can see people having custom-designed, visually appealing Instagram story highlight covers that go with the rest of their Instagram feed. Such as these:
You can design your own Instagram story highlight covers or there are many pre-made templates for you to customize. Many Shopify stores also sell highlight covers for different niches you can purchase and utilize.
Either way, you can look into making your highlight covers aesthetic and in alignment with your brand design guidelines.
Eight Ways You Can Use Instagram Highlights to Boost Engagement:
Since we are putting so much effort into making our Instagram Highlights, we might as well look into how we can use this to boost engagement for your socials and your business. So here are eight ways in which you can successfully utilize highlights:
1. Make an Online Product Catalogue
If you have a business with multiple products in your inventory, then Highlights are a great way to display them in one single place. When an Instagram story highlight viewer wants to check out your products, they can view them within the app itself and do not have to venture out.
Having these products in the story alone will be short-lived. In posts, they might get lost and not catch the attention of the user. But highlights are rarely missed.
This is one example by Richard Mille, a famous watch brand where they have made a separate highlight for each one of their product.
You can also list all the products in a single highlight, like this example by Chamberlain Coffee.
2. Create a Guide For New Comers
When a new Instagram story highlights viewer stumbles across your profile, looking to know what your offerings are then oftentimes they might feel lost. They might gather snippets of details about your business, which may or may not intrigue them.
To avoid this, you can take your narrative into your own hands and create a highlight that says “Start here!”. You can then guide them through a series of posts and stories where you tell them about your business.
This way, People listen to your business and brand story your way!
3. Show Behind-the-Scenes of Your Business
Brands being just brands has been out of trend for some time now. These days, consumers want to see the person behind the brand. They want to see your brand story and genuinely get to know your business. So, showing what happens behind the screen can humanize your brand in their eyes.
4. Answer Commonly Asked Questions
Have you ever noticed a pattern in the questions consumers ask you in DMs?
There may be some questions that get repeatedly asked. Put these questions and answers in your highlights for people to easily access and appease their queries.
Gisou used a similar strategy, where they answered their customer queries through a highlight.
5. Display your Happy Customers
Testimonials! A great way to toot your own horn without coming off as a show-off. It is also an amazing way to show the credibility of your business.
There are many ways to display testimonials. You can show the video recordings of happy customers sent your way or you can share screenshots of the reviews that you received. This way you can earn the trust of new-comers pretty easily.
Byoma, a skincare brand has used this strategy to display the review of their products in an engaging video format. They have also cleverly included a link for purchasing the product within the same video.
6. Tell the Story Behind Your Brand
When compared to businesses without a brand, businesses that have a strong identity behind them perform well. When people learn who you are and why you do what you do, they have a feeling of wanting to help you and your business. This is another reason why you should build your business in public and take people along the ride.
Highlights are a great way to convey your brand story coherently. Plus, highlights are in a unique position that is hard to miss.
7. Introduce Your Team
This is another thing that will boost the likeability factor of your business among your customers. Show the fun, day-to-day elements of your employee’s work time, make interactive events that they participate in, and so on. This helps boost the morale and teamwork between your employees and it is also engaging for the user to see them. Thus making this a win-win situation.
8. Talk about the social causes you support
Customers love when brands have a social responsibility and are active advocates of good causes. Showcasing this aspect of your business makes people want to trust your business. Who knows, maybe your consumers also might start contributing to the same charities and be a part of the greater good.
Conclusion
Social media has revolutionized the way businesses market themselves. People have constantly utilized these opportunities and creatively put themselves out there and made the best of socials. Similarly, you can also use Instagram highlights in a way that best suits your business and brings value to your brand.
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to what you should post or not post on highlights. It all depends on what you are willing to do. So create a strategy that will work for your business, generate high-quality stories per this plan, and finally execute!
FAQ:
Instagram story highlights is a feature that allows you to organize new and past stories and make them a permanent staple on your profile. Because of its prime location in your profile, it is a great way to immediately grab your viewer’s attention.
To create Instagram story highlights, follow these steps:
If it is a new story, then:
1. Go to the story that you want to save and click the “Highlight” button at the bottom.
2. Then click on the highlight that you want to save it to. Or you can create a new one and save it to that.
Suppose it is an old story, then:
1. You can go to the Archive section in your settings and select the story that you want to archive.
2. Then you can add it to a Highlight by clicking on the “Highlight” button at the bottom.
Yes, you can change the cover of your Instagram Highlight and add any image from your gallery. You can also design your own Highlights cover or you can buy pre-made ones from online stores.
