The complete guide to Instagram highlights

Instagram marketing helps businesses connect with their audience on a deeper level, share product information through visually appealing storytelling, and deliver an engaging customer experience. It’s no surprise that a whopping 60% of businesses surveyed by Birdeye consider Instagram mission-critical to their success. 

To reach a wider audience with Instagram, you must be active in Instagram Stories. The downside to Instagram stories is that they automatically disappear after 24 hours. 

So, what if you post great content there and want it to stay on your profile for more than 24 hours? In that case, you need Instagram highlights. Instagram’s story highlights feature allows you to keep important content front and center on your page without impacting their feed.

In this blog, you’ll learn what Instagram highlights are, how to set them up, and tips to leverage them.

What are Instagram highlights? 

Instagram highlights are curated stories you can feature on your page beyond the usual 24-hour time limit. The highlight covers are just below your picture and information and above your Instagram feed.

Usually, when someone visits an Instagram page, they see the most recent photo or reel the person or organization posted. If you post daily on social media, you’re also pushing valuable marketing content farther down your page with this practice. 

Instagram highlights offer the opportunity to keep the most important content at the top of your page itself. Instead of seeing just the latest Instagram posts from your business, Instagram users will also see your greatest Instagram posts.

Why are Instagram story highlights important? 

Instagram story highlights help businesses spread brand awareness, make users stay longer on their page, boost engagement rates, and more.

Human attention spans are short, so you must devise a way to impress your audience and position your brand as what they are looking for — as quickly as possible. 

By incorporating Instagram story highlights into your social media marketing strategy, you can: 

• Decide what people see first on your Instagram account: You can turn Instagram story highlights into a mini version of your website and curate helpful content for your audience here. 
• Raise brand awareness: The more memorable the first interaction is, the longer customers remember your brand. By curating relevant and on-brand content on Instagram story highlights, you help people understand your brand identity. 
• Make navigation easy: Use your story highlights to help followers and viewers find specific information. Create highlights for FAQs, events, products, locations, and more.
• Promote recent and relevant content: Highlights are the perfect spot to showcase your latest offers with ease. For instance, use Instagram highlights to keep a Christmas sale in the spotlight, and then swap it out for your next promotion once the festivities wrap up.

How to create an Instagram story highlight 

Adding Instagram highlights is the easiest on a mobile app because the Instagram desktop website has fewer features. So, it is best to use the Instagram app for iPhone or Android to do this. 

1. First, open the Instagram app and switch to your business’s Instagram profile by clicking on your profile picture in the bottom right corner. 

2. Next, click on your profile picture in the upper left corner of your Instagram page. This action lets you view your Instagram stories like an Instagram user does.

3. You can choose from the live story you want to add to Instagram highlights.  Click on the More option to access the menu. 

4. Select “highlight” from the menu.

5. The following screen will appear. Choose a new title for your highlight cover, up to fifteen characters long. With so few characters, you want to make the highlight title as straightforward as possible, using abbreviations if necessary. Simple categories like products, FAQs, or Locations work best.

6. Select “add,” and the following screen will appear.

7. The Instagram highlight cover will now appear on your Instagram profile. 

After creating your first highlight, you can add more by clicking on the “new” button beside your existing highlight(s). This option appears both on the mobile app and the Instagram website. You can make as many highlights as you want with up to one hundred live or archived stories each. 

Instagram story highlight covers

An Instagram story highlight cover is the picture that best represents the highlight category. It appears as the highlight icon on your photo, and it can be from an existing Instagram story or your camera roll. This feature allows you to use uniform icons, which you can crop and edit from the app.

How to add Instagram highlights covers? 

Instagram automatically chooses the first photo you add as your Instagram story highlight cover. However, you can change it. Add additional stories and cover options by repeating the process of creating an Instagram story highlight.

Then, choose an existing highlight to update the highlight cover.

From there, you can choose which story to use as the cover or choose from the files on your camera roll by clicking the photo icon.

How to edit Instagram highlights 

If you don’t like the highlight cover photo or the title, you can edit your Instagram Highlight in a few easy steps.

1. Select the highlight you wish to edit from your profile page.
2. Select “more” in the bottom right corner.

3. Select “edit highlight.”

4. You can select “edit cover” on this screen to choose a new cover photo. You can also change the highlight title just by writing a new one under “title,” you can even add and remove stories. 

10 ways to leverage Instagram highlights for your business

Now you know how to create a highlight for your business’s Instagram account, but you may still be wondering exactly how Instagram highlights can benefit your company’s social media campaign.

Here are ten ways you can use highlights to capture the attention of your target customers.

1. Highlight reviews

Make reviews readily accessible to Instagram users by grouping them together in a highlight. It may also attract the attention of consumers who wouldn’t usually sift through your feed trying to find customer testimonials. But if they’re so readily available, they may just look through them and get in touch.

For example, Author Sergio Troncoso curates reviews for his novel Nobody’s Pilgrim under the “Pilgrims” highlight. Similarly,  you can create Instagram highlights to demonstrate customer satisfaction for any product or service.

2. Highlight product/appointment links 

If you are a retail business, customers would want to know more about your products than look through your content. Creating a story highlight with easy-to-access product information, and service appointment links can help them fulfill their intent faster, leading to a better customer experience. 

My Bambino has created a highlight for each personalized product they sell. Instagram users can easily find what they’re looking for and browse product examples for piggy banks, step stools, jewelry boxes, and more, and then click on the included link when they’re ready to make a purchase.

3. User-generated content highlights

If you want to convince new customers that you are a brand that demands their trust, it is essential to showcase user-generated content. This helps build faith in your ability and improves the conversion rate. 

The Frozen Farmer has a highlight – “Our Fans,” which shows photos and stories their customers have tagged them in. This is a great way to let loyal customers do the marketing legwork for you. All you have to do is curate the content.

4. FAQs

Mint Mobile makes it easy for consumers considering switching to this telecommunication company to get more information. They use multiple Instagram Highlight marketing techniques. The “Truth” category has customer reviews, the “Promos” category tells you about their current promotions, and “Why Mint” is a mix of press releases, frequently asked questions, and statistics.

We appreciate this account’s ability to keep the highlights section simple and stick to the essential categories. While you can have an unlimited number of highlights, it’s unlikely that Instagram users will scroll through them all.

5. Highlight press features

Let the world know you’re helping the community, winning awards, and making your brand a household name. Bob’s Discount Furniture has an “Awards” highlight and a highlight dedicated to the “Bedzone Bash!” during which they gave away two hundred beds to kids in need.

All that good press is the first thing Instagram users see, giving consumers an excellent first impression and raising brand awareness.

6. Discount campaigns highlight

Live Nation is running a summer promotion where fans can get four tickets to see live music for $80. The Instagram highlight cover featuring a big “$80” makes it easy for consumers to find that information and for Live Nation to sell tickets.

When the promotion is over, they can easily delete the highlight.

7. Educational content highlight

Birdeye teaches local businesses everything they need to know about marketing and promotion through products, blog posts, and other means, like the “Biz Tips” Instagram highlight. We help the little man compete with the conglomerates.

8. Link to important posts 

Chewy uses its Instagram highlights to promote pet health and pet care articles on its website. By incorporating links in their Instagram content, they drive traffic to their website and consumers to their online store. 

Since Instagram doesn’t allow links in captions yet, this is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website. 

9. Spotlight influencer or celebrity endorsements

Covergirl has quite a few highlights, and one of them is labeled COVERGIRLS. This has information, reels, and photos featuring their current celebrity spokesperson, America Ferrera. The mutually beneficial relationship between influencers and celebrity endorsements is legendary on Instagram. CoverGirl drives 3 million followers to America Ferrara’s page, while she drives 1.5 million followers to CoverGirl’s page.

10. Highlight events

The Royal Opera House in London, UK, does a brilliant job of using brand colors in its highlights, giving its Instagram profile a cohesive and professional look. They make it easy for patrons to know which shows are playing and the showtimes by including a “What’s On” highlight. 

How to remove Instagram highlights 

Removing Instagram highlights is a simple process, as it should be. Promotions, events, and news articles come and go, so Instagram has made it easy to update, edit, and delete highlights as needed.

• To remove a story from a highlight, go to “edit highlight” (outlined above) and select “remove from highlight.”
• To remove a highlight entirely, go to your profile on a mobile device, press and hold the highlight you’d like to delete and look for this popup window. 
• Select “delete highlight.” 

FAQs about Instagram highlights

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