Instagram is one way where brands and marketers can engage with the audience, whether by posting pictures, stories, or IG TV. Just started as a picture-sharing app, Instagram has come up with new ways people can interact with one another on the social media platform, enhancing the customer experience for many brands and businesses.
One of the most popular features which gained an insane amount of attention since its release and now is used by nearly 500 million accounts daily is Instagram Story. Instagram stories have become a potential way to reach customers. They can also increase your presence beyond the now-crowded photo feed of your audience. Stories are short and precise, a place where you tell a story in brief, helping them feel in control of the narrative you’ve built.
Here in this article, we’ll talk about Instagram Story Highlights that managed to garner equal popularity just like any other feature on the platform. Instagram Highlights are basically collections of posts, videos, or pictures that you’ve posted on your Instagram stories in the past. Different from Instagram stories that disappear after 24 hours, these highlights live always on your profile.
Ready to get started? Let’s dive deep into every detail you should know to make the most out of Instagram story highlights for your brand and how to use them to create maximum engagement and brand awareness.
What is Instagram Story Highlights?
You know that Instagram stories vanish in just 24 hours. But Instagram has provided a feature called Highlights, where you can save some of the stories and make them visible as a pin in your profile.
In simple words, when you post a story, you can save it in a Highlight like an album that will display on your Instagram profile. You can also activate the Archive option that automatically saves your Instagram stories and, in the future, create highlights from the stories saved in your archive.
The main features of Instagram Stories Highlights are :
- Highlight name – you can name the highlights just as you name any folders.
- Highlight cover – you can add any icon or custom image representing the topic of the stories saved inside.
Once you create any highlights, they will appear on your Instagram screen right below your profile picture and bio.
How are Instagram Highlights beneficial to your brand?
Instagram stories have become one of the most crucial channels for brands to connect with their audience.
Therefore, saving these carefully produced stories makes the Highlights feature very important for digital marketers and community managers. If done with a proper strategic organization, these highlights can add a lot of class and value to your brand.
You can reap the following benefits by using Instagram Highlights for your business :
- Showcase your products or services in a structured and categorized way.
- Use this format to tell an ongoing story.
- Educate the audience about your previous activities posted in the stories.
- Make the content of your stories accessible to new followers.
How can you create Instagram Highlights?
As you read above, you can create Instagram Highlights in two ways :
- Create Highlights from archived stories – If you activate the archive option, your stories will get saved in the archived section. In the future, you can select which stories to pin as Highlights.
- Create Highlight from an active Instagram story – Post a story and save it as a Highlight.
Let’s see how to create Highlights from both options.
Creating Highlight from an active story
If you have posted an active story and want to add it as a Highlight, follow these steps :
- Tap on the active story you have posted.
- At the bottom, tap the option Highlight.
- Now tap on the plus icon to create a new Highlight.
- If you want, enter the name of the Highlight.
- Tap the Add button.
After you’ve activated this option, your followers can view it even after 24 hours.
Creating Highlight from the archived stories
To add stories from the archive to your Highlights and add them to your profile, you can follow these steps :
- Log in to your Instagram profile, and below your bio, tap Story Highlights.
- Click the plus icon.
- When the next window opens, click and select all the stories you want to show in the Highlight section. Now tap Next.
- Now upload any icon of your choice or any story you want to show as a Highlight icon.
- Now enter any name for your Highlight.
- Now click Done or Add whichever option is shown there.
How can you add more stories in a current Highlight?
If you want to add more photos or videos to Highlights, follow the steps mentioned to do so :
- Log in to your Instagram account and press the Highlight you want to edit.
- Tap on the Edit Highlight option.
- Now select the stories you want to add and tap done.
Now that you know the importance of using Instagram Highlights let’s see how to use them to get the most benefits.
8 Ways to Use Instagram Highlights for your business
Highlight your products or services
You can use Instagram Highlights to promote your products or services. Many users take action after seeing highlights on your profile. Even if some users have never been on your channel and see a highlight album named product, they might get compelled to go through the entire thing. This can even get you, new followers and potential customers.
Promote any event
We all know social media is a great space to promote events and create awareness. You can promote any future event or anything you conduct on a regular basis. Even if you’re not conducting any events in the future, you can showcase the previous ones. This will give your audience a general idea of what the events your business actually hosts are like and might also increase interest for future ones!
Product Tutorials or how to videos
If you’re a beauty or cosmetic brand, you can post videos showing how to use your products and what difference they can bring. Later on, add these videos to the Highlights.
Suppose you’re an analytics or video hosting company. In that case, you can highlight a tutorial stating how to create great-looking pictures or videos on your mobile device, etc.
Tell your audience what you’ve been up to
Keeping the audience informed has been one of the main objectives of any business. You can highlight behind the scene looks showing what your brand is up to. You can also give an inside look at your new products or how your employees work.
Showing the working environment of your company helps humanize your brand.
Highlight your Customers
If your customer loves to post pictures using your product or use your branded hashtags in their post. You can repurpose this content and post it to your Instagram Story Highlights. It does two things for you. First of all, it gives a virtual shout-out to your customers, and second, it presents your business more authentically.
If you decide to post any such stories, make sure you take permission from the person and give them proper credit for your stories.
Highlight your Influencers and partners
If you work with partners, influencers, or collaborate with other brands, you can organize such content in your Instagram Story Highlights.
You can also feature any live sessions or interviews in your highlights.
Don’t forget to Highlight your campaigns
If you have a campaign or promotion that you’ve put a lot of hard work into, it could be quite sad to see it get disappeared in 24 hours. With Instagram Story Highlights, you can make sure more people see them. You can pin these campaigns to your profile for as long as they are running.
Highlight any testimonials or reviews
Many professionals or influencers do a review of products for their audience. If you see an influencer reviewing your product, you can ask them and pin the post to your Instagram Story Highlights.
You can also pin any customer testimonials to your profile. Creating a highlight devoted to reposting screenshots or testimonials of your customers and their experiences using your service, product, or brand and highlighting these on your Instagram account is a fanatstic way to share the stories of your satisfied and happy customers.
The Bottom Line
As you know, social media is constantly evolving, and to keep up with that, you have to plan your strategy accordingly. Hopefully, with this post, you can better understand how Instagram story Highlights work and how you can use them to create more engagement and awareness.
