If you’ve been putting off Story highlights, now is a great time to start getting smart and strategic with Instagram Story highlights.
First off, let’s break down what a highlight is. Typically Instagram Stories only last 24 hours, but highlights allow you to keep your best stories up for as long as you want!
However, the purpose of highlights is more than just sharing your favorite stories. If you’re an online business owner, you want to share stories that will attract your ideal client strategically. So, you want to make sure that you are sharing highlights strategically!
Before I dig in in how to use your Story highlights to attract your ideal client, here are just a few things to keep in mind:
โข Whenever you add to your highlight, this becomes the first category they see.
โข Continue to review your highlights periodically to make sure that your content is relevant.
โข They don’t need to be perfect. It’s better to have a few up rather than none at all.
โข You can always change your mind later!
1. Decide what categories you want to appear as Story highlights
While there’s no limit to the number of highlight categories you can create, people who visit your profile will see the first 5 highlights before they’re prompted to scroll for more (up to 7 on desktop).
So, you want to make sure that your first 5 categories show your best Stories.
Choose 5 categories that you think will best represent you. Here’s a list of ideas to help you get started.
โข INTRODUCTIONS: About – My Story
โข INFORMATION: FAQ – Values
โข CONTENT: Links to Content – Curated Content
โข OFFERS: Products – Freebies – Services
โข SOCIAL PROOF: Testimonials – Reviews
โข CONTACT: Contact Me – Directions
2. Curate Categories for your Story highlights
Figure out what each category needs: On a piece of paper, write out your top categories as columns. For each category, write down which essential Stories need to be in each category.
For example, for “About Me,” choose a Story that includes a basic introduction and what you do.
Some important things to note:
โข Don’t put every single Story into a highlighted category, or it would be too long.
โข Most people will likely click only on the first few Stories, so make sure the most important Stories show up first.
โข Make sure your call-to-action is towards the beginning of the highlight.
2a. How to add a Highlight
Tap on the bar that says “Story Highlights” -> Add New -> Select the clips you want -> Add a name -> Add a cover photo.
2b. To Remove a Highlight
Click on the highlight -> Remove the Story clips you no longer want for the highlight -> To remove the entire Highlight category, you must go back and individually select each highlight to remove it.
2c. New Stories to fill in
If you feel you need a new introduction, or are missing some calls-to-action, feel free to create new Stories.
If you think people will think it’s out of place, you can share a quick intro saying you’re updating your highlights (and tell them to check out for them later!)
Don’t want to do these all today? Could you put them on your calendar to film later?
3. Create on-brand covers for your Story highlights
The covers will represent what each category is about. You can use text, icons, or photographs to describe your category. Remember to use your brand colors. The descriptive text below the cover will cut off after 10 characters so if you can’t get the whole title in ten characters, try using text in the graphic instead and be consistent. If you’re going to use icons, stick with all icons. If you’re going to use text, use all text.
3a. How to create a cover
The simplest way to create a cover is to choose from your Story clips; however, this doesn’t always represent what a category is all about.
You can design your cover outside of Instagram to get the most control over how your design looks. You can use a program like Photoshop for desktop or a web-based app like Canva, which has templates that already have the dimensions that will allow your design to show properly in the Highlights circle.
4. Share your Highlights
Share a Story to encourage your followers to check out your new highlights.
You can do a screen recording or share screencaps with some text, like click on my profile (insert text with your @username so that they can click on it), under my bio, you’ll see my highlights! Then introduce what they can find with each highlight. And end with a call to action, like “Thanks for checking out my new highlights! Now DM me and tell me, which one of your highlights do you want to check out!”.
Avoid overthinking it, and you can always jump in the comments here if you need any help or, if you complete your highlights, let me know so I can check out how you did!