Instagram Story Highlights for Your Business
Instagram Stories last for just 24 hours which means that if your Instagram followers miss it, they won’t have access to it any more. Instagram Story Highlights are an effective feature to help solve this problem. With Instagram Story Highlights, your stories will be saved to a highlight which serves as a folder or collection of stories displayed on your profile even after 24 hours have passed.
Just like a folder, highlights have to be named according to the topic or theme of stories they feature and have a cover image or icon to represent the stories inside. They are crucial to help your real Instagram followers view content long after the 24 hour duration of Stories and appear on your profile just below your bio.
Creating Instagram Story Highlights
Instagram Story Highlights can be created in 2 ways:
Manual saving of a story posted
If you’ve posted a Story and want to add it to a Highlight, follow these steps:
- View the active story first
- Tap on the Highlight option at the bottom and the + icon to add a new highlight
- Name the Highlight what you want
- Click on the blue Add button
It will now be visible to your Instagram followers even after the story’s 24 hour duration.
Archived Stories
If you want to add Stories from your archive to create a highlight, here’s what you need to do:
- Click on the Story Highlights option under the bio on your Instagram profile
- Select the + icon
- Choose the Stories you want to add to your Highlight from the archive and click Next
- Edit the cover for which Story you want as the Highlight icon
- Name your Highlight
- Choose the Done (Android) or Add (iPhone) option
You can even keep your finger pressed on a particular Highlight to edit or delete it.
Adding a cover to your Instagram Story Highlights
If you don’t add a separate cover to your Highlight, the cover icon for your Highlight will be the image or video posted to the Highlight. You can, however, have a cover icon without having to share it to your Story. Here’s how:
- Save the icon you want as your Highlight cover to the camera roll of your phone
- Keep your finger pressed to the Highlight and select Edit Highlight
- Choose Edit cover and select the picture from your camera roll
- Select Done to have your Highlight cover added
You can even customize your Highlight covers to create a distinct identity for your brand. Canva is a good tool to use for this. Here’s what you need to do to create a custom Highlight cover with Canva for your business:
- Through your Canva account, look for “Instagram Story” in the search bar
- Select the “Instagram Story” template to get the right dimensions for your Highlight cover
- Go to “Elements” in the sidebar and select “Graphics” to choose form several illustrations for your Highlight cover
- With the text options from Canva, you can also choose a Highlight cover that’s text based
- Once you’ve made your choice, pick a background colour and then download the design
- Once it’s saved to the camera roll of your phone, add the customised Highlight cover in the manner already described above
Having a customised Highlight cover can add a distinct brand personality and make your brand more recognisable to your Instagram followers. It can also help you get more Instagram likes on your feed posts and help your audience engage with your brand more. Ultimately, such benefits will mean more business growth, which is essential if you want to give yourself an edge over your competition.
You can add a maximum of 100 photos/videos to highlights, but there’s no limit on the number of Highlights you can have on your profile.
Using Instagram Story Highlights for Business
Instagram Story Highlights can be used in different ways to further your business goals:
Showcasing products and collections
If you’re launching a new product or collection, adding it to a Highlight will help your Instagram followers keep track of the range of products you offer or give them an idea of your entire collection. You can even Highlight Stories that feature product tags and shoppable stories so that those interested can directly buy your products. By easing the shopping experience for them through a Highlight of your products, you can experience a growth in sales for your business. If your business has a large product portfolio, you can even Highlight products based on their category, making it easier for your customers to view what they’re interested in.
Highlighting tutorials
If you have tutorials or “how to” videos that showcase your products in use or how to operate your products, adding such content to your highlights will make it easy for your audience to get help whenever they need it without having to wonder about how to use a particular product.
Hosting contests and giveaways
Contests and giveaways tend to be time bound and many of your Instagram followers may miss the latest ones if it doesn’t show up on their feed. By adding details of contests and giveaways to your Story and highlighting them, you’ll make it easy for your real Instagram followers to stay up-to-date about the latest contests/giveaways you’re hosting and participate in them.
Posting seasonal content
Some products may be seasonal or you may even be hosting a seasonal event which won’t be available to your customers all year. You may also be offering certain seasonal discounts that your Instagram followers won’t be able to benefit from after a specific period of time. Highlighting such content can draw attention to its seasonal nature and increase the interest of your customers.
You may be operating a lot of other social media platforms for your business and it’s crucial to grow your audience on any of the other platforms as well. Getting your real Instagram followers to support you on other platforms can boost engagement rates on these other platforms and lead to overall business growth. Adding a Highlight to update your audience about content posted to other social media platforms can help achieve this goal.
Updating on trending topics
If you’ve got a blog for your business or generally share opinions on trending topics that are relevant to your industry, you can add a Highlight for this. This way, you can share your opinions and your Instagram followers will also become aware of the trending topics in the industry.
Posting user generated content
If you’ve got a branded hashtag and have collected plenty of user generated content through its use, it’s a good idea to post such content as Stories and them highlight them. User generated content is great for your brand because it’s real to your audience. It shows people that you’ve got happy customers and communicates a message about your brand that comes directly from its actual customers. Such content serves as a powerful testimonial or review of your brand for other prospective customers who are likely to be more trusting of it. This can lead to a growth in sales for your business. Apart from this, it also acts as a shout-out to your customers and acknowledges their support, which can help them feel more connected to your brand.
Giving your partners and brand ambassadors a shout-out
As a business, you may have several brand partners and ambassadors working with you to achieve your business goals. Influencer marketing is also something brands are increasingly taking advantage of. Highlights can help you give a shout-out to your brand partners and ambassadors. Not only does this help to acknowledge them, but it also creates a sense of transparency for your Instagram followers.
Promoting your campaigns
If you have upcoming campaigns that you want to promote on Instagram, creating a Highlight of it is a great way to bring more awareness to it. Campaigns can also be for social causes. If your business supports a social cause strongly and is running a campaign on it, such Stories can also be highlighted to increase brand credibility.
Highlighting your business events
Highlighting important events of your business is a great way to keep your audience engaged. Your Instagram followers will be able to view past as well as upcoming events and check up on updates relating to such events. This can help to create hype around business events.
Posting Q&As
If your Instagram followers have questions for you and you do a series of stories answering the questions they have, highlighting it is a good idea so that your responses to such questions can be saved for future reference. You may get repetitive questions from your audience and in such cases, creating a Highlight of FAQs for your brand will save you lots of time in the future. All you have to do is direct your audience to this highlight and let them see the responses for themselves.
Conclusion
Highlights are excellent to prolong the life of a Story, which otherwise, would only last for 24 hours. New Instagram followers can also access them and get to know important details about your brand. Try some of the uses described above and experience the benefits for yourself.
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