How to Make Instagram Story Highlights in 2021

Contrasting to Instagram Stories that evaporate after 24 hours, Instagram Stories Highlights can animate permanently on your profile. This is the main reason why you should consider spending some more time organizing them to showcase and promote your brand/content.

To create Instagram story highlights, first you need to open Instagram account on your device, go to your profile and hit Story Highlights beneath your username and bio. Tap New, the plus icon (+). Then select the story/stories you want to add to highlights and then hit Next. That’s it, the story is done.

Now, let us explore this great detail!

Instagram is estimated to have 1.074 billion active users worldwide in 2021 (Source-eMarketer), it has become a great opportunity to drive a wider target audience. With the social networking site becoming extensively popular, approx. 71% of US businesses claim that they use it for business (Mention,2018).

Users can spend hours constructing a single story. To qualify & conservate the employed labour and time, and help them appear as a pin in user profile, Instagram introduced a prominent feature called “highlights”.

These chunks of digital countenance, can be stored in self-curated collections that have a perpetual home just under your bio.

What are Instagram story highlights?

• Group of stories

Instagram Highlights are clusters of stories that you can create as ring binder/folder section on your Instagram profiles. The technique of saving some of the stories and making them appear as a pin in your profile, is known as a highlight feature. They appear just below your profile photo.

• Outstanding collection of key features& stories

Businesses and individuals craft these miracle collections that are excellently snapshots of who they are, bestowed their personality at an engaging& promotional level and represent what their feed is all about to grow. Being a collection of IG stories and appear at the bottom of your Instagram Bio.It is a new tool which enables users to embrace on to their favourite reminiscences from Stories.

After posting a story you can save it in a Highlight-folder, that will appear on your profile, or you can start the Archive option that will automatically save them and you can use them to create highlights in future.

Keep scrolling to know, how to create an Instagram story highlight.

Advantages of using Instagram highlights

When strategically used IG highlights, deliver an incredible way of representing the target audience what you are about basically. They play like channel teasers. They work best when comes to self- promotion & aggrandizement.

The most crucial benefit of Highlights on Instagram is for marketing & advertising your brand/products/services.More than 80% of businesses consider Instagram engagement as the most important metric (Mention, 2018). The Highlights segment can help your brand drive user-attention to the product they are selling.

They have developed as one of the main networks for brands to connect, engage, and gain real results from their digital marketing strategies.

Therefore, generating efficient story videos or images, saved for future followers to view at any time, make the Highlights feature very great for the community administrators and brands.

Instagram highlights benefits include

• Represent enduring story

• Get your stories accessible to new followers

• Spread the knowledge shared previously

• Market & display your products or services, in an organized and categorized way

• Leverage playlist format of relevant content that you’ve previously shared

Therefore, highlights are the assets to maintain value on your profile and are very easy to organize.

Note- You must update your brand’s highlights frequently.

Highlights help you to deliver your memorandum to the right target audience. You can feature an event or promotion, providing them all the details about your proposal and probable discounts, giveaways, and packages to notify your followers.

Select the best snapshots to work as Highlights

Choose your best moments and target the posts which represents who you are and what you are about. If you leverage them correctly, success is soon to follow you!

You might be interested in: How to create Instagram stories in 2021.

How many Instagram story highlights can you lend on your profile?

The good news is that you can add unlimited Instagram highlight “groups” to your profile. But you can only add 100 archived stories to each group.

If you cross the limitation and add more than 100 stories to anIG highlight group, it deletes the “oldest” story and substitutes that with the latest, so that the number of stories in the group always remains 100.

Remember

• You should have the Instagram app on your phone, and you should be logged in.

• You need to publish your content to story first to move it under highlight section.

• You can create highlights only from the Instagram app

How to add highlights on Instagram

You can use either way to create an Instagram Story Highlights:

• Develop Highlight from the active story –You can post a story and manually save it in a Highlight

• Develop Highlight from archived stories –If you have the Archive option activated, your stories will save automatically in your archive folder, you can choose from those preserved stories to be organized in a future Highlight.

Now let us discuss both the options;

Develop Highlight from the active story

If you want to add your active story as a highlight;

1. Click on the active story to open it

2. Hit the bottom option Highlight

3. Now select the plus iconto create new Highlight

4. Give a name to the new Highlight

5. Hit the blue buttons Add

Voila! You just added a new highlight to your profile! Your followers will be able to view it even after the 24-hour limit of a normal story.

Develop Highlight from archived stories 

If you want to create highlight from the archived stories;

1. Head to your profile and tap Story Highlightsbelow bio

2. Hit the plus icon

3. Now, click and select the stories you want to appear in the Highlight and hit Next.

4. Tap ‘Edit Cover’to pick which story will appear as a Highlight icon or upload an icon

5. Give a name to the new Highlight

6. Click Add if you are using iPhoneor Doneif using an android phone.

How to add highlights on Instagram from camera roll

Adding to IG highlights is easy, but you should know that you have to add the photo or video to stories first. Everyone sees the stories can watch that highlight too.

To add highlight from camera roll, follow the instruction below:

1. Open the file or gallery containing photos on your android

2. Select the photos you want to add to stories highlights

3. Tap the share icon

4. Select Instagram from the sharing apps exposed

5. If you cannot see Instagram, tap More and switch the button on for Instagram

6. Click stories from the options

7. Now, open Instagram, click on your profile picture, tap ‘+’ sign, and go to story highlights

8. Add new, select photos, and write the highlights name.

9. Tap Add

10. Voila! Your highlight will now hang below your bio to star your profile!

How to add more stories in anexisting Highlight

If you think something is missing or left in your highlight, you can add more photos or videos to your it at any time by following these easy steps:

1. Go to your profile and tap and holdthe Highlight you want to edit.

2. Click Edit Highlight

3. Select the stories you want to add and tap Done

How to make highlights on Instagram without posting on story

You need to block your followers from seeing your story, upload the story that you want to add to your Highlights. So, that after 24 hours, you can add it to your Highlights and then just unblock people from seeing your it.

1. Switch to private account

Turn your account private which will stop users from viewing your story if they aren’t your followers. If your account is public before uploading your story, people who are not don’t follow you will also be able to see the story that you blocked your followers from seeing.

2. Block everyone from viewing your Story

To stop everyone, to view your story, go to your Instagram settings, selectstory controls and click on 0 people. Then select all of your followers and block them from seeing your story. You need to select all followers manually by tapping the minor bubble at the right side.

3. Upload stories

Upload the story from your gallery. Then open the story and tap on the highlight icon at the bottom. Choose the highlight or create a new

4. Turn the story to highlights

Tap on the highlight button at the bottom and choose the highlight you want it in.

5. Unblock everyone from seeing your story

After 24 hours when the story is taken to archives, unhide everyone, whom you blocked on Instagram story control and voila!

Characteristically, IG stories have to be issued and left for everyone to see for at least 24 hours before you can move them to the Highlights section. So, use this hack to add a story to your Highlights without publishing it!

How to delete an Instagram story highlight?

Just press and hold on the Highlight you want to delete and select the option ‘Delete Highlight’.

Instagram story highlights covers

Instagram Stories Highlights covers make a superb first impression. Situated right below the bio section of your profile, they are a great way to keep your Instagram profile on-brand and take your artistic to the next level! Your brand needs better than just any random image. As this qualifies as a real estate for increasing conversions. You can use apps like Canva stories or Adobe Spark to access a ready-made cover that you can customize & leverage.

How to make Instagram highlight covers

To make/change/edit the Highlights covers without sharing them in a story follow the below steps.

Step 1: Go to your profile and tap &hold your finger to the Highlight you want to edit

Step 2: Tap Edit Highlight

Step 3: Click Edit Cover and choose a cover photo.

Step 4: Select a photo for cover tap Done.

Step5: Add a story name for your highlight, then click Add (iPhone) or Done (Android).

How to make Instagram highlight covers on Canva

1. Log in Canva and tap Create a design

2. Select the Instagram storyformat

3. Choose a cover design dimensions to be 1080 pixels wide by 1920 pixels tall with 9:16 aspect ratio.

4. Go for any template, delete its content and edit the background colour. Click +Add a new page to replicate the background.

5. Head to Elementsand in the search bar type Pick the ideal icon, set it in the middle and decide its colour.

6. Download your cover from Canva via sending the design to your email or Airdrop and save it in your phone’s gallery.

If you want to change the cover, just choose this icon from your phone’s gallery.

Instagram highlight namesand ideas

Instagram helps 80% of Instagrammers decide whether to buy a product or service (Facebook, 2019). Instagram users account enabling a purchase decision based on something that they saw while browsing the app

Influencer marketing plays a huge role in manipulating these buying decisions too, so if your brand is not including Instagram to your social media marketing, you’re missing out on a gigantic marketing strategy. To drive the target audience to your profile you must use, interesting ideas on to organize the IG stories and design the Highlights covers.

You can use these highlights covers for inspiration

1. Glossier Inc. a people-powered beauty ecosystem –

   They leverage only pink colour only for their profile image and for the Highlights covers they use only blank – white images. Which is very different than other accounts, who usually use icons or some product images.

2. Carrots n Cake Flexible Macro Plans & Coaching –

   They use all green icons with a similardesign to represent all different groupings of the Highlights.

3. Starbucks Coffee–

   They use real people photos as covers for the Highlights. Which help them to humanize their brand and it makes the audience feel the accessibility of their content.

Some Instagram highlights ideas

Give people glimpse of what you want to convey:

1. My family

2. New music

3. My creativity

4. Happy clients

5. My blogs

6. Interviews

7. Webinars

8. Socially yours

9. My equipment

10. Quotes

How to create highlights on Instagram business account to drive potential sales

50% of Instagram users follow at least one business (Mention, 2018) meaning, that businesses have a great marketing potential to increase their reach through Instagram. Whether you’re a small business or large, you have the latent to improve your brand’s ROI, advocacy, credibility, awareness and leads eventually by using Instagram. Many brands even buy real Instagram followers to drive engagement on their story highlights.

1. Represent your brand’s aesthetic-

   Show-off your brand’s colours, fonts, favourite emojis and logo to populate your account with potential customers.

2. Convince & convert your audience to customers-

   You can drive new target audience to your shoppable stories by presenting your product’s usefulness.

3. Use simple, but small icons-

   To demonstrate your actions on Instagram, from posting stories about new products or categorizing these stories by a product type, be sure to use cute icons.

4. Use bold & stylish icons to highlight your highlights-

   Make your profile have a cohesive look and raise your brand voice, by including your brand kit in your highlights covers.

5. Showcase your product/service/expertise-

   Represent your product & services using eye-catchy highlights and win the race!  You can feature brand ambassadors in your main story highlights covers and offer your expertise.

This comprehensive guide will surely help you to learn, how to create Instagram story highlights to grow your business & popularity.

Feel free to share!