Why You Need to Take Advantage of Instagram Story Highlights

Everyone is always talking about Instagram — it’s become the best marketing tool for businesses. The latest feature are Instagram Stories Highlights which are an incredible tool for a business to showcase and promote their brand. Just like Instagram Stories, it’s totally worth spending the time planning and strategizing how to use them to your advantage! Your Instagram Story Highlights are your cherry-picked stories that you want to share with your followers indefinitely — it’s highlighting your best Instagram content.  Understanding this Instagram tool can be one of your main competitive advantages for your 2020 marketing initiatives. In this article, we’ll dive into IG Story Highlights, why they’re so important, and how to get you started!

What is a Story Highlight?

Instagram Highlights are groups of stories that you can create and categorize on your Instagram profile. This means that once you post a story you can save it in a Highlight - think of it as a folder - that will display on your Instagram profile right under your bio. They’re like curated collections of Instagram Stories that your followers — both old and new — can tap into and watch any time they like.

Check out our highlights for reference →

By curating and highlighting Instagram Stories, more and more brands find that they’re able to optimize their customer experiences and create new opportunities for meaningful connections with their audiences. If you need any more convincing, here’s why you should take full advantage of Instagram Stories Highlights.

Why are Highlights Valuable?

1. Longevity

Unlike regular IG Stories, highlights allow your content to stay for much longer than 24 hours. One major benefit of the new Instagram Stories Archive feature, specifically for brands like us, is that it eliminates any anxiety around losing valuable content. As long as you keep the auto-archiving feature turned on, you can save and re-share your best Instagram Stories even after the 24-hour period has passed. To do this, head to your Instagram profile, open your settings, tap on Privacy and Security, and then Story Controls. Here you can toggle the Save to Archive option to on. Archives allow you to auto-save stories, and then stores the content in your profile’s backend. Old Stories can even be curated and Highlighted later, making the content available to the public again.

2. First Impressions

Location is key!  Because Highlights are featured right below a brand’s bio and above its feed, followers see this content first. Make a good first impression to your followers and potential customers by giving them easy-to-access content front and center. The prime location makes Highlights the perfect place to direct followers to your most valuable and interesting content. Every story highlight can be edited, so the content can be ever-changing—  once a certain post loses its timeliness, it can be updated, so you’re always putting your best foot (or content) forward.

3. Branding

Highlights are the perfect opportunity for your store to tell its brand story. Bering live front-and-center on your Instagram profile, they’re the ultimate place for helping new visitors discover what your company is all about. You can be as creative as you want with your stories! Take this chance to express yourself, show off your products, drive traffic, market your business, or personalize your brand! This is a way to humanize your brand. Whether its highlighting office culture, content creation, or product production, brands can share their unique stories—inviting followers into their world. By peeling back the curtain a bit, brands can better connect with their followers on a personal level.

4. Easy Navigation 

Sometimes your viewers might be looking for something specific from one of your stories, like more information about a new launch or a sale you’re running. For this type of content, Instagram Highlights are the perfect way to reach out, without putting a time limit on when viewers can watch! Grouping your Instagram Stories Highlights together into various categories, events, or topics makes it super-easy for audiences to find the stories that are of most interest to them.You could also organize your Instagram Stories Highlights based on your follower demographics. For example, you could create Highlights for target customers depending on what you sell: Women's, Men's, Kids, Beauty, Accessories, Shoes, etc.

5. Eliminate Clutter

There’s no such thing as too much content! But, if your brand has a large amount of content that your regularly posting, then things can quickly get disorganized and cluttered. Highlights are a great way to keep everything organized and looking sleek. You can even step up your creativity with options to customize the Highlight category covers. Creating matching graphics, colors schemes or associated icons to each section will help set your brand apart from the competition in an aesthetically-pleasing way!

Things to Know

Instagram Stories Highlights urges you to plan ahead and become more strategic with your posts and content. Here are a few of the finer details: 

• You can only add stories to your Highlight that have been posted to your Instagram Stories since December 2017 (or since you started archiving).
• You can add up to 100 photos or videos to your Highlights and there’s no limit to how many Instagram Stories Highlights you can create.
• If you add more than 100 clips to your current story, the first one will be removed and added to your Archive.
• When naming your story highlight, it can only be 15 characters long (including spaces) and only the first 10 characters will appear.
• Just like the regular Instagram posts that you can choose to archive from your feed, only YOU can see your Instagram Stories Archive.

Inspiration

Now that you have all the details, it’s time to start actually creating your highlights! Wondering what kind of content you should highlight?

• Highlight different products or different lines
• Highlight tips, tricks or advice
• Highlight your customers using or wearing your products
• Highlight brand ambassadors, partners or influencers
• Highlight seasonal events or holidays
• Highlight marketing campaigns
• Highlight behind the scenes
• Highlight your company events
• Highlight reviews and testimonials
• Highlight your team and staff
• Highlight job openings

Those are just the tip of the iceberg...get creative! There’s so much you can do with highlights. Think about - What’s unique to your brand? What do you post the most content on? What content is most popular with your followers? 

Create Your Own!

One of the most important aspects of Story Highlights is the aesthetic. The Highlight covers and text are gaining huge popularity due to the fact that these small icons are the first thing a new visitor to your profile will see. You’re able to change the cover of each highlight to showcase your brand from the start. This gives your profile a clean, chic look and you can design them to match your brand. How? We’ll get you started! For just $9, our Instant Download Canva Template (made just for retail brands!) is yours to create your own custom-branded Instagram Story highlight graphics. You can change the background colors on each one and then upload them following the instructions below!

Uploading your custom Instagram Story highlight graphics:

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Hit done and VOILA! You have a custom-branded Instagram Story highlight graphic to create your brand's best first impression.

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