Instagram Highlights: A Step-by-Step Guide

Here is the best way to keep your stories for more than 24 hours. Explore Instagram Highlights: A Step-by-Step Guide.

Whether you are a business or content creator, or even have a private account. Want to showcase your products, share memories, or any moment, with your followers and friends? Instagram highlights are the best feature you can explore.

It’s not about just randomly adding stories to your highlight. To make an impact, you need to know how to set them in the right way.

Let’s get into the blog to learn more about Instagram highlights, what benefits you can get by using them, how to add them, and much more. At last, we have a bonus point for you.

What are Instagram Highlights?

Instagram highlights are a feature in Instagram that helps you to keep your story on your profile for a very long time. It helps you to create a long visibility of your story even after 24 hours.

The best feature of highlight is that it does not have a limit; it will still be there until you delete it.

You can even add the existing story (from the archive) to your highlights. Or you can create new highlights, or you can add the story to your existing highlights.

Highlighting is the best way to create long-term visibility of your content, if you’re a content creator. So, people can watch your stories even if it has expired.

What are the benefits of using Instagram Highlights

1. Extended Visibility:

Instagram Highlights are the best feature of Instagram. It helps to extend your visibility, where Insta stories are available for only 24 hours.

Ig highlights help you to keep your story on your profile till you delete it. So, whenever anyone visits your profile, they can view all your old stories that you have added to your highlights.

2. Enhance profile aesthetic:

You can organize your story aesthetically using Instagram highlights. You can manage each of your stories in a different category and even have Instagram highlight covers for each category.

Examples – Photography, Travel, Food.

3. Improve Engagement:

Instagram highlights help you improve your profile’s engagement. Highlights help you to store your old stories on your profile. Even if your story has expired after 24 hours. Highlights help your followers view the expired stories that you have added to your highlights.

So, it helps your followers to go through all your content and posts, which improves your engagement.

4. Storytelling:

You can share your brand’s journey, showcase your product and service, and even send customer reviews. You can make different theme highlights for your followers.

Example: “Behind the scenes,” “Customer Reviews”

How to add highlights on Instagram?

Step 1: Select a photo from your camera roll.

Step 2: Upload it to your story.

Step 3: Tap “Highlights” at the bottom of the screen.

Step 4: If you want to create a new highlight, tap “New” and add the name of the highlight.

Step 5: Or else you can add to the existing highlights.

How to create effective Instagram Highlights?

Instagram Highlights are the best way to improve your profile engagement. Let’s discuss how to make it more effective. Highlights are the first thing that your followers will notice once they visit your profile.

1. Plan your Highlight strategy.

Before creating and posting a highlight, plan your content on what you want to post. If you are a business, you can have a theme such as customer reviews, product launches, new products, etc.

You have to evaluate:

What do your followers like to watch?

What content niche do you belong to?

Example:  Travel, About me, About us, Testimonials, Events, News

2. Create and post story highlights.

Highlights do not allow a random picture from your camera roll to be posted. You need to post images or videos in your story first, then you can add them to the highlights.

After planning your content strategy, start making and posting stories around your chosen topic.

Note: Or else, if you have not planned your highlight stories, you can select your story from the archive and add it to the highlights. Even after your stories have expired.

3. Add stories to your new highlights.

You can directly add a story to your highlight or add it from the archive after the story has expired.

Click the “+” sign to create a new highlight, or else add it under the existing theme.

4. Add customized highlight covers.

The best and most eye-catching part of Highlights is that you can customize highlight covers. You can decide the topic on which you want to create stories; then, you can customize a cover accordingly.

5. Keep updated highlights

Make sure to update your Instagram app so you can use the latest highlights feature.

Update your Highlights with new content for your followers. Add new stories to your existing highlights. You can reorder to keep your Important highlights at first.

Instagram Highlight covers

Instagram allows you to keep your stories forever in the highlights. It also gives you the benefit of having a highlight cover according to the theme of the stories.

Examples – Travel, photos, selfies, Question and Answer, etc.

Highlight covers are the small images or icons that represent the type of content you have posted in the particular highlights. It is the best way to make your profile more engaging for your followers. It helps to categorize the different content you post.

How to edit Instagram highlights cover?

To edit the cover photo, here are the steps:

Step 1: Go to your Profile.

Step 2: Long-press on the existing highlight.

Step 3: Tap “Edit Highlight”

Step 4: Tap “Edit cover”

Step 5: Select from the stories which photo you want to keep as a Highlight cover.

Or

Tap the gallery icon and select a photo from your gallery.

How do you create customized Instagram highlight covers?

You can use any image from your gallery or the uploaded stories. You can customize your highlights by using a personalized highlight cover. To make your Highlights more engaging and interactive,

You can use a third-party app such as Picart  Story Art or Canva

Edit the picture according to the theme you like, or you have your stories posted on. Then you can save the image to your camera roll. And edit it as your Instagram highlight cover by following the steps mentioned above.

Importance of Instagram highlights cover?

As Instagram Highlights are essential to increase profile traffic. In that way, Instagram highlight covers also play an indispensable role. Let’s have a look at the points:

1. Make Navigation Easy

Adding a highlight cover makes your followers’ engagement smoother. As it helps them navigate through the highlights easily. Only by having a look at the cover they can know what type of content is present in the particular highlight.

This helps them to explore more of your content.

2. Showcase Important content

As Instagram stories disappear within 24 hours. Highlights are the best way to showcase all your important content, as highlights stay on your profile till you delete them.

Having a good cover or a customized one helps you to showcase your Important content. Which will attract your followers to engage with the content.

3. Professional Look

And last point, the Instagram highlight cover provides a professional and clean look on your profile.

Instagram Highlights Title

Highlights Title refers to the short, descriptive heading used to represent the type of content you have posted in that particular highlight.

Example: Videos, Travel, Most asked questions, sports, Project Highlights, etc

You can make any highlights depending on what type of content you post.

How do you edit the Instagram highlights Title?

To edit the cover photo, here are the steps:

Step 1: Go to your Profile.

Step 2: Long-press on the existing highlight.

Step 3: Tap “Edit Highlight”

Step 4: Tap “Edit Title”

Instagram Highlight viewer

Ig Highlight viewers are your followers or audience who view the stories that you have saved in your Highlights.

Who can be your Insta Highlight viewer?

If you have a private account on Instagram, then your viewers will be your followers.

But if you have a public account, a business account, or a content creator account, then your ig highlight viewer will be

1. Followers
2.  Non-followers

Can I see who views your Instagram Highlights?

Yes, you can see your ig highlight viewer only for 48 hours after you post your original story.

You can view the profiles in your Instagram Highlights if someone has reacted to your highlight story.

If someone only views your ig highlight story after a couple of days, you would not be able to know who viewed your highlight.

Common Mistakes to Avoid While Creating a Highlight?

1. Overloading Highlights

Do not overload your highlight with duplicate content or stories.  Keep your highlights with a specific theme, and do not post unnecessary photos.

2. Inconsistent Branding

If you are a brand or a creator, make sure to upload your content or stories consistently. Consistent posting will keep your followers engaged with you and improve visibility.

3. Neglecting Updates

Your Highlights should have current updates. Not being consistent will make you seem inactive, and you will lose your engagement.

4. Ignoring Analytics

Do not ignore your Instagram Analytics. Use Analytics to see how much engagement your highlights are getting. Highlights can improve your analytics as they have a long visibility, as compared to the normal stories. They will keep your followers engaged and make them stay on your profile with valuable content.

As a bonus tip,

We share that Instagram helps you save your stories in the highlight feature for long-term visibility. Likewise, we have a solution to your scheduling problem.

You can explore Indzu to schedule your stories and get them posted even on your most packed days. You can plan your highlight strategy, create content, and schedule it on Indzu.

Wrap up

In the end, Instagram Highlights lets you save and showcase your stories on your profile beyond the usual 24-hour time limit.  They are the best feature on Instagram to boost your content visibility, organize your stories, and engage visitors with themed content like travel, food, shopping, etc.

You can add your existing stories from Achieve to an existing highlight or create a new highlight. Follow the steps mentioned above to create your own Instagram highlight.

You can have customized Ig highlight covers by using Canva, Picarts, and Storyart. You can give your highlight title based on which content you have saved. Customized covers and a proper title make your Instagram highlight look professional.

For maximum impact, avoid mistakes such as overloading highlights, irrelevant content, being inconsistent, and ignoring your highlight analytics.

Do not forget to go through the bonus point, where indzu helps you to schedule your ig stories and make your work smooth on your peak days. So, you can avoid the excuse of being inconsistent with your content.

FAQs

Q1. How many highlights can I have on my profile?

Ans. There is no limit on creating highlights on your profile. You can create as many as you want.  Instagram highlights help you to keep your stories organized and under selected categories.

Q2. Can I see who viewed my Highlights?

Ans. No, you cannot see who viewed your highlights. But when you upload your story and add it to your highlights, you can view your ig highlights viewers for 48 hours.

After 48 hours, your viewers list will vanish, and only the people who have reacted to your story will have their usernames seen.

Q3. Can I add an old story to your new highlight?

Ans: Yes, you can add an old story to your new highlight. Go to your story archive > select the story > Tap “Highlights” at the bottom of the screen > Tap “+ New” and add the name of the highlight.

Q4. Do highlights contribute to my overall engagement?

Ans. No, highlights do not directly contribute to your overall engagement. But if you have your story highlights on your profile, you can increase your user engagement. Which will indirectly contribute to your overall engagement.

Q5. Can I edit a highlight after publishing it?

Ans: You cannot edit your story after adding it to your highlights. But you can add or remove your story from your highlight. Create a new highlight and update your existing highlighting name.