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How to make cute instagram highlights


How to Create Beautiful Instagram Highlight Covers (40 Free Icons)

Instagram Highlight covers make a great first impression.

Located right below the bio section of your Instagram profile, they provide a polished look for your Instagram Highlights and draw attention to your best Instagram Story content.

And you don’t have to be a hip influencer to use them. Orgs of all stripes from government institutions to Fortune 500 companies use them to great effect.

Covers are an easy win for any brand that banks on aesthetics. (And on Instagram, that’s everyone.)

The good news is that even if you don’t have access to a graphic design team, they’re easy to make.

We’ll walk you through all the steps to create your own Instagram highlight covers. As a bonus, we have a free pack of icons to help you get started.

How to create an Instagram highlight

How to create a new Instagram highlight from your profile

How to create your own Instagram Highlight covers

5 tips for using Instagram highlight covers and icons

Download your free pack of 40 customizable Instagram Stories Highlights Icons now. Optimize your profile and set your brand apart from the competition.

Create highlights to keep your best Story content at the top of your Instagram profile permanently.

1. In your Story, tap Highlight in the bottom right corner.

2. Choose the Highlight you want to add your Story to.

3. Or, tap New to create a new Highlight, and type out a name for it. Then click Add.

And that’s it! You just created an Instagram highlight.

Have an idea for a new highlight? Or maybe you want to add a few different Stories at once?

Follow these steps to create a new Highlight from your Instagram profile:

1. Go to your profile and tap the +New button (the big plus sign).

2. Pick the Stories you want to add to your new Highlight. Pro tip: Instagram gives you an archive of your stories going back years. So don’t be afraid to do a little digging for those Story gems.

3. Tap Next and name your new Highlight.

4. Choose your Highlight cover, and tap Done.

Don’t have a highlight cover yet? Read on.

Instagram will allow you to use any image you like for your highlight covers.

BUT your brand deserves better than just “any image.”

This space is prime real estate for converting lurkers to followers. You want to leave an impression.

If you’re crunched for time, Adobe Spark has pre-made covers that you can customize and use.

But if you want more control over your Instagram brand, these steps will show you how to easily build a great Instagram highlight cover from scratch (or almost-scratch).

Step 1: Log in to Visme

Log into your account on Visme or create a free account on visme.co.

Step 2: Create a new image that is sized for Stories.

From the main Visme dashboard, click Custom Size in the top right corner, then type in the Instagram Story image dimensions (1080 x 1920 pixels). Click Create! 

Step 3: Get our free icon set

Download your free pack of 40 customizable Instagram Stories Highlights Icons now. Optimize your profile and set your brand apart from the competition.

Once you’re done downloading, unzip the file and choose your favorites. (You can use them with or without our professionally designed backgrounds.)

Step 4: Upload your icons to Visme

Go to My files in the left-hand menu, click Upload, and select the icons you would like to add.

Once you upload the icon image, click on it. If you can’t see your icon on your canvas after you’ve uploaded it, don’t worry. It’s most likely because the icon is white lines on a transparent background. We’ll fix this in the next step.

Step 5: Create your background

Right-click anywhere on your image and click Background. A quick-access background bad will appear in the top left corner of your workspace. Here, you can select a background color, or add a brand color in the HEX code field.

When you change the background color (to anything other than white, your icon will appear).

Step 6: Download your highlight covers from Visme

Name your project. Then click Download in the top right corner. Choose your file type (PNG or JPG are both fine). Then click the Download button.

Download your free pack of 40 customizable Instagram Stories Highlights Icons now. Optimize your profile and set your brand apart from the competition.

Get the free icons right now!

Your cover will be downloaded to your hard drive.

Repeat this process with other cover designs.

Pro tip: Now is a great time to make sure your Instagram account has your Story archive enabled. This is important if you want to go back and see your old Stories without downloading them to your phone.

Step 7: Edit your existing highlights to add your new covers

You no longer have to add an image to your Story (where all your followers will have to swipe past it) in order to make it a highlight cover. Instead, you can just edit the highlight directly:

  1. Go to your Instagram profile.
  2. Tap the highlight whose cover you’d like to change.
  3. Tap More in the bottom right corner.
  4. Tap Edit Highlight.
  5. Tap Edit Cover.
  6. Choose the image icon to access your phone’s photo library.
  7. Choose your beautiful cover.
  8. Tap Done (actually, tap it three times.)

Do this for each of the stories you want to add covers to.

Voila! Your on-brand Instagram highlight covers are now gracing your profile and unifying your look. Magnifique.

5 tips for using Instagram highlight covers and icons

Now that you know how easy it is to make your own unique highlight covers, we’ve got some time-saving tips to make them as effective as possible.

Show off your brand’s aesthetic

Your brand has its favourite colours, font, capitalization—and possibly even some favorite emojis. Your highlight covers are definitely the place to show these off.

That said, keep in mind that less is more. Those little portholes are pretty small, after all. Clarity is key.

Don’t be afraid to experiment

Your Instagram highlights don’t have to do it all. They can do one thing very well.

For instance, Red Bull’s highlights used to be fairly conventional (e.g., Events, Projects, Video, etc.) But now they give each of their athletes their own highlight. All we get is a face, a name, and an emoji. Intriguing.

Meanwhile, the New York Times takes Stories literally. They populate their highlights with exhaustive yet readable primers on complicated political subjects. They also create fun, snackable Stories about appealing subjects.

Either way, their cover style is perfectly consistent, which helps make the wide reach of their topics more manageable.

Be consistent in your organization

There are absolutely no rules when it comes to organizing your Instagram highlights. (Brb, my inner librarian needs to go rail antacids. )

But, some brands organize their highlights like they would their website (e.g., About, Team, FAQ). Some brands organize by collection or product (e.g., Winter ‘20, New Arrivals, Makeup Line).

I’m here to tell you that however you choose to organize, remember to approach it from your audience’s perspective.

In other words: if they know what they’re going to see, they’re more likely to tap.

Highlight the Stories that matters most

Ask yourself what’s most important to your audience. What are they here to see? This season’s collection? Today’s schedule? Or something that is useful for the longer-term, like, for instance, how to pair your flagship earbuds?

The Met, for instance, prioritizes potential visitors. It keeps a helpful guide to this week’s exhibitions at the top of its highlight reel.

Convert your audience to customers

With the right covers, you can introduce new eyes to your best shoppable Stories and swipe-up content (if you have an Instagram for business profile with more than 10,000 followers). Try using our shopping bag icon, for instance.

For more tips on selling products using your Instagram Stories, check out our complete guide to Instagram shopping.

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How to Make Beautiful Insta Story Highlight Covers (custom icons)

Alexandra | Feb 9, 2018

Usually, I share Instagram tips to help you plan your Instagram feed like a boss (if you need help, check this). But today, let’s talk about Insta Stories for a minute.

How can you make these nice circles under your Instagram bio? Easy peas-y!

Use “Canva”. Canva is a (super easy) design tool. You can use it on your computer or on your phone. It’s going to make your life so much easier.

For this tutorial, I’m going to use the app because it has templates for Insta Stories. The computer version doesn’t have templates for Insta Stories. But you can still do it on your computer if you want to. If you are using your computer, select “Custom Dimension” and your Insta Story dimension (example: 1242 x 2208 px for iPhone 6S Plus).

Feel free to open your phone and the Canva app to follow the tutorial with me. It’s really easy.

Follow these steps:

Click here to use it

1. Open Canva and select “Your Story”

Open the Canva app. On top you will see all the designs you can make. Select “Your Story”. This will load templates for Insta Stories.

For this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to design a cover with a background color and an icon. I’m going to start with a blank template (the first one on the list).

2. Choose a background color

Your blank template is loaded.

  • At the bottom of the screen you can choose a background color for your cover
  • Press “+” if you want to choose your own color
  • You can also type your own color code (great if you want to stick to your brand or Instagram theme colors)

3. Choose an icon or add text

Now that you have a background color, you can add an icon, emoji or text. It’s up to you.

For this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to add an icon.
If you want me to show you other designs with photos and text, let me know and I’ll make another tutorial.

To add an icon to your cover:

  • Select the “+” button on the bottom right corner of your screen
  • Select “Graphics”
  • You can scroll to discover all the graphics they have, or you can search for a specific icon (example: “heart”)
  • Press on the icon you want to use for your cover
  • Choose the color of your icon

4.

Add pages to design more covers

You can continue to design more covers for your Insta Story Highlight.

  • Press on the “+” button on the bottom right corner of your screen
  • Select “Pages”

Design another cover with another icon. Repeat the process to design more covers.

5. Save the images on your phone

Once you are done, you can save your Insta Story covers on your phone.

  • Press “Share”
  • Select “Quick Look” (iPhone) or “Upload to Photos” (Android)
  • Press the export icon (bottom left corner)
  • Select “Save image”

6. Make sure you turn on the Insta Story “Archive”

Before you share your covers on Instagram, make sure you turn on the “Archive” feature.

  • Go in your Instagram settings
  • Select “Story Settings”
  • Turn on “Save to archive”

7.

Post on your Insta Story

You have to do this step in order to set a cover for your Highlight. Your covers need to be added in your Insta Stories first, before you can use them as covers.

  • Share your covers in your Insta Story
  • Press on the “Highlight” button

Now you have 2 options:

  1. Create a new Highlight
  2. Add cover to an existing Highlight

If you already have an existing Highlight, select the one that needs the cover.

This is how you create an Insta Story Highlight:

8. Create an Insta Story Highlight

  • Select the “+” button
  • Give a name to your Highlight

Your new Insta Story Highlight will appear at the bottom of your Instagram bio.

9. Edit the cover

You can edit the cover:

  • Hold your finger pressed on a Highlight (a circle)
  • Select “Edit Highlight”
  • Select “Edit Cover”

Here you can change cover images. And you can also resize your cover image. For example, if your icon is too small in the circle, zoom in with your fingers to make it bigger.

I hope you found this article useful. Have fun creating your covers! Leave me a comment below if you have any questions.

 

Click here to use it

Highlights on Instagram - how to make and add a story to Highlights

The Highlights on Instagram feature allows you to save stories in a special archive that will be available only to you, and later create collections from them that are available to everyone. This feature appeared on December 5, 2017, and since then has been actively used by bloggers, companies as part of the Instagram promotion .

What are Instagram Highlights and how does this feature work

Before Highlights, stories on the social network were saved for only 24 hours. The new feature allowed users not only to save stories to revisit later, but also to create compilations of the best moments and share them with friends. nine0005

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Story Highlights - actual stories - displayed in the description of the user's profile. You can add an unlimited number of stories to each new collection. All of them will be displayed as normal stories, in chronological order.

How to make and add Highlights to Instagram

Simultaneously with the Highlights feature, Instagram introduced automatic saving of stories. Now, after 24 hours, they do not disappear, but are moved to the archive - they can be shared, reviewed later, or added to the collection. You can add to collections stories saved in the archive, that is, created after December 5, 2017. nine0005

To create a new collection, upload multiple stories, from one to infinity. Read more about using Stories in our article. Once downloaded, go to your profile and click the "new" button in the Highlights section.

You will see a window with all saved stories. Select any of them in the order you would like later when displaying the Highlights compilation. Select the cover of the collection from the thumbnails of the story. Then write the name - it can contain up to 16 characters with spaces. nine0005

Important: by default, the cover of the new album is the image of the first story, cropped to the center. You can change the story that will become the cover and its centering.

After adding the stories, cover and title, save the new highlights . They will appear in your profile description and will be available to all users who visit your page. Collections will appear as normal stories. Their number is not limited - you can add 10, 20 or 100 "best moments", blog categories, product descriptions. nine0005

How to design and use beautifully

The Highlights feature can be used for promotion. Browse competitor profiles and use their experience or develop your own original ideas. For example, you can:

  • Create a collection of for each day if you are a well-known blogger or public figure. So the user can easily see what you did yesterday, a week or a month ago.
  • Represent each individual item in your selection. This is true for shops on Instagram. By adding the description and benefits of each product to a separate collection, you systematize the information and make the search more convenient. nine0044
  • Create a section called "about us" and publish interesting facts about the company, team or workdays in it. This will increase user engagement, which means that in theory it will affect the ranking of your posts in the general feed.
  • Divide the blog into categories - for example, "About politics", "About stars", "About animals". This is true for bloggers with a variety of topics for releases.
  • Create a price list - this will make it easier for users to find prices. If you sell several products, you can create one collection. If a lot - several albums categorized. nine0044
  • Sell advertising space. This usage idea is also relevant for users with large followings.
  • Publish descriptions of promotions and discounts. So they will be in a prominent place, and users will be more active.

Read also: How to change your Instagram information

How to change or delete

Published Highlights can be edited or deleted. To change or delete them, go to your profile, tap on the desired collection and hold your finger on the screen until a pop-up window appears. Choose the option you need - edit or delete. nine0005

In edit mode, you can change the name of the collection, its cover, add another story to the best moments. You can also delete from the "best moments" of history that have lost their relevance.

Article in the topic: How to make covers for current stories on Instagram

In the delete mode, the system will ask you again if you really want to delete the published album. If you confirm the operation, it is permanently deleted. But the stories published in it are saved in the archive - you can create a new collection from them. Also, you can download any Stories from the Highlights section. nine0005

Why Highlights doesn't work

Old app

If you haven't updated Instagram in a while, the feature won't work. To be able to use Highlights, please update the app to version 25 or later.

System crash

If you have the latest version of the app and still don't have Highlights, try reinstalling or restarting it.

Important: if neither updating nor reinstalling helped, write to the technical support service of the social network. nine0005

Do you use Highlights, and what stories do you upload to collections? Share your experience in the comments - we are very interested.

We also recently wrote about the appearance of gifs on Instagram and subscriptions to the hashtags .

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HIGHLIGHTS on Instagram - how to add actual assaults Share!


Highlights on Instagram or actual (pinned) Stories appeared quite recently, but are already actively used by many commercial accounts. Highlights allowed to significantly expand the content of the header business profiles on Instagram .

The information that does not fit in the profile description or is relevant in connection with any holiday (February 23, March 8), can now be placed just below the description in the form of pinned Stories.

Program for promotion on Instagram - SocialKit:

  • Collecting and filtering the target audience
  • Masslooking, massfollowing, massliking
  • Delayed posting of photos, videos and stories
    • nine0041 Mailing in Direct, autoresponder

Registration >>>

Location of highlights on Instagram

Highlights are located below the description and above the content posted in the account (marked as Hot for account owners). Displayed only on the main profile page.

Most often used to post a price list, answer frequently asked questions, highlight current promotions, present new products, and so on. They are a set of Stories collected in one album, with an arbitrary name. nine0005

How to make and add a pinned story

To make a pinned story, add a regular story. We talked about how to do this in an article about Instagram Stories .

After publishing a Story, open it and click on the heart icon, then confirm that you want to highlight the story.

The second way to add a pinned story is from the main page of the account by clicking on the big plus. After that, you can select any of the previously published Stories or create a new one. Having marked the necessary Stories, then we come up with a name for the collection and click "Finish". nine0005

The album cover will be selected automatically, but you can change it by clicking "Edit Cover" and selecting any of the Stories in the collection as the cover.

After the done manipulations, the created collection will appear in the "Actual" section in your profile.

Ideas for using highlights on Instagram

  • Catalog of products/services - to simplify the search for products on your account, you can place the main ones in pinned Stories.
    • nine0041 Portfolio - divide your completed works or cases into areas and fix them on the main profile page.
  • Archive of photos dedicated to one topic. For example, "Journey to Italy" or "Opening of an exhibition of paintings by Van Gogh. "
  • Content rubricator - we save Stories by subject for each album.
  • Instructions - for example, on how to place an order on the site.

Surely, while you were reading our ideas, an insight came to you and you came up with at least a few more ways to use the Highlights function. nine0005

Cool video ideas for Instagram

How to change or remove Highlights

Remove from current.

Why there is no highlights function on Instagram

The absence of the highlights function on Instagram can be due to the following reasons:

  • outdated version of the application;
  • an old version of the operating system or device;
  • old account.

To be able to make pinned stories, update the app or software on your phone.

Conclusion

Highlights are quite a useful feature that you should definitely use to significantly expand the section with important information about the company.

Learn more