How to make highlight cover instagram
How to Make Clicky Instagram Highlight Covers [40 Free Covers]
What is an Instagram highlight cover?
How to create an Instagram highlight cover
8 tips for clicky Instagram highlight covers
Instagram highlight cover templates
Having an orderly, beautiful and consistent set of Instagram highlight covers looks cool, sure — but it’s also a great opportunity to show off your branding, color palette and sense of style to your followers. And, aesthetic highlight covers encourage profile visitors to click and view the Stories that contain all the important information you’ve essentially pinned to the top of your profile.
You can design personalized highlight covers from scratch or use a graphic design tool or photo editing app for extra support. Read this post and you’ll be, well, covered.
Download your free pack of 40 customizable Instagram Stories Highlights Icons now. Optimize your profile and set your brand apart from the competition.
What is an Instagram highlight cover?
First: What is an Instagram highlight?
An Instagram highlight is a collection of Instagram Stories that a user has saved under a certain category. Instagram Stories can only be viewed for 24 hours, but adding a Story to a highlight gives it a permanent spot on your profile.
An Instagram highlight cover is a photo or graphic that appears above the highlight name on your profile page. It’s like a book cover, but for your highlight.
In the example below (indicated by the blue rectangle), a fashion brand uses highlights to feature important information—a sizing guide, care info, new launches, etc.—and each highlight has a cute floral highlight cover.
Source: Instagram
Highlight covers aren’t essential, but they do provide your profile with a polished look—and they make a great first impression for people visiting your Instagram page for the first time.
Here’s how to make them.
How to create an Instagram highlight cover
To create an Instagram highlight cover, first you need to have an Instagram highlight. Follow these step-by-step instructions to create a highlight (and if you already have a highlight set up, skip this part).
How to create an Instagram highlight
1. Open your Instagram account in the mobile app and click “New” in the highlights section below your bio.
2. Scroll through your Story archive and select the Stories you want to include in your highlight. Then, tap Next in the top right corner of the screen.
3. Type in the name of your highlight.
4. Optional: Tap Edit cover to edit the default cover picked by Instagram (a frame from the first Story in your collection). You can also do this later, once your highlight is live — we cover the process in detail below.
5. Click Add in the top right cover of the screen.
That’s it! Your highlight will show up on your profile page.
How to create a personalized Instagram highlight cover
Once you create an Instagram highlight, the cover will generate automatically — but personalizing your Instagram highlight covers is way more fun. It’s also a great way to showcase your branding and add an individual touch to your profile.
We’ve put together 40 Instagram Story highlight cover icons that are free to download and easy to customize. Or, you can make your own.
You can create circular Instagram highlight covers using any design app or software. We’re fans of Canva (and psst… Canva is now integrated with Hootsuite, making it simple to design beautiful graphics for free). Here’s how to create a highlight cover using Canva.
1. Go to canva.com. Canva is free to use, but you do need to create an account to log in.
2. You can design your own Instagram highlight from scratch using any circular image, or personalize a Canva template (that’s what we’ll be doing in this example). Type “Instagram Story highlight” into the search bar to find thousands of templates.
3. Select your favorite template.
4. Once you’ve selected your template, you can edit the text…
5. …and the colours…
6. …and even add graphics, if you want to. Canva has a ton of free images and designs to choose from.
7. When you’re happy with the design, click “Share” at the top right of your screen to download the image.
8. Choose Download from the drop-down menu. Download the image as a PNG or JPG. If the template you’ve chosen has several pages, only download the pages that you want—in this case, we’re only saving page 2.
9. Save the image to your phone’s camera roll. Now, it’s time to use the image as a highlight cover.
How to change your Instagram highlight cover
To change your Instagram highlight cover to a personalized image, follow these simple steps:
1. Open the highlight from your Instagram profile.
2. Tap More in the bottom right corner.
3. Tap Edit highlight. Then, tap Edit cover, near the top of your screen.
5. To choose an image from your camera roll, tap the photo icon near the bottom of your screen.
6. Choose the new highlight cover from your camera roll. Then, tap Done.
That’s it! Your brand new highlight cover is live.
The formula for going viral
Everything you need to make engaging content. Post templates, an AI hashtag generator, and access to Canva and Grammarly Pro in Hootsuite.
Get 60 days for $0
8 tips for clicky Instagram highlight covers
Still searching for inspiration? Here are some great examples of engaging Instagram Story highlight covers and tips on how to get it right.
1. Keep it simple
Instagram Story highlight covers are small—so small, in fact, that you’ll want to avoid crowding that precious little circle with too much text or overcomplicated images.
Source: Instagram
Keeping your covers basic and clean is ideal. Even simple color-blocked highlight covers (like the ones used by the artist above) are super effective: they’re not too busy, and pleasing to look at.
2. Be consistent
Your IG highlight covers don’t need to be identical, but ideally, they’ll match: consider picking a certain color, theme or pattern to follow when making your covers.
Source: Instagram
This restaurant uses a red circular frame on all of their highlight covers, creating a consistent look even though the photos within each frame are all different. It’s a small detail, but it gives the covers a cohesive look.
3. Be creative
Highlight covers are an opportunity to show off your creativity as a brand. Think about how you can infuse your brand into your highlight covers as much as possible.
Source: Instagram
For example, paint brand Farrow and Ball has highlight covers that look like paint mixing together. It’s a very unique choice that effectively communicates something about the brand (mainly, that they sell paint).
4. Use a branded color palette
Another way you can incorporate your brand into your highlight covers is by using your brand’s colors in the designs. Think of a cover like a label for your business: audiences should be able to look at it and immediately know that it belongs to you.
Source: Instagram
This cosmetic brand, for example, has a very consistent color palette across their products and on their Instagram. The highlight covers are no exception: they take on the same trendy pinky-brown hues as the rest of the profile.
5. Use icons
Because there’s not much real estate on a highlight cover, using pictures that symbolize words and ideas—or icons—can be an excellent tool for communicating simple information.
Source: Instagram
Crate and Barrel’s Instagram highlight covers are quite basic, but the icons are effective when it comes to symbolizing ideas (and they’re pretty cute, too). Icons are where editing apps like Canva really shine—there’s thousands of symbols and simple illustrations built right in.
6. Show off your products
If you use Instagram for business, your highlight covers work as a tiny marketing tactic. Instead of having to scroll through your feed to see all of your merchandise, Instagram users can get a quick look at your products via the highlight covers.
Source: Instagram
This slow fashion brand uses highlights to feature specific products, so curious shoppers can easily research the design and fit of different pieces of clothing.
7. Highlight what matters most
Don’t make the high school mistake of highlighting everything. Highlights should be used to showcase only the most important and useful information to your audience. It’s good to be picky about which Stories you highlight (and as a bonus, being selective means you won’t have to design a ton of highlight covers).
Source: Instagram
Pottery Barn Kids keeps their highlights simple and broad: topics like “Nursery,” “Toddler,” and “Bedroom” make it easy for Instagram users to find the inspo they’re looking for.
8. Don’t be afraid to experiment
Highlight covers often symbolize the highlighted category in a very literal way, but if you’ve got an idea, try it—one of the best things about highlight covers is that they can be edited or switched out if you change your mind. Let your imagination go wild.
Source: Instagram
It’s not surprising that this graphic designer has very bold, distinctive highlight covers—they fit perfectly with his brand. For example, it would be the typical choice to go with Twitter’s logo for the “Tweets” section, but this designer created his own personal version of that iconic bird.
Instagram highlight cover templates
Now that you know how to create Instagram highlights and add custom covers to them, download this bundle of 40 free customizable designs and take the look of your Instagram profile to the next level.
Download your free pack of 40 customizable Instagram Stories Highlights Icons now. Optimize your profile and set your brand apart from the competition.
Easily manage all of your Instagram marketing with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can schedule and publish posts directly to Instagram, engage your audience, measure performance and run all your other social media profiles. Try it free today.
Get Started
Better content in half the time
Boost engagement and save time with a hashtag generator, post templates, Canva, and Grammarly Pro in Hootsuite.
Free 60-Day Trial
How to Make Aesthetically Pleasing Instagram Highlight Covers — Homemade Social
Written By Becca Booker
With the ever-changing Instagram algorithm, it is becoming increasingly important to utilize IG stories to create consistent engagement & show authenticity! IG stories are a great way to interact with your followers & give them a behind-the-scenes of what you’re all about.
A great way to increase the traffic to your page is to save your Instagram stories to highlights so followers can refer back to them for information and entertainment. A big aspect of a cohesive theme and establishing a solid Instagram aesthetic, which we talked about in our recent blog post, is creating highlight covers. These are easy to create & make highlights more user friendly, while incorporating brand colors and themes.
A great website to use is Canva (it also has an app, but it’s not as easy to use). This site offers a ton of FREE templates & icons to use on highlight covers. You can also upload your own photos to turn into Highlight covers. The possibilities are endless! This is the perfect opportunity to be creative & try your hand at graphic design.
Have a few Instagram highlight ideas in mind? Watch below for an easy step-by-step tutorial on how to Instagram highlight covers & be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Enjoy!
Brief Outline to Creating IG Story Highlight Covers:
Go to canva.com
Once on the homepage, search Instagram Story
Choose any template
Clear out any text or images on the graphic
Add an icon, “illustration” or text. Play around with fonts to match your brand and aesthetic!
Type the Cover category
Duplicate that graphic for the # of covers you’ll need
Customize each cover’s icon and title to correspond with your category. Don’t be afraid to switch up the background color either! Just make sure they align with your brand and Instagram content.
Download templates as a png file
Go to the Instagram app and click on a story highlight
Click More at the bottom of the story and choose Edit Highlight
From there you can edit the cover with your new designs!
Here are some other social media-related blog posts:
How to Use Instagram Stories Highlights to Wow Your Customers
3 Tips To Increase Your Engagement On Instagram Stories
Our 3 Favorite Instagram Story Apps
4 Tips For Service-Based Businesses To Improve Their Social Media Presence
6 Tools Every Content Creator Needs Under $25
How To Stay Up-To-Date With Social Media Trends
We hope you enjoyed this blog post and found it insightful! Making your Instagram highlight ideas into a reality through on-brand highlight covers can do wonders for helping you establish a cohesive theme and Instagram aesthetic overall! Be sure to follow along on Instagram at @homemadesocial_ and let us know if you have any questions! You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter for social media tips & tricks & to stay up-to-date on the latest in the digital industry!
Becca Booker http://www. homemadesocial.com
How to add and change Instagram highlights correctly
Stories on Instagram* live only a day, but they can be returned using albums (highlights). This is convenient if you don’t want to forget valuable shots and important moments in life, and it’s also useful for work: with the help of albums, you can create thematic headings. A list of such ideas can be found in the article “15+ Ideas for Instagram* Highlights that anyone can implement”.
In this article we will analyze the technical part: how to add, change and hide stories from the current one.
How to add Stories to Instagram Stories*
You can add both recent Stories and previously released Stories to Stories.
How to put the actual on Instagram *:
- We publish stories.
- We return to the feed of publications.
- Click "Select" on the published story.
- Select an album to save or create a new one (see below for creating albums).
- Stories are saved to Topical.
How to add stories from the archive to the current one:
1. Go to your personal tab in the Instagram app*. Click "Add" in the feed under the profile header.
2. Select the stories you want to add to the album. The number is not limited, one story can be added to several albums at once. As you choose, click "Next".
How to add old stories to current3. Edit the cover art and name it . The maximum title length is 16 characters. You can use numbers, symbols, and emoji. For the cover, you can use frames from stories uploaded to the album, or click on the gallery icon to select images from your phone.
Instagram* In any case, write down the name, so if you don't want a signature, then use an invisible space - copy it from here, it is between the brackets (⠀).
Important : Create icon covers if you want to style your profile in the same style. For more details, see the articles “How to make a cover for Instagram* Highlights Stories” and “How to make an Instagram highlight*: instructions and tricks”.
4. Click Finish . The current one is saved in your profile and is available for viewing by subscribers. Unfortunately, Stories view statistics will no longer be displayed in the current one.
Keeping up-to-date on Instagram*Is it possible to add up-to-date on Instagram* without stories? No, you won't be able to upload a picture or video from the gallery right away - you'll have to create a story anyway.
How to edit Instagram highlights*
How to edit Instagram highlights*:
1. Click on highlights . Next, click on the “More” item in the lower right corner and select “Edit current”. By the way, in the same menu you can delete a specific story from the album, send it to friends in direct, copy the link or share it through other social networks.
2. Change Actual . Two tabs will appear: in the "Selected" you can click on stories and remove unnecessary ones, in the "Add" tab, respectively, add saved stories from the archive.
Edit highlights3. Change title and cover . The actions are exactly the same as when creating covers and captions, which we described above.
4. Click "Finish" . Current edited.
Adding new stories, changing the cover in highlightsHow to rearrange what's hot on Instagram*
There's no official way to change the order of what's hot on Instagram*, but the app keeps the order of albums according to the editing date. To swap highlights, just edit the desired album and it will automatically move forward.
- Go to the current and click "More", then - "Edit current".
- Go to the "Add" tab and select any story, the date is not important.
- The album has moved forward.
So, with the help of simple manipulations, you can build the desired order of the albums.
Changing the order of the current in Instagram*Important: when deleting stories from the current in edit mode, the order of the albums will not change.
How to hide Instagram highlights*
On Instagram* you can hide stories from users and show them only to your close circle. The list can be customized - as a result, only those who are part of the group will see stories. This also applies to the present.
How to make relevant for friends:
1. Add stories . Choose the place of publication: "Close friends".
2. Adding friends . We make a list of those who will see the story - you can add from one person.
3. Go to the feed . We select "Select" and create a new album: we prescribe the name and edit the cover, if necessary.
4. Done . Now only friends from the list will see this album. For comparison, in the screenshot below: in the first picture, this is how a friend’s list of highlights looks like, and in the second, for someone who is not on the list.
How friends see their profile on Instagram*There is another way to hide stories and highlights from a specific person.
How to hide stories and current from another user:
1. Go to "Settings" . Select the "Privacy" section.
2. Select "Stories". Next, specify the accounts of those people who do not need to show your stories.
Closing stories and current from users3. Done . Now the selected people will not show your stories and current.
What does a profile look like with hidden stories and the current oneIn conclusion
We plan to release stories in SMMplanner Have you figured out the current one? Now it only remains to publish stories and scatter them into categories. Well, our SMMplanner service will help you plan the release of stories - you can add stickers, do polls, change backgrounds and connect Canva to create designs. This is convenient if you often publish content and do not want to be intrusive - the scheduler will help you create a publishing plan at least a month in advance.
Highlights on Instagram - how to add relevant pinned Stories
Share!
Highlights on Instagram or actual (pinned) Stories appeared quite recently, but are already actively used by many commercial accounts. Highlights made it possible to significantly expand the information content of the header of a business profile 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
- Mailing in Direct, autoresponder
Registration >>>
Where highlights are located 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.
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 the 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".
The album cover will be selected automatically, but you can change it by clicking "Edit Cover" and choosing 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.
- Portfolio - divide your completed works or cases by 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.
Cool video ideas for Instagram
How to edit or delete 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;
- 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.
