How to make story highlights cover on 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.
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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.
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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 quickly make a beautiful cover for Highlights on Instagram
The growing functionality of the Stories section has long made working with Instagram* Stories a separate strategy for interacting with subscribers. In Stories, they make quests and advertise blogs and products, conduct surveys and communicate in joint live broadcasts.
Stories used to be available for 24 hours, but due to the popularity of the format, Instagram* developers allowed to save content using the new Stories format, Stories Highlights. It is also called the "Actual" section - it allows you to save stories forever, and also - to fix them immediately after the profile description. You can also sort, name, and change the appearance of pinned stories.
And if you need to plan Stories, use SMMplanner's super-advanced Instagram Story Builder*.
You can make the Featured Stories section visually appealing by editing their covers, which can improve the overall look of your account.
Let's figure out how to do it yourself, without resorting to the services of different "specialists".
How to add a cover to Stories
Let me tell you a little secret. To add a cover to Stories, it is not necessary to publish it in Stories, as many people do. Incomprehensible characters will only cause negativity in your readers.
You are scrolling through Stories, and suddenly something indistinct pops upI advise you to do it this way:
- Click "Edit Current" and then "Edit Cover"
- Open the gallery. The button is hidden at the very beginning of the row (on the left)
- Select the desired image and save the cover
Stories cover apps
Okay, we've learned how to upload covers. But how do you find a unique cover that suits your style? We have collected several ways, you will definitely find something for yourself.
1. Flaticon
This resource offers tens of thousands of icons on a variety of topics. You can use ready-made thematic catalogs or enter the desired topic into the search (for example, "food") - the service will show all the icons that match the request.
2. Pinterest (application in the App Store or Google Play)
We go into the application and write in the search "Cover for Instagram*". You will be given bright and interesting selections suitable for different very different accounts.
3. Canvas in SMMplanner
Those who use SMMplanner and read the blog know that our autoposting service has a free built-in editor with the functionality of Canva, who left Russia. In the "Canvas" section, you can create your own icon or inscription to your taste.
The whole procedure consists of several steps:
- Creating a New Design.
- In the "Pictures" section, look for a suitable image or upload your own.
- In the "Resize" section, select the appropriate format.
- Text and shapes can be added to the Text and Elements sections.
- Save and upload to Instagram*.
Do you want to learn how to make effective creatives for posts and ads and save on designer services? Sign up for the course "Design for social networks from 0 and for free." In 10 practical lessons, you will master the free Canvas editor, learn how to independently and quickly create visuals and advertising for your projects using ready-made templates or from scratch. The editor is available online without VPN, does not require design skills and downloads of additional software.
4. App For Type
This method is suitable for those who like bright and interesting inscriptions. The application has a lot of inscriptions, settings and more than 50 fonts.
5. Google
You heard right. This is not banter, but real advice.
Even in Google you can find something interesting. Try it, it gives pretty good results.
Ideas and types of cover design for Stories
When drawing up a strategy or preparing a content plan, bloggers and SMMs are guided by the target audience. You will laugh, but when choosing a cover, you need to do the same.
Covers are different, so the profile is perceived differently. Conventionally, they can be divided into 3 categories:
- Standard covers
Suitable for bloggers, ordinary users and all accounts with a lifestyle theme.
- Thematic covers
Suitable for professionals of all professions.
- Business covers
For example, Black Star did not bother (by the way, you already know how to make a similar cover for yourself). But if you want to stand out, you can't do without covers like the ones on the right.
Tip for those who want to update their cover but don't want to dig through apps: you can save any of these collections and upload them to Instagram* right now.
Leah Kanarskaya , SMM specialist :
In addition to the obvious function of navigation and stimulating a sense of beauty, Stories Highlights perfectly help businesses implement activities to engage users in content, including sales promotion. This means that you can collect and share subscribers' reviews about your products and services in the "Actual" section, save contests and winners, write about delivery conditions, payment, returns and other relevant information. And my advice to you is that since the captions for the icons of Actual Stories do not contain a sufficient number of characters, it is best to turn to the creation of high-quality, easily and quickly understandable to the user, covers. Don’t make your Instagram guest* think and search, make it easier for him to purchase a user’s path, since the functionality allows.
Do you need covers for Stories Highlights
It seemed to me that only lazy people do not use covers for Stories. No! It took me about an hour to find the examples above. Many still don't use Stories Highlights at all.
This means that even now this method is great for standing out.
Yes, this will not affect the increase in coverage or the influx of subscribers, but it will help in other ways. For example, I recently searched Instagram* for people who bake at home. With equal criteria, one of the accounts I found stood out - as you might have guessed, it was well-designed, and Stories were packaged in windows with bright, and most importantly, understandable covers on the splash screen. This is where my search ended and I happily placed an order.
Whether or not to cling to the cover is your choice, but it certainly won't do you any harm.
To recap
Creating covers is quick and easy if you know where to look for inspiration or ready-made options.
Use any of the methods above: Flaticon and Pinterest are a treasure trove of cool icons, collections, and more, and with Canvas and App For Type, you can make your own unique cover art.
One thing is obvious - there is nothing complicated about it. With the help of these services, it will be possible to collect something interesting for any account, even without design skills.
For information on how to upload photos to Instagram* from a computer, read the link.
*The social network is recognized as extremist and banned in Russia.
The article has been updated. First published: October 22, 2018
How to create covers for saved stories in Instagram profile
Previously, we have already talked about how to beautifully design an Instagram account. Today we want to return to this topic again. But this time we will talk about the design of the Actual (block of saved stories).
Saved stories (or stories)
Text, image or short video that is placed in a special section. Unlike regular stories, saved stories are eternal, that is, they are not automatically deleted after 24 hours, only the account administrator can delete them.
Saved stories are fixed at the very top of the profile, above the block with photos. Therefore, they play an important role in forming the first impression of visitors about your account. Be sure to pay due attention to the design of this block - this way you can highlight your products / services, group content, and simplify profile navigation.
Below are some examples of the beautiful design of the Actual:
How to create a saved story
- Create a regular story.
- Open it and click the Select button at the bottom.
- A popup will appear to select the folder where you want to save the history. You can name the folder as you like, but use no more than 16 characters
- After selecting a folder, the saved story will appear on your profile.
By default, Instagram uses the first image you add to the highlights section as the cover photo. Then the cover can be replaced.
Note: Recent is the section where saved stories are stored.
Things to consider when designing a block of eternal stories:
1. Cover. Images must be of high quality. Check out how they look on Instagram. Not all pictures look equally good “in a circle”.
You can use 1080 x 1920 pixel jpg images as the cover.
2. Title. Up to 15 characters are allowed in the name of an eternal story. However, the system breaks long names with an ellipsis. Therefore, this should be monitored and used as few characters as possible.
- You can add more than 20 icons to a block. But we do not recommend adding too many of them, otherwise it will be difficult for users to understand their abundance.
- One story can be published simultaneously in several playlists.
- The folder name must not exceed 16 characters.
How to add cover art to saved Instagram stories
- Upload your cover image to Stories.
- Next, add it to the Topical (click on the Select button below and select the desired folder).
- You can now directly change the cover of your story. Go to it and click the More button below, and then Edit current.
- After that click Edit Cover and choose your cover image.
- Do not forget to click on the Done button, otherwise the changes will not be saved.
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