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How to set up instagram highlights


Everything You Need to Know About

What do people see first when they open your Instagram profile?

Your bio information and of course right below one of the most useful Instagram features, the Instagram stories highlights!

They are front and center on your profile, serving as the perfect indicators to show users what your brand is all about. You can have the best Instagram stories that you re-share from your followers and build a perfect user-generated content highlight as social proof for your brand’s quality.

Unlike Instagram Stories that disappear after 24 hours, Instagram Stories Highlights can live permanently on your profile. This is why you should consider spending some time planning on how to apply them to showcase and promote your brand.

In this guide, you will learn all you need to know to create Instagram Highlights that will help you stand out from the crowd.

What’s inside:

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  • 1. What are Instagram Story Highlights?
  • 2. How to Create Instagram Highlight?
  • 3. Why Instagram Highlights are so Important?
  • 4. How to add Instagram Highlights covers or icons?
  • 5. How to design Instagram Highlights Cover Icons
  • 6. Instagram Highlights examples to get inspired
  • 7. Tips for creating effective Instagram Story Highlight covers
  • 8. How to display Instagram Highlight on your website?

1. What are Instagram Story Highlights?

We all know that Instagram stories disappear in 24 hours. And, in order to give the option for the users to save some of the stories and make them visible as a pin in their profile, Instagram has provided a feature called Highlights. The feature allows you to keep your stories content on your Instagram feed as long as you want.

Instagram Highlights are groups of stories that you can create as folder sections on your Instagram profiles.

This means that once you post a story you can save it in a Highlight (like a folder) that will display on your Instagram profile, or you can activate the Archive option that will automatically save Instagram stories and in the future create highlights from the saved stories in your archive.

The main attributes of the Highlights are:

  • Highlights covers – option to add a custom image or an icon that will represent the topic of the stories that are saved inside;
  • Highlights name – option to name the Highlight the same as you do with naming folders.

Note that, once you create the Highlights they appear in your Instagram profile screen right below your bio text and profile photo.

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2.

How to Create Instagram Highlight?

As mentioned above, you have two ways how to create an Instagram Story Highlights:

  • Create Highlight from the active story – Post a story and manually save it in a Highlight
  • Create Highlight from archived stories – If you have the Archive option activated, your stories will save automatically in your archive section, and in the future, you can choose which stories to be organized in a Highlight.

Let me show you how to create a Highlight with the first option:

Create Highlight from the active story

If you have an active story and you want to make sure this story is added to a Highlight just follow these steps:

  1. Tap on the active story to view it
  2. Tap the bottom option Highlight
  3. Tap the plus icon to create new Highlight
  4. Enter the name of the new Highlight
  5. Tap the blue buttons Add
Create Highlight from an active Instagram Story

Once you do this, your new Highlight will appear on your profile photo and your followers will be able to view it even after the 24 hour story lifetime.

Create Highlight from the archived stories

There is a possibility to create highlights from the stories archive as well. Using the story controls and options you can pull the stories you save to archive. 

To add Instagram stories from your archive to a highlight and pin them on your profile, follow the steps below:

  1. Go to your Instagram profile and tap Story Highlights below bio
  2. Tap the plus icon
  3. In the new window, tap and select the stories you want to appear in the Highlight and tap Next.
  4. Tap ‘Edit Cover’ to choose which story will appear as a Highlight icon or just upload an icon
  5. Enter a name for your Highlight
  6. Tap Add (iPhone) or Done (Android).

How to add more stories in a current Highlight

You can add more photos or videos to your highlight at any time by following these steps:

  1. Go to your profile and hold your finger pressed on the Highlight you want to edit
  2. Tap Edit Highlight
  3. Choose the stories you want to add and tap Done

Also in this ‘Edit Highlight’ screen, it’s text and it’s the cover image. And if you want to delete the Highlight, just press and hold on to the Highlight you want to delete and choose the option ‘Delete Highlight’.

3. Why Instagram Highlights are so Important?

Instagram Stories have become one of the main channels for brands to connect, engage, and gain real results from their digital marketing activities. Understanding Instagram stories for business can be one of your main competitive advantages for your 2020 marketing activities.

Therefore, having hard-produced story videos or images, saved for future followers to view at any time, make the Highlights feature very important for the community managers and digital marketers.

The main reasons why you need to use Instagram Highlights, are the following:

  • Use this new format to tell an ongoing story
  • Make the content of your stories accessible to new followers
  • Educate them about your previous activities posted in the stories
  • Showcase your products or services, in a structured and categorized way
  • Provide library format of useful content that you’ve already shared

4.

How to add Instagram Highlights covers or icons?

The covers and the text of the Instagram Highlights are gaining huge popularity due to the fact that these small icons are the first thing a new visitor to your Instagram profile will see.

You will notice that the cover images are usually the images in the stories that you’ve selected for that particular Highlight. But, this tutorial, will show you how to change the Highlights covers without sharing them in a story.

Before you start, please add the icon images in your phone’s camera roll and follow these steps.

  1. Go to your profile and hold your finger to the Highlight you want to edit
  2. Tap Edit Highlight
  3. Tap Edit Cover
  4. Choose the photo from your camera roll
  5. Tap Done

That’s it! Now you have your Instagram highlight covers!

As for your other social media and Instagram feed, you can also design your own free icons for your Instagram stories.

For this challenge, I will definitely recommend Canva.

It is a very easy tool and it already has predefined icons that you can easily re-use to make Instagram highlights covers.

You will only need to follow the steps below, and in a very fast time you will be able to create your highlight covers:

  1. Open Canva and click Create a design
  2. Choose the Instagram story format
  3. Choose any template, delete its content and change the background color
  4. Go to Elements and in the search field type icon. Choose the preferred icon, set it in the middle and choose its color
  5. Share this design to your email and save it to your phone’s camera roll

Once you want to change the cover, just choose this icon from your phone’s camera roll.

6. Instagram Highlights examples to get inspired

Once you know how you want to create the icons, you will need to make a plan for the overall design of the Highlights section.  

This is a current trend, and as you are probably aware you want to make sure people coming to your profile click on these icons and check your great Instagram stories.

In the following section, you can find some interesting ideas on how to organize the Instagram stories and design the Highlights covers.

Here are few Highlights covers for inspiration:

1. Glossier Inc. is a people-powered beauty ecosystem – they use pink color only for their profile image (not a logo) and for the Highlights covers they use only blank–white images or product-line images. Very minimalistic and very different than other accounts, which usually use icons or some product images.overs they use only blank–white images. Very minimalistic and very different than other accounts, which usually use icons or some product images.

2. Carrots n Cake Flexible Macro Plans & Coaching – provides a very indebted structure about their content published via Instagram stories and uses all light-orange icons with the same layout to represent all different categories of the Highlights.

3. Starbucks Coffee – they use real people photos as they use real people photos or cute green product images as cover icons for the Highlights. This appeal brings the design of their profile to life and it makes the visitors feel the user-friendliness of the profile.

7. Tips for creating effective Instagram Story Highlight covers

Instagram highlights popularity has definitely resulted in them being an essential element of every Instagram profile.

So, to make sure you keep up with the latest trends, we combined some tips with real examples to showcase how you can design the Highlight covers to get the best of this Instagram feature.

Tip 1: Be innovative. Use words instead of icons or vice versa

When creating Highlight icons, make sure it is in line with your brand identity but still have fun, and try to be as innovative as possible to make that small space eyecatching.

For example, see how Instagram for business is doing this.

They use their colors but not for designing the cover icons.

They’ve literally swiped the spaces.

They use the actual icons for cover icons. Cool right?!

Tip 2: Use bold icons and text to emphasize your highlights

Take a look at how the French beauty chain Sephora is doing this.

They use simple, but cute icons to demonstrate their activities on Instagram, from posting stories about new products or categorizing these stories by a product type.

Tip 3: Use your brand colors

To make your profile have a cohesive look and keep your brand voice, try including your brand kit in your Instagram highlights covers.

See how the American chain of restaurants Shake Shack is doing this.

They use simple icons with green graphics to present their company activities.

Tip 4: Showcase your product/services

Highlights are a good way to show Instagram users what you offer.

Check out how Florence by Mills does this. The cosmetics brand crafts eye-catching highlights (that also match their brand colors) to present their products and services.

Tip 5: Use your brand ambassadors

See how Nike Women does that in practice.

The famous footwear corporation includes famous athletes as their brand ambassadors in their main story highlights covers.

The actual covers are a photo of the athlete and the name of the Highlight is her name.

8. How to display Instagram Highlight on your website?

Once you are done crafting your unique Instagram highlights, why not show your creativity on your website too?

Please note that at this moment Instagram does not have an API that will allow third-party tools to directly sync the websites with your Instagram Highlights.

The good news is that there are tools like EmbedStories that can display Instagram stories on any website.

This means that you can embed Instagram Highlights but only for the stories that are already generated in the EmbedStories platform.

The archived stories can be uploaded manually by using the upload option for a custom story that you can later add to your stories Highlights menu.

For any information on how to embed Instagram Highlights on your website, feel free to chat with us.

—

In summary, Instagram highlights help brands catch the eye of their followers and keep them engaged in a more creative way. 

And from the looks of it, Instagram highlights popularity isn’t going to vanish anytime soon.

Use that wisely!

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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Highlights on Instagram - how to add relevant pinned Stories

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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 the 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.

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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 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

  • Products/services catalog - 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 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 - in each album we save Stories by subject.
  • 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 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;
  • 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. Also mandatory is how to use the SocialKit program for professional Instagram work.

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

The Highlights feature on Instagram 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 within the promotion Instagram .

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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 famous 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.
  • 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, "Politics", "About the 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.
  • 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 information on Instagram

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.

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.

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.

Learn more