Using Instagram Highlights is a great way to capture those fleeting Stories and keep them on your profile. You can take bits and pieces from you Insta Stories to add to your Highlights and showcase them right under your bio. You can create as many Highlights as you want, each with a unique cover that will entice visitors to click through to the Stories within.
Here’s how to choose a cover photo for your Highlight or even create custom Highlight icons that will help form a cohesive theme across your Instagram.
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You have to use Instagram Highlights to choose custom covers, so if you haven’t started using them yet, now is your chance. Head over to your Instagram Story Archive, tap on a Story, and then tap Highlight. The first Story you add to your Highlight will automatically be chosen as the Highlight cover, but you can change your Highlight cover whenever you want. Here’s how:
Not everyone knows that, but you can also upload an Instagram Highlight cover from photos in your Camera Roll, even if they aren’t part of the Highlight. Just follow these step-by-step instructions.
You can use whatever photo you want for your custom Instagram Highlight covers. If you’re feeling ambitious, why not create your own Instagram Story Icons to use as Highlight covers? You don’t have to be a designer to create Highlight icons that will stand out. In fact, you can make them for free with Canva.
Canva is a graphic design web tool and app that makes designing social media graphics easy. With Canva, you can create beautiful Instagram Highlight covers within just a few minutes, using designs that are ready to go. Here’s how to use Canva to create your custom Highlight covers.
Your Highlight cover will fit inside a circle on your profile page, so using square dimensions when designing your custom Highlight cover should work well. Use 2000 x 2000 pixels with a ratio of 1:1 for the best results.
If you’re designing a custom cover on Canva, you will see that the icon sits neatly in the middle of a Story-sized rectangle. The overall aspect ratio for the Canva Highlight covers is 9:16. You just have to make sure that your illustration is centered when you add it as your Instagram Highlight icon.
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Whether you use a photo from your Instagram Stories or a custom illustration for your Instagram Highlight covers, be sure to maximize the space on your profile by using your Highlights to their fullest potential.
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).
Log into your account on Visme or create a free account on visme.co.
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!
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.)
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.
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).
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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. nine0003
You can add both recent Stories and previously released Stories to Stories.
How to put the actual on Instagram *:
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".
3. 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”.
Greenfield, Inostranka and Leroy Merlin highlight cover design options 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. nine0003 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*:
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. nine0003
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.
3. 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 highlightsThere'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.
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.
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. nine0003
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.
Add stories for friends to the current 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.
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. nine0003
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 one 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. nine0003
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The Instagram video cover is the preview frame you choose. It is able to attract the attention of users, display the essence of the video. In addition, you can add a call to action and branding elements to the cover to improve the company's reputation. nine0003
Setting a custom video cover is not provided by the social network, but there are simple and convenient options for choosing a cover. They will be discussed in today's article. You will learn all the ways how to set a cover photo on Instagram video. We will consider some of the methods in detail.
Program for promotion on Instagram - SocialKit:
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See also : Auto-post video to IGTV
There are three main ways to change cover.
A little later, we will take a closer look at its capabilities. nine0018 Interesting : How to download video from Instagram
Let's move on to step by step instructions.
Post your video to Instagram first. To do this, go to your page and click on the "+" icon.
Select content from the gallery or go to the Video section and record a new video by holding the record button. nine0003
After recording the video, click on "Next" at the top of the screen.
Click the Cover tab at the bottom of the screen.
Select a suitable preview frame and click Next.
If necessary, add a description to the video and mark the geolocation. You can also repost to other social networks. At the end, click "Share".
Done - the video is published with the cover of your choice!
If you want to change the cover, you will have to delete the published video and add it again, choosing a different preview during the posting stage.
Go to Google Play and install the app on your mobile device.
Launch this video editor on your phone and click on Video.
Create a new file by clicking on the plus. Go to the section with your videos and photos. After that, select a photo - a check mark will appear on the photo selected for the cover. nine0003
The selected photo can be edited: crop, copy, rotate, zoom.
Next, go to "Video" and tick the desired video for which the preview is intended.
You can also edit it: cut, insert music, add text and apply a filter.
Click Save at the top of the screen. A green check mark will appear, which means that the application is connecting the video with the picture, processing the request. nine0003
Select the video quality you want.
Once the on-screen video conversion reaches 100%, your video with a new cover will be ready.
To make the transition from the cover image in the video almost imperceptible, go to the "Speed" section. Select the desired frame - the "Time" tab will appear. Set the slider to one second. In this case, the screensaver will not interfere with the comfortable viewing of the video.
Topic 9 article0029 : Instagram video ideas
In order not to make a mistake when choosing a cover, take into account the recommendations of SMM specialists.
