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How brands can create Instagram Story Highlights and Highlight covers

by | Mar 22, 2018 | Analysis, Public Relations

When Instagram introduced Highlights for Instagram Stories, it became an easy way to let potential followers know what your brand or personal profile is all about. Story Highlights are basically Instagram Stories that you have chosen as your favorites, thus appearing right below your bio in your profile. Story Highlights are featured in circles with a thumbnail, and they make a strong and lasting impression on what kind of content you can offer as a business account or profile.

Instagram presents their users more and more ways to get creative, and allowing Highlights to be permanent is one of its recent features. Before people can scroll down to your grid, they’ll come across your Story Highlights as they are the first thing anyone sees once they tap on your profile.

It is important to utilize this content platform to the fullest as it is essentially the first impression someone will receive of you and your content.

Creating Instagram Story Highlights

Here’s how to choose striking images as covers to catch maximum attention for your business, brand, or personal profile:

  • To make a new Story Highlight, tap on to your Instagram profile and select the circular icon showing the ‘+’ symbol situated below your bio. Upon doing this, all of the Instagram Stories you have published will appear.
  • From this step, you can choose which story you want to highlight. Once you’ve selected that story, tap ‘Next.’ Your stories will appear on your profile in chronological order based on when you published them.
  • You can also edit the title of your Story Highlight. You have at least 16 characters to make your title short and catchy enough to catch immediate attention. Here’s where your copywriting skills will come on full effect!
  • To edit the thumbnail or cover of your Story Highlight, tap on the circle of your story and tap ‘Edit Highlight.’ You can select any part of the Story, and then move the frame or the highlighted part of the image part of the image that you want to crop.
  • Once you’re happy with your Story Highlight and cover, tap ‘Done.’ Congratulations, your new Instagram Story Highlight is now nestled on your profile for as long as you want!

How brands can create Instagram Story Highlights and Highlight covers

There’s no limit as to how many Instagram Highlights you can put on your profile. In fact, you can even include a particular story as part of multiple Highlights. We recommend having a designated theme for each highlight—in this way you can feature different aspects of your business or brand in an organized manner. To do this, just tap down on a Story Highlight you want and you’ll be able to edit, add or remove, or change the cover of your Highlight. If you want to remove the Highlight, simply tap on the ‘Archive’ and you’re all set.

Moving on, here’s how to create a stunning cover for your Highlight

It’s very important to have a striking image so your followers (and potential followers) will immediately tap and watch your Highlights.

While you can only use Stories from your archive as a cover for your Highlights, you will need to upload the cover you want as an Instagram Story.

Here are a couple of creative and fun ways to utilize Instagram’s features for Highlights Cover:

  • You can create a solid colored background with text on Instagram Stories. To do this, take a photo of anything and tap the marker icon on the upper right (next to the sticker icon), and then choose which color you fancy as a background. Hold the screen until the color appears in the entire screen. You can now add text, emojis, doodles, or anything you want in your Highlight’s Cover.
  • Place your emojis, text, or doodles at the center of the screen so when you create a Highlight Cover, these characters are focused right at the middle.
  • If having a solid color doesn’t suit your style, you can create Covers using the filters, backgrounds, and font options in the Instasize After downloading the app for either Android or iOS, you can play around with the exciting in-app features that will inspire unlimited amounts of creativity. You can edit photos using the filters for vintage looking Highlight Covers, or use the borders for exciting background prints. The in-app text tool and its cool looking fonts also lets you toy around with typography. Creating Highlight covers doesn’t have to be difficult, check out the Instasize Blog for more Instagram tips and hacks!

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