Creating Highlights for Instagram
Let’s spiff up your Instagram account for 2022!
Highlights are a feature on the Instagram profile that allows Stories to be saved in a collection that is showcased right on the profile! If you’ve seen Highlights on an Instagram account, you’ve probably wondered how you can create Highlights for your business. Read on to learn how to do this!
Adding a Highlights circle to your profile is easy. Go to your business profile on your mobile and look just under your profile bio for a circle with a plus sign inside of it and the word “New” just below it.
If someone has created a few Highlights on this profile before you, the “New” button appears to the right of those Highlight circles. If you don’t see it, try swiping the current Highlights to the left. Press the “New” button and all of your recent Stories will appear in a grid. Scroll through to select the stories you want to add to your Highlight.
If you haven’t yet run the Stories that you want in this Highlight, that will be something you can plan for the future.
Creating Evergreen Content that Sells
Some Stories that are created represent a lot of work, especially if it’s a collection of pictures or a video. But, Stories are only up for 24 hours! So, selecting them as Highlights gives them a longer shelf life and allows your business to showcase the best content right on the top of the Instagram profile. Highlights are always on your profile and they don’t disappear after 24 hours! They are there until you edit them.
One great example of evergreen content that sells is Crumbl’s “Reviews” Highlights on their profile (@Crumbl). It is a collection of videos of customers reviewing their cookies.
Other good examples of business Highlights are Product Unboxing videos, Events, Services, Origin stories, and many more! What kind of categories would be perfect to Highlight for your business?
Other brands use downloadable content in their Highlights, like a menu or a wallpaper for a customer to download to their mobile phone. The Celtics offer wallpapers for fans, and so does XBOX (@xbox). Many brands also have “Gear” or “Products” Highlights, with direct links to their “Gear Shops” or online stores.
How to Add a Long Video to Instagram Highlights
Stories only allow for 15 seconds worth of video to be posted. This means you can’t post a long video to your Stories. But, many brands have posted longer videos and commercials to their Highlights. How are they doing it? They are splitting their videos!
If you have a 2 or 4-minute video that you receive you can split it into 15-second segments and upload them to your Stories. There are video splitter apps you can use to automatically split the video into 15-second segments for this exact purpose! We just tried this method on an Android phone and used an app called “Video Splitter” from the Google Playstore.
Download a video splitter app and try to split your company video on your phone. You will need to download your company video to your phone. Then open the video splitter app, select the video and you might have to customize the segment length to 15 seconds or less. The app will automatically split the video into segments and save them to your phone. Now you are ready to create a Story that will eventually become a Highlight!
Open Instagram and use the Plus box at the top to create a Story. The Story option is the third one down. Once your Story is running you can open it and view it and use the “More” menu at the bottom to mark it as a Highlight. It will start running in Highlights right away.
Or you can wait 24 hours to create a New Highlight with the method above.
Tips:
- Create Highlights and Stories in the Instagram mobile app.
- Scroll back to the first segment of the video, and add it first. Select the video segment, then select “Your Story” at the bottom. You will have to do this with each segment.
How to Create Highlight Covers
You don’t have to create Highlight Covers for your Instagram. If you don’t, it will automatically use the first image of the collection. If it is a video, it will use the first few frames of that video.
Many brands use a Highlight Cover design. Most are corporate color and simple icons. You can also purchase Highlight Covers on Etsy, Dribble or look for inspiration on Pinterest! You can also find templates for Highlights on Canva, and then customize those to reflect your brand. Highlight covers use the same size template as a Story. The icon is centered on the field.
If you do create Highlight covers, you need to run them as Stories before they can be used in Highlights.
How to Edit the Highlight Cover:
- Open your business Instagram profile on your mobile device
- Click on the Highlight icon, when it opens click More at the bottom
- Click Edit Highlight, then Click the cover at the top
- Now you can select an image from your video or your cover design
Tip: your cover design must run as a Story first. Run it as a Story and then open the Story and select “Highlight” at the bottom.
Some Brands That Use Highlights
Most brands that you look at on Instagram today use Highlights. Market Basket, XBOX, Converse, Bertucci’s, and many more! Look at your favorite brands so see what they are doing with Highlights.
Our clients who use Highlights on Instagram: The Megan House Foundation, Cobblestones, moonstones, Stones Social, and StandNP. The Megan’s House Foundation uses Highlights to feature several videos including interviews with family members of their residents, house tours, and information about working at the Megan House. Recreating in-person experiences is an excellent way to use Highlights on your business account.
Be Strategic and Show-Off with Instagram Highlights
Highlights on your Instagram profile can strategically guide a new customer into learning all about your business with just a few clicks. You can show them what you’re passionate about, how your business came into being, amazing product features, and services, or whatever makes up your unique business story.
Maybe you’d like to showcase your awards? Or show off how amazing your staff can be with customers. You can do this relatively quickly and easily with photos, audio, stickers, and even video!
We hope you get started with Highlights today, but if you get stuck or overwhelmed, you can always Contact Us at Tomo360 for a consultation! We love this stuff!!