What Highlights are
Usually, stories disappear from the account after 24 hours. But you can keep your Stories forever if you add them to Highlights — users will see them under the profile bio, just above your posts. You can save them, either, while they are still active. Or you can get them from the archived stories and add them to Highlights.
Why are the first five Highlights so important? Because when you open a profile, you can see the first five collections without scrolling. Therefore, the main focus of this article is on making these first five selections perfect.
If you don’t have Highlights yet, you need to add at least five. If you add only one, two, three, or four — the profile will not look complete.
Creating Highlights
It is essential to create stories with a similar style. Try using the same fonts, one letter size. It looks nice and clear.
If your collection names are too long, Instagram cuts them off in the middle of a word. And then, it is difficult for the followers to guess what you have written. So, when you pick names, keep them as short as possible and check how they appear on Instagram. Check using your phone, not your computer, because the full Instagram version is in the form of a desktop version.
Instagram will not allow you to add your story to highlights if you do not write a name in the collection title bar. But there is a lifehack: you can insert a secret space there. It is easy to find it on Google: search for a ‘secret space’ — an invisible character that you can copy and paste into the name of the Highlights collection. Then Instagram will consider it a symbol and save it without naming.
Covers of Highlights should be as simple as possible. Just fill the one with a solid color or add a slight gradient in your primary colors.
If you have a personal blog, you can use one of your photos as the cover of Highlights. But it should not be a random photo. Choose one of those added to the collection. You need to prepare a square format photo. The main object in this photo should be large enough because the cover icon is small — it will be difficult to see anything if you are far from the picture.
Filling Highlights
When users open your Highlights, they most commonly start watching from the first collection. And therefore, you need to think logically about what you need to show people in Highlights to bring them to purchase. Through a chain of Highlights, you need to lead the client to the desire of buying a product from you. There is a marketing formula — AIDA. It is an abbreviation for A — Attention, I — Interest, D — Desire, and A — Action. You can apply the formula to Highlights efficiently.
So, first, you need to get people’s attention. Usually, this is a selection of stories where you talk about yourself. It is necessary to speak in a way one can see what will be next.
With Onlypult, save time you spend on SMM tasks — posting to all social media, analytics, multiple links, micro landing pages, web monitoring. All in one place.
Further collections should arouse interest and desire according to the AIDA formula. For example, it could be reviews of your services or products.
Be sure to add a selection with services and prices. “DM for prices” is an old trick that doesn’t work anymore.
If you have a store on Instagram, you can create the following collections:
- About yourself, about your brand.
- ‘In stock’ or ‘Pricelist’ of things that users can buy.
- ‘Preorder.’
- ‘Reviews.’
- ‘Question — Answer.’
- If you have promotions and discounts — put them in one of the first five Highlights collections too..
- ‘Before / After’ if you are a beauty master.
- ‘Contacts.’
Highlights order
Those who have already worked with Highlights know that they are arranged by Instagram automatically in a specific order: the selection that you updated last pops up in the first place. If another collection pops up first, you can manually restore the order you need. How is it done? You can add any archived story that should be first to the selection. To find archived stories, go to ‘Edit stories’ and add any latest stories. The collection will appear in the first place. Then you can delete that story.
