When it comes to Instagram Highlights, most people don’t often consider a strategy beyond how the Highlight covers will look. But given how many users are interacting with Story Highlights, we highly recommend implementing a strategy here.
Let’s take a deeper look:
Why have a strategy for Instagram Story Highlights?
Instagram Story Highlights are a great way to keep valuable content on your page for longer than 24 hours, but some other benefits also include:
- The ability to showcase your products or services in an organized and structured way.
- Humanizing your brand and letting users know what you offer.
- Telling a story with your Highlights.
Here’s how you can set up a strategy for your Instagram Story Highlights:
1. Set a goal
What’s the goal of creating Story Highlights? Goals can include (but are not limited to):
- Telling your brand story.
- Showcasing business excellence and providing social proof.
- Informing your audience about your products and services.
Once you have a goal for your story highlights, it makes it easier to know what sort of content you want to post on stories to support your goals.
For example, let’s say you own a medical spa. Your goal for Story Highlights may be to showcase the different treatments and products your spa offers.
2. Create Story Highlight Categories
Once you have your goals in mind, you can start brainstorming categories of content you want to highlight on your Instagram page. Creating different categories of highlights makes it easy for the user to navigate your page and learn more about your brand. With categorized Stories, the user can also choose to view what’s most relevant to them.
Going back to the example, if your goal is to showcase the different services and products your spa offers, some “categories” can include:
- About The Team
- New Treatments
- Before & After Photos of Clients
- Client Testimonials
3. Start Creating Content
Now that you have your categories, it’s time to create content for your Stories so that you can add them under the different categories of your Highlights.
Here’s an example of how one of our clients, Halcyon Cosmetic Clinic, uses Story Highlights to let users know what type of services and ongoing promotions they offer:
4. Tips & Best Practices
Once your content is posted as a Story, start adding to the relevant Highlight! Here are some important things to know, and best practices for Story Highlights:
- Story Highlights max out at 100 Stories each. If you add more than 100, the first story from the Highlight will disappear.
- Most users won’t look at 100 Stories, so keep your Highlights short. Start your Highlight with an intro video, and cap each Highlight at 5-6 Stories max.
- The order the Story Highlights appear on the profile will change based on which Story was added most recently.
- Story Highlights go in chronological order, so for any Story Highlight where you want an intro video, no previously published stories should be saved to that Highlight – only save new content there, so it appears after the video…
- Review your Story Highlights periodically to remove anything that feels old or outdated and to prevent Highlights from becoming too long.
