How to Strategically Use Instagram Highlights

1. How to Strategically Use Instagram Highlights

2. Instagram highlights. Are they dead or are they thriving? Are they serving your account or are they a waste of time? Instagram highlights are kind of like hashtags in my opinion, they aren’t going to make your account blow up but they are part of Instagrams key features and should be used properly! WHAT ARE INSTAGRAM HIGHLIGHTS? Instagram highlights are a way to save Instagram marketing. Users were getting frustrating that the valuable content they put on stories was getting deleted after a mere 24 hours. So Instagram created highlights. Highlights are the row of circles you may see below the bio on someone’s profile. They are essentially albums of Instagram stories sorted into specific categories of your choosing. I’m here to share with you today how you can use Instagram highlights effectively to convert profile views into follows and continue to drive traffic back to the content you’ve worked so hard to create. So how can we strategically and effectively use Instagram highlights?

3. KEEP YOUR HIGHLIGHT CATEGORIES ON BRAND I did a little highlight audit recently and realized that some of my highlight topics, while fun, were not on brand. I had an entire Instagram highlight called ‘Eats’ which, to be honest, had a lot of great food tips and recipes in it but it doesn’t align with the content that I regularly post. So I had to kick it to the curb. It’s crucial that your highlight categories actually match with content you consistently share and ultimately drive more people into your business in some way. Maybe that means saving stories that have swipe ups to your blog. Maybe you have a behind the scenes highlight that shows your creative process as a maker and directs people to your etsy shop. Maybe you have a highlight featuring testimonials from past clients. Speaking of, I’d LOVE to get a follower testimonial from you! Feel free to put me under lifestyle *wink wink, nudge nudge*. I had another highlight called travel, and while it was nostalgic for me to tap through and reminisce over past trips it wouldn’t be accurate for someone coming to my page to see, because a Travel highlight suggests I share travel content, which I do, but it’s not the type of content that drives my business forward. At the end of the day Brand strategistwant to make sure our Highlight titles are serving our audience and serving our business not serving US or our personal entertainment. Make sense? MAKE AN INTRO OR WELCOME HIGHLIGHT I don’t know about you but when I'm looking at a new profile I want to know WHO is behind it ASAP. Who is the person behind the pictures? What are they all about? The first thing I do is click their most Instagram recent story, hoping to find a clip of them talking so I can meet their personality. If they don’t have a story live I go to the highlights and click one that peaks my interest. If I can find video content of them talking there is a way better chance I’ll follow. So what Highlight topic can we have that promotes this connection?

4. A couple of weeks ago I had this idea that it would be cool to have an 'intro to me' highlight where I quickly talked about who I am, what I'm up to and how I show up on the 'gram. But, the only way to make this highlight is by of course physically posting it to Instagram stories which might feel a little random and awkward. I went on stories and prefaced it by explaining what I was going to do and then jumped into the intro. I created a new highlight called "Welcome” and then added the appropriate clips. MAKE HIGHLIGHT COVERS Highlight covers are a great way to bring a branded element to your page because you can create a color scheme. If you have a website that has specific colors you definitely want to use the same colors. This is to create cohesion in the experience as someone moves from your Instagram to your website. If you don’t have brand colors but your feed has a color-vibe this is a good place to start. You can actually use Canva’s color palette picker. Canva also provides for you the actual color codes which makes making your highlight covers way easier! To make your own highlight covers with solid colors, simple graphics or text head to Canva.com, make a free account, then create a new design with the dimensions 19020 x 1080. You can simply change the background color to one of your brand colors, export the files and air drop to your phone. Or get creative by adding elements or font to the cover. HOW TO ADD HIGHLIGHT COVERS WITHOUT POSTING TO INSTAGRAM STORIES Once you have your new highlight colors as jpeg. files you can add them to a pre-existing highlight WITHOUT having to upload them to your Instagram story. Remember back in the day when we had to tap through everyone’s highlight covers? No more! Just click a pre-existing highlight, select edit, edit cover, upload from camera roll! Pro Tip: You could also make solid color highlight covers by taking a photo within Instagram stories, selecting the paintbrush tool,

5. choosing a color and pressing and holding for three seconds. Save this new solid color image to your camera roll and upload to a highlight as I explained above. Highlight covers make your page look clean and organized, don’t skip this step! KEEP THE NUMBER OF INSTAGRAM HIGHLIGHTS TO A MINIMUM Users are likely not going to scroll horizontally through your highlights. Ideally you want all of your topics visible from your profile view. And since highlights are organized by which was most recently updated they are always changing in order. If you don’t update your 9th highlight for months it will be stuck in the back and likely not seen! Ideally we prioritize and aim for a maximum of 5 highlight topics. IF you have more highlights, and maybe that makes sense for you, you CAN bring a highlight to the front of the list. You’ll have to go into your Instagram stories archive, chose a recent slide and add it to your highlight. It’s okay if it’s not an actual fit because you are simply going to remove it from the highlight right after. Save the highlight and then go back in and delete the slide you just added. Doing this will move this Instagram Highlight to the front of the row without affecting the contents of the high light!

6. THE BEST WAYS TO USE INSTAGRAM HIGHLIGHTS To recap when it comes to Digital marketing strategyusing Instagram highlights you are going to make sure that the highlight topic, title or theme is actually on brand for you and in alignment with your content. Your also going to make some pretty highlight covers through Canva.com or within Instagram stories itself and also make sure those are on brand and cohesive with your blog or website if you have one. Third you want to get a little uncomfortable, get on camera and make a Intro to you highlight! Please tag me if you do this because I’d love to see what you’re up to. You can even blame me in your disclaimer story and say “hey Johanna is making me do an Intro story so that I can save it as a highlight, here goes!”. And then you can do your intro and it will be amazing! Other things to keep in mind are that you want to keep the number of highlights you have to a minimum and lastly create highlights with the intention of repurposing content such as IG posts, blog post or podcast episodes.

7. And while I’m thinking of it, if you have in your bio you could actually write a little call to action that directs people to your highlights maybe something like ‘check out my highlight for how to work with me’ or ‘check out my cooking highlight for easy breakfast recipes”. Whatever makes sense for you! Alright friend that’s all. for me. today. Source:https://www.johannaadriaansen.com/my-blog/how -to-strategically-use-instagram-highlights