How to Leverage the Power of Instagram Highlights Effectively

In 2017, Instagram features included Instagram stories highlights. Since standard Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours, the Instagram highlights feature allows users to pick their favourite stories and save them, so that they can appear permanently on their profile for everyone to see at anytime.

Instagram stories highlights appear right below your bio and above your posts, which is prime real estate for exposure.

In order to create Instagram stories highlights, tap on the story you wish to highlight and when you do, you will be asked to give a title to your Instagram highlight as well as choose a thumbnail for it.

When naming your story highlight, it can only be 15 characters long, including spaces, and only the first 10 characters will appear, the rest of the title will be replaced by 3 dots. You can even add emojis to your titles to make them stand out further.

Then, the story will appear as a highlight story below your bio. Should you change your mind, you can always delete or edit your highlight by tapping and holding your story highlight. When you do, two options will appear: either to delete your story or edit your story.

Note that there is no limit to how many Instagram stories highlights you can create and note that every time you turn a story to a highlight, that story will move to first position. After more than 5 highlights, your audience will have to scroll to see the other ones.

There are many benefits to using Instagram stories highlights.

The first benefit, is the ability for Instagram story highlights to help you generate traffic.

Since Instagram stories allow you to include a clickable link if you have at least 10,000 followers, having Instagram story highlights on your profile allows you to permanently promote different links and not be limited to just the link in your bio.

If you’d like to take your Instagram marketing to the next level, and increase the results you’re getting from your current Instagram marketing efforts considerably, download my FREE Instagram report, titled The Top 15 Instagram Marketing Strategies That Drive Traffic And Sales. Simply enter your name and email and I’ll instantly send you the report.

The second benefit of Instagram story highlights is the fact that they feature in a prime location on your profile, and users don’t have to scroll through your profile to find them, they’re pretty much the first thing your audience will see, and therefore click on.

 

 

The third benefit of Instagram story highlights is the ability to draw attention to what is most important for your business, such as your products or services. For example, should you be in the fashion industry, you could use Instagram highlights to promote a new season.

Or, should you be running special deals and discounted offers, you could also use Instagram highlights to promote them further and potentially reach more people.

Jacob Restituto for example, (Instagram.com/JacobRestituto) a singer and songwriter from New York posts as an Instagram story a 15-30 second movie with different scenes instead of a photo promoting his work. Each story tells a story of its own which he then highlights above his regular Instagram posts.

 

 

Finally, Instagram story highlights are a great opportunity to display content that is evergreen, such as customer reviews, client testimonials, educational content how-to videos, tutorials and product displays.

There are many elements of your business you should turn into an Instagram story highlight.

• The first element you should create a story highlight about is an explainer video. An explainer video is a short video that explains what a business does and who it helps and how it helps a specific group of people.

It usually explains a business’s product or services, their value, their benefits, what other people say about your business and products and how to purchase them.

• The second element of your business you should display using Instagram highlights are reviews or testimonials. Social proof is much more effective than any other type of advertising so make sure you highlight what other people say about your business.

For example, create a story that includes different clips back to back with what people say about your business or product.

 

 

• The third element of your business you should highlight is educational content that would appeal to your target audience and that would be considered as useful and informational to them. For example, should you be a tennis coach, you could create an Instagram highlight about 5 exercises to improve your tennis serve.

By providing such content, it will help you become the go-to person in your industry and stand out from other people.

If you’d like to take your Instagram marketing to the next level, and increase the results you’re getting from your current Instagram marketing efforts considerably, download my FREE Instagram report, titled The Top 15 Instagram Marketing Strategies That Drive Traffic And Sales. Simply enter your name and email and I’ll instantly send you the report.

The fourth element of your business you could highlight is your lead generation funnel. To capture leads, most businesses set up lead capture forms and give away free products, free services or free information in exchange for people’s contact details to then run email marketing campaigns.

So Instagram highlights can become quite powerful to draw attention to your lead generation funnel. For example, should you be in the food supplement industry, you could create a free report titled “How to find the right food supplements for you and cut through all the noise”.

The fifth Instagram highlight you can create is about your other social networks. If you have an Instagram account, you very likely have other social networks such as Youtube to market your business. If you do, create an Instagram highlight inviting your Instagram audience to also follow you on other social networks.

 

 

When you do, make sure you incentivize people to do so, or most of them won’t. For example, you could let them know that you run giveaways on Youtube and if they don’t subscribe to your Youtube channel, they might miss out.

Or you could say that you release discount codes on Twitter on a regular basis and that they should follow you if they want to secure your products at better prices.

Lastly, you could create an Instagram story highlight dedicated to news and updates. This Instagram story could be about upcoming events, new product launches or industry-related news.

Since this highlight won’t be evergreen, make sure to update it on a regular basis by either editing it or deleting it when it’s not newsworthy anymore.

If you’d like to take your Instagram marketing to the next level, and increase the results you’re getting from your current Instagram marketing efforts considerably, download my FREE Instagram report, titled The Top 15 Instagram Marketing Strategies That Drive Traffic And Sales. Simply enter your name and email and I’ll instantly send you the report.

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