In recent years, the social media platform Instagram has created a feature known as highlights. As standard, Instagram stories disappears after 24 hours, the new highlights feature lets users choose their most favourite stories and provides them with the opportunity to save them from appearing permanently on their profile for all to see.
Learn How GIFs Can Help Your Brand Become an Internet Sensation in our previous post.
Highlights appear just underneath a profile's biographical section and directly above its posts, which is prime real estate for exposure. Social media is just a highlight reel, so finding ways to utilise the highlight feature can benefit your business.
You can uncover new ideas which will aid you in advertising your brand and reaching a greater audience through digital marketing techniques.
Social media is an essential feature of a successful brand, so as it is, you must not miss the opportunity.
How to make a story highlight
Click on the story, you would like to highlight and fill out the information accordingly. You will provide a title for your Instagram highlight which can be no longer than 15 characters, including spaces, and it's important to remember that only the first ten characters will be visible on your profile. In contrast, you must represent the remaining characters by three dots.
A snappy and informative title is a crucial feature of an active highlight, so take your time in deciding the best word or phrase to attract users into clicking. You can even include emojis in your titles if you want to make them stand out even more, or if you wish to attract a younger audience.
You must also attach a thumbnail picture
A thumbnail picture is a small circular snapshot that will show on your profile to represent the highlight. It is tiny in size, so don't use a picture with too much detail, but aim to make it as relevant as possible. You can create some basic graphics that follow a set colour scheme or style to use as the thumbnails for your highlights as this is a great way to show off an artistic flair and aesthetic value.
Each time your business launches a new product or service, there's no reason why you shouldn't choose to add a modern highlight cover to present it to your followers. You can display any essential updates or news and save for your followers to view at any time, and this can provide them with all of the information they need just a few simple taps away.
Label each of the highlights
You can label each of these highlight reels to create specific categories for a more organised feel - for example, if you are a clothing brand, you can post your spring/summer collection in its highlight. At the same time, you can release autumn/winter in a whole new highlight for increased simplicity.
The highlight will give you far more coverage than posting your products on your profile's story as though it may appear on a users home page; it will only last for 24 hours. It will likely also maintain more coverage than simply sharing a post on your main feed, as this will soon get lost amongst a sea of other posts.
Create an FAQ page
Do you often find that users on social media send your brand profile messages, including questions about your products or services? Is your comments section riddled with the same queries over and over? An excellent solution could be hiding in the highlights section, as you can easily create an FAQ page which answers all of the common questions in a precise and efficient way.
You can even post on your brand story utilising an 'ask' feature in which your followers can type in and send off any questions they have, and you can immortalise the answers to the most popular queries in your FAQ highlight. It's even possible to include swipe up links (if you have more than 10,000 followers) which direct users from your social media highlight to your website, so if you have a more detailed FAQ on another platform then this can be accessed here.
Review section that contains positive quotes from customers
Another great idea that you can utilise for story highlights is a reviews section that contains many positive quotes from happy customers, as this will be one of the first things new users see on your profile. Clicking on a business profile to be greeted almost immediately with a reviews page will most definitely entice a potential customer to explore further.
Seeing other positive reviews is the perfect inspiration for someone to turn from a follower into a customer, and the prime location at the top of your page makes it more than likely to receive a lot of attention. Gather as many positive comments as you can by adding new reviews whenever you receive them.
Create Story highlights on other platforms
Other social media sites are following in the footsteps of Instagram to introduce their highlight features, so you need not be limited to reaping the benefits from just one platform. Each site must create their unique ideas so as not to infringe copyright laws, so the process of utilising the different formats may vary.
However, the basic concept will still be the same, meaning the rewards and selling points should stay the same. Be sure to do your research online if you don't feel confident in programming highlights correctly, as there are many helpful resources which detail step by step tutorials and even video guides that can show you the ropes.
Using social media highlight features can benefit your brand in several ways, pushing your most important messages in the prime spot to ensure you give off the correct impression to any visiting users. From FAQ pages to positive reviews, the options for story highlights are genuinely endless.
In conclusion, trial and error are the best way to find your feet on social media, so don't be afraid to experiment with your highlights to see what will generate the most views. Be sure to check out tedbree.com for more inspiring information.
