How To Use Instagram Story Highlights To Engage Audiences? 

Instagram has undoubtedly become one of the best marketing tools for businesses and individuals to grow their brands. Instagram offers various unique features to maximise the reach of your content, and one such feature that has gained immense popularity is Instagram Story Highlights. But how many of us know how to use Instagram story highlights to enhance our reach on Instagram?

According to the reports by Business Instagram, more than 500 million users upload Instagram stories daily. Almost one-third of the stories viewed on Instagram come from businesses. These numbers are enough to define the importance of Instagram stories in promoting your business. But Instagram stories automatically disappear after 24 hours. With Instagram Highlights, you can permanently save the stories on your profile. 

In today’s blog, we will discuss some of tips on how to use Instagram story highlights to effectively engage your audience. But before, try to know what story highlights are and how to add a story to highlights.

What are Instagram Story Highlights? 

Instagram Story Highlights are combined collections of Instagram Stories that users can permanently save and display on their profile. Unlike regular Instagram stories, which disappear after 24 hours, Highlights remain visible to your audience until you choose to remove them. This feature enables you to showcase your brand’s personality, products, services, and important moments in a visually appealing and organized manner. Moreover, it also allows audiences to know your business better and develop meaningful connections. 

How to Add Instagram Story to Highlights 

Before knowing how to use Instagram story highlights to engage the audience, you must know how to add stories to highlights. To add a story to highlight:

• Open the story you want to save
• Click on the highlight at the bottom of your story 
• You can save a current highlight or add a new highlight for the story 

To add archive story to highlights:

• Click on the top right corner of your profile and tap on the three horizontal lines
• Click on Archive
• Open the story you want to add
• Save highlight or add a new highlight for the story

So, if you are a content creator or an individual trying to make your presence on Instagram, here are some of the tips on how to use Instagram stories to maximize your profile reach.  

Choosing Relevant Content

The key to engaging your audience through story highlights is selecting content that resonates with them. When saving the content for Instagram Highlights, consider your audience’s interests, preferences, and demographics. Whether daily normal life scenes, product tutorials or customer testimonials, ensure that the content adds value and promotes your brand identity.

Create Compelling Covers

Covers serve as the thumbnails for your story highlights and play a crucial role in attracting users’’ attention. Design visually appealing covers that reflect the theme or content of each highlight. Learning how to use Instagram story highlights requires consistency in design elements such as colours, fonts, imagery, etc. All these tips can help create an attractive and polished look for your profile.

Organize Highlights Strategically

Combining all the stories is the first step towards learning how to use Instagram story highlights. Organizing highlights strategically and logically makes it easier for your audience to navigate them. It’s better to categorise highlights based on topics, events, product lines, or seasons. Moreover, you can also use descriptive titles and emojis to provide context and make them more engaging.

Craft Storytelling Narratives

Effective storytelling can attract your audience and generate a deeper connection with your brand. If you have a proper idea of how to use Instagram story highlights, you can create compelling narratives that resonate with your audience’s emotions and requirements. Whether you share your brand’s journey, highlight customer success stories, or showcase the impact of your products or services, storytelling can help your brand grow your brand and make it more relatable.

Promote Exclusive Offers and Contests

Highlights provide an excellent platform for promoting exclusive offers, discounts, and contests to generate engagement and drive sales. You must create dedicated highlights for limited-time promotions, flash sales, or giveaways and feature them on your profile. Using compelling visuals and clear calls to action to influence viewers to take action.

Provide Value through Tutorials and Tips

Educational content mostly goes viral on social media platforms, and highlights offer an opportunity to share valuable knowledge with your audience. To learn how to use Instagram story highlights effectively, you must create tutorials, how-to guides, tips, and tricks related to your industry and save them into dedicated Highlights. Whether it’s daily life hacks or cooking activities, saving your story highlights can position your brand as a trusted authority in your field.

Engage with Polls, Questions, and Quizzes

Engaging elements such as polls, questions, and quizzes can add a fun dimension to your Instagram story highlights. Learning how to use Instagram story highlights is one of the best ways to gather feedback from your audience, gain insights into consumer preferences and spark conversations. Brands must create highlights dedicated to user-generated polls or quizzes and encourage their followers to participate.

Provide Extra Information 

Once you have a proper idea of how to use Instagram story highlights, use these highlights to provide additional information to the users. It can include behind-the-scenes information about your business, explaining your brand, about us, and the services provided, and saving them as your Instagram highlights. This will allow new followers to learn about your brand in detail without directly visiting your website. 

Things to Remember about Instagram Highlights 

• If you are learning how to use Instagram story highlights, remember! You can only add 100 images or videos to your single highlight. However, there is no particular limit on how many highlights you want to add.
• If you add more than 100 clips to a single highlight, the first one will get automatically removed 
• Remember that your highlight name, including spaces, can be only 15 characters long.