How To Make The Most of Your Story Highlights
Instagram Stories are the perfect way to engage with your audience, showcase your personality and give followers an insight into the authentic everyday life of your brand. But what do you do with those stories that could benefit your followers and further increase engagement? Well, that’s why Instagram Story Highlights exist!
Instagram Stories Highlights allows you to pin your stories to your profile permanently. This is better than stories that disappear after 24 hours. Using this feature is essential if you want the best social media presence, and there are a number of ways you can take advantage of this.
In this article, we are going to share 8 ways you can use the Instagram Stories Highlights feature of Instagram to effectively drive engagement from your followers and improve your followers' experience when they are on your profile.
1. Specific Product or Collection Highlight
Highlights allow you to showcase specific products or collections so that not only can you share a photo or a short clip of a product, but you can also 'highlight' real details about the product/collection.
For example, you can create a Highlight for a specific product and share more information about it, share clips about how to use the product, share reviews, and share multiple images.
This allows potential customers to learn more about the specific product they are interested in, instead of searching through your entire profile or website.
2. Tutorial or How-To Highlight
Speaking of sharing information about how customers can use your product, Highlights allows you to share and pin tutorials and howtos. Instead of posting a story that only a handful of followers might see or posting an IGTV tutorial, which will only be visible after a few scrolls, you can simply put together a specific tutorial Highlight.
This way, a customer who is confused or needs instructions on how to use one of your products can see the information they need!
3. Q+A Highlight
Q+As are a great way for your audience to get to know your brand and engage in a more personal connection with you, but why limit this to a one-time Q+A live or 24-hour story? Start a Q+A Highlight, and either purposefully run a Q+A session, or every time you do a Q+A you can simply add these stories to this Highlight.
With a specific Q+A Highlight, any question your audience might have will most likely have been answered and therefore they don’t need to go to the effort of getting in touch with you and waiting for a reply.
4. User-Generated Content Highlight
86% of millennials take user-generated content into account when deciding the quality of a brand, so share your UGC! However, if you don’t want to share tonnes of UGC posts, you can create a UGC Highlight - every time you get tagged in a post or see a photo of someone using your product, add it to this Highlight.
This Highlight doesn’t only increase the amount of UGC content on your social media, but it allows your audience to see how people use your products/style your pieces. In addition, your audience will want to be showcased on this Highlight and will therefore be more likely to create UGC for you. - LINK UGC article when published.
5. Important Details About Your Business Highlight
Creating a Highlight that showcases all of the important information about your business is incredibly useful and informative to your audience. In this kind of highlight, you can share the location of your business, your opening times, your shipping details, discounts, etc!
This reduces the amount of time that your audience/customers have to spend researching on your site, and stops them from getting frustrated if they struggle to find these answers.
6. Events Highlight
If your business runs events, using a specific Highlight that contains all of the information about your events, whether that’s what events you’re having in the future, or content from previous events, you’re going to engage your audience and provide them with a fast, easily-accessible bout of information about your events!
You can also add information about where people can buy tickets, including useful swipe-up links if your account is eligible for this feature. Keeping all of this information in one place means that your entire profile doesn’t get taken over by event content.
7. Meet The Team Highlight
In the current world of digital marketing, personality and authenticity are two of the most important areas of focus. A wonderful way to show personality and help your audience to feel like they truly connect with your brand is by showing the team behind the brand!
By creating a “Meet the Team” or “Behind The Brand” Highlight, you can introduce your team, show a bit of information about everyone, and you can continue to build it, continuing to share the personal element of your brand.
8. Review Highlight
Reviews, a useful type of user-generated content, allow your audience to see how real customers like your product/service, improving trust and promoting your products/service organically.
Creating a Highlight with customer reviews allows your audience to see real-life feedback about your products/service in one place, reducing the time that they need to spend online trying to find reviews and therefore improving their customer experience!