A Guide to Creating Instagram Highlight Stories for Your Business

Here are all of the possible secrets to creating Instagram Highlight Stories for your company's Business Instagram. Let me tell you, it can be a tricky ordeal. Maddening, actually. For about two weeks now, I have been creating a feed of photos for Anthem Branding and establishing them as Instagram Highlight Stories that provide context of who we are and what we do as a business. Through trial, error, and a lot of frustration, I have learned the ins and outs with creating good content within your individualized highlight stories that will showcase your business in the best light.

Hold up. Why are Instagram Highlight Stories even important?

Before you start this step-by-step process, I have to delve into how essential Instagram Highlight Stories is to your social media for your business. According to Hubspot.com, Instagram users spend 20-30 minutes on Instagram stories. That is ample amount of viewer time for a consumer to peruse your merchandise, branding, and products. With Instagram Highlight Stories, the stories stay on your profile for as long as you want. On top of that, Instagram Highlight Stories are one of the few things that consumers see within the first glance of your Instagram page. These stories are a quick snippet of what your business is about, and you want to create specific content to interest and impress your potential customers.

Your Feed

Sometimes you hear millennials going around blabbing about their aesthetic. With all of the tech-savvy, instagram-obssessed millennials out there, how something looks is important. With your business Instagram, the same applies. Narrow down the colors and moods that your Instagram centers around, and apply those looks to your Instagram highlight stories. Specific edits or inspiration images help to create the look you're going for as a business and can be carried throughout your stories.

Cover Photos or Icons

Creating a good cover photo for each Instagram highlight story is important to bring everything together and keep your social media cohesive. You have to keep your cover photo on your Instagram highlight in order for it to stay there forever. If for some reason you want to change your cover photo, then you have to redo this maddening process. That means that you have to put it on your regular story, add it to your highlight, adjust the photo with how you want it in the circle, and then keep it on your highlight feed. Tedious stuff right there.

We decided to create icons for our Instagram Highlight Stories to provide a fun aspect to our social media. Our designer, Lisa Tupy, did an amazing job with fitting our aesthetic and creating icons that were just right for Anthem Branding.

Story All of Your Highlight Stories

Before you are allowed to create an Instagram Highlight, you have to make sure it's on the Instagram archive. That means that every story you want to put on the highlight has to be posted as a story first on your general Instagram account. You can't pull from your camera roll to post on your highlight story. There is no way of getting out this besides posting it on your main story first. Once you put it on your story, DO NOT DELETE IT. The story has to be on there for 24 hours to forever stay on your Instagram Highlight Story. If you delete anything on your main story and it wasn't there for the full 24 hours, then it will be deleted on your Instagram Highlight Story too. I can't reiterate this enough (because I have lost a few years of my life because of this), whatever you do with your main story will screw with your Instagram highlight story.

The Secret to Uploading Multiple Photos

Don't want to have your followers see that you are messing around with your Instagram Story Highlights? Paranoid that posting too many photos on your main story will lose integral followers? Have no fear, there is a way to upload a plethora of photos on your main story without scaring too many people. If you go to your profile and click the gear button that represents "Settings," it will bring you to a page that allows you to invite your Facebook friends, contacts, etc.

If you scroll down past Account and Business Settings, the headers that are in bold, and arrive at Privacy and Security, you will find an option that says "Story Controls."

Click into "Story Controls" and at the top of the page you will find an option that says, "Hide Story From."

This option allows you to click every follower that you want to hide your main story from. Selecting all of your followers will allow you to hide your story from virtually everyone, enabling you to upload as many photos as you want without people knowing. Once you have created all of your highlight stories and wanted the 24 hour period since your last post, you can unhide your story from your followers. Voila, now all of your followers can see a clean set of Instagram Highlight Stories without see the mess that went into creating them.

Create Your Last Story First

Your stories bump more than a classic EDM song. What I mean is that Instagram has made it to where your stories get bumped down after you create them. Figure out the chronological order that you want for your highlight stories. Then, create the last one on the list first. That way your order stays how you want it to look on your account.