Social media is an integral part of blogging. As a blog owner, you’re selling so much more than your writing; you are, in fact, selling a brand. When you decide you want to start building your brand, marketing yourself, and eventually monetising your blog, you’re going to want social media accounts that benefit and market your business. 

Instagram is the 4th most popular social media platform in the world, coming in under only Facebook, Youtube, and Whatsapp. Since Instagram is a visual platform, creating enticing graphics, uploading clean and well thought out photos, and editing together educational or informative reels to your account is the key to success. But what about the Instagram highlight feature?

Why Using Highlights On Instagram For Bloggers Is Essential

Bloggers can take advantage of Instagram’s highlight features in order to drive more traffic, sales, and engagement, and create a more dedicated following. Because of this, your overall Instagram performance can be enhanced with some careful planning and eye catching highlight covers* and content. 

At the time of writing this blog post, Instagram has no limit to the number of highlights that you can create on any one Instagram account. Although this may sound exciting, it’s vital that you use your highlights strategically. Creating highlight reels with no forethought or planning will not help you to grow your Instagram account, so be mindful about the content you upload.

How To Upload A Highlight To Your Instagram Account

Uploading highlights to your Instagram account is a relatively easy task. First, you need to plan your content and create a visual piece to upload. You can do this using the Instagram app and designing a story that caters to your needs, or you can use a design tool such as Canva to create aesthetically appealing highlights. To use the latter, simply head to Canva, create a free account and create a post to upload using the Instagram Story template. Canva has plenty of free templates for you to choose from, as well as texts, elements, stock images and graphics. Of course, you don’t need to use a template, you can design your own content from scratch if you’d prefer. 

Once you have your Instagram highlight content ready, here’s how to upload it to your Instagram account.

Uploading content to your Instagram highlights couldn’t be easier. Firstly, you need to ensure that Instagram’s auto-archiving system is turned on. This feature automatically archives and saves all the content that you upload to your Instagram Stories, making this available to repost again and again, even after it’s disappeared from your Instagram Stories. To do this, simply:

1. Tap the settings tab on your Instagram Account.
2. Tap Story.
3. Ensure the Auto-Archive button is turned on. 

Now you’ve done that, simply head to your Instagram profile and tap on the empty highlight circle below your profile picture. Select an Instagram highlight cover* image and a title, then tap done and add! 

You can add content to your highlights by uploading them to your stories and adding them to your highlights from there.

The Top 3 Instagram Highlights That You Should Have As A Blogger

Your Instagram highlights should serve a purpose. Consider them similar to a menu bar for your Instagram account. They are there to showcase your skills, your unique selling points, and let users know everything they need to know about your brand and blog in quick and easily digestible media. 

These are the top 3 Instagram highlights that you should have as a blogger. These highlights will help users to learn more about you and your blog, determine the type of content you regularly produce (for example, tutorials), and learn more about what you’ve been up to and what floats your boat. 

Try adding the following Instagram highlights to your account:

• About. In this section, you can detail information about you and your blog. What topics do you cover, why did you start blogging, how can people contact you etc.
• Product/Services/Best Posts. As a blogger, you may or may not be part of affiliate schemes, have your own business, sell your services, or have insightful blog posts that bring in great traffic. It’s important for you to showcase your products and allow users to learn more about the type of content they can expect from your account. According to Instagram, 75% of users are likely to take action when coming across Instagram highlights that showcase products, whether or not they’ve engaged with your profile before. It’s therefore imperative that you make your products as easy to access as possible. 
• Quick Links. Now that Instagram has finally given all IG users the ability to place links in their stories, creating a Quick Links highlight is a brilliant way to push traffic through and drive sales. Create content for your highlight that showcases the content that you want users to view, including things such as affiliate items, newsletter sign-ups, and freebies.

Additional Instagram Highlight Ideas

Once you’ve sorted the top three Instagram highlights out on your account, you can think about adding some more. Remember that each highlight needs to serve you and your brand, so consider what’s likely to appeal to new and existing followers.

• Events. Bloggers are often invited to beautiful events – showcase some of your favourite pictures and videos from some of the events you’ve been to. You can also use this highlight to advertise upcoming events that you’re looking forward to attending and tag any potential partners.
• Ads. Sometimes, as part of work, bloggers are asked to create visual content alongside written content. Use an Ads Instagram highlight to share some of your favourite collaborations and showcase the amazing content you created for your ad partners. 
• BTS. Who doesn’t love a good behind the scenes? I have been following blogger accounts on Instagram for over 8 years now, and I can’t tell you how much I enjoy seeing BTS content. The world of Instagram can be toxic, and I think this is especially true in the blogging industry as we’re constantly shown perfectly clean houses, happy smiling children, and Pinterest worthy arts and crafts. Add a little realism to your account by showing what content creation REALLY looks like to you. 
• Niche related categories. Hopefully, you’ve got your blog pretty niched down by this point, which makes creating niche category Instagram highlight covers a piece of cake. Take a money saving or budgeting blog, for example. Additional highlights may include titles such as freebies, saving money, making money, and investing. 
• Q&A. Creating a FAQ/Q&A Instagram highlight can save you time when it comes to individually answering all those DMs that land in your inbox. Try posting an “ask me a question” sticker on your story and answer those that come through, then add them to your highlight reel. Additionally, you can also add questions that you frequently get asked such as what’s the best way to contact you.

With Instagram Highlights, The Possibilities Are Endless.

As I mentioned before, Instagram doesn’t currently have a limit on the number of Instagram highlights any one user can create on their account. There is, however, a limit on the number of images and videos that can be uploaded to each highlight – this is capped at 100. 

What Instagram highlights do you use on your blogging account? I’d love to know what you use and how they serve you, so please leave me a comment.