intro to highlights and pinned posts
Highlights and pinned posts are two important parts of your Instagram profile, but they are often neglected as part of a consistent content routine. I generally recommend taking a look at your highlights and pinned posts at the start of each month to make sure everything is still relevant and that the links are still active.
Highlights
Highlights are those little circles underneath the “Follow” button row on your Instagram profile and are made from collections of Stories posts that you select to “highlight.” They’re a great way to showcase more about your brand beyond the limited room in your Bio.
Here are a few ideas of different highlights you can create for your business:
Welcome
About
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Testimonials
Behind the scenes (BtS)
Sales or Promotions
Menu of Services
You only have 15 characters in the title of your highlight, though, so you might have to get a little creative.
Here are two ways to create a highlight:
Post the content to your Stories that you want to use as a highlight. Once it’s posted, click the highlight button in the bottom right corner to add to a new or existing story. Or, from your profile, hit the plus sign in the Highlights area to see previously posted Stories to add them to a Highlight.
From there, you'll add a title and cover image for your Highlight. The cover image can be added directly from your camera roll so you don't need to share your highlight cover image to your Stories anymore. Some people create their covers in Canva, buy them on Etsy, or just use an image from one of the Stories in the Highlight.
For me, I have one "Start Here" Highlight that I update fairly regularly as well as a Highlight for an offer I'm selling at the moment. It's important to keep the Highlights updated so that the information shown there is relevant to potential customers when they see your profile.
One good thing about creating new Highlights from new content, is that it has to be posted to your Stories to be saved as a Highlight, meaning you're going to have some great content in your Stories.
Many people have highlights created from posts that are years and years old, which is okay, but it’s important to make sure the information is still relevant, valid and helpful to your audience.
Pinned posts
Moving on to Pinned Posts, which are Posts or Reels from your Instagram account that are "pinned" to the top of your account. When someone views your account, your "pinned" posts will remain at the top of your posts. You can pin a post by selecting the three dots in the top right corner of a post, and then select "Pin to Profile."
Here are a few ideas of posts you can or should "pin":
Menu of Services
Availability
An Introduction
Testimonials
Sales or Promotions
Your best-performing content
Pinned posts are pretty similar to Highlights, except one deals with posts and the other deals with Stories. Both are significant in the fact that they're two of the first things a potential client will see when they visit your profile.
If you’re looking for extra support with highlights and pinned posts, here are a few ways I can help:
Content & Community: the monthly membership to help you learn to DIY your Instagram content like a pro. You’ll get access to pre-recorded trainings, templates to keep you organized, weekly coworking calls and a Slack channel for any questions that come up along the way.
Strategy Double Shot: a thorough Instagram audit that includes audit of bio, highlights, pinned posts, overall feed content and stories.
