Instagram Highlights: How To Guide

In December 2017, Instagram introduced two new tools to help their users express themselves even more on their profile: Story Highlights and Story Archives. At first, however, users and even brands were a little lost on how to incorporate these two tools into their Instagram page. But as outlined below, it is clear that these tools are not only helpful in showing more information about your organization/brand, but it also allows you to add some customized aesthetic into your profile that makes your profile page come together.

What is Story Archives?

Story Archives is self-explanatory, it archives your Instagram Stories and sorts it by date. It is important to note that only stories posted after Instagram’s release of the tool on December 2017 will be archived. Instagram Stories posted prior to this are not stored in the archive. You can use any stories that you have posted since last December and add it into any Instagram Highlight album.

What is Story Highlights?

With your stories now stored in the archive, you can compose an album of Instagram Stories consisting of as many story posts that you want. These highlights will be displayed on your page “permanently” until you decide to take it down. Stories highlights appear in a section between your bio and your Instagram guide on your profile and can be tapped to view and works just like an Instagram Story. You can create a highlight by tapping on the “New” circle at the far left.

What Should I Feature in the Instagram Highlights?

Just like anything else with social media, your content depends on the demographics you cater to. Culinary pages on Instagram feature recipes in their highlights, apparel pages feature information of new products and sales, etc.

#CSUSocial decided to create Instagram Highlights that are both informative and enjoyable for current and prospective students as well as content that allows our alumni to reminisce back to their time when they attended CSU. To give you some ideas, the breakdown of CSU’s highlights is as follows:

  • Events – Weekly events that are happening around campus are stored here. Updated weekly.
  • Tradition – Features CSU’s traditions from CSU Homecoming to our annual Border War rivalry football game.
  • Follow – Highlights CSU’s flagship Instagram pages including all eight colleges, Admissions, Athletics, our mascot CAM the Ram, and CSU’s Student-run Instagram, Proud To Be A CSU Ram.
  • FoCo – A photo tour of Fort Collins, the home of CSU.
  • Tour – A campus photo tour series of Colorado State, perfect for new and prospective students.
  • #Ramily – Fans, Fams, and Friends. We highlight Ram Pride from all around the globe.
  • Ask CSU – Answering our follower’s burning questions about the university.
  • #RamGrad – Seasonal coverage of graduation is highlighted here.

How to Customize Instagram Highlights?

Instagram Highlights can be found right under your bio, it is the first content people see when they visit your page. With the ability to set your own cover image for each Instagram album, you can add some of your brand colors into the page and make it look more uniform. Please note that you can only set an image as the cover image of an album only if it in the story archives. Some examples of the cover images are below.

With these graphics set as the cover images for our Insta Highlights, we are able to achieve a much more polished, branded profile page.