I hope that by now you have embraced Instagram stories and have gone from watching others create them to creating your own and using them to build your brand and engage your audience! There is no doubt that Stories are the future of Social Media Marketing. And with nearly all the major platforms adopting some version of ephemeral content (content that disappears quickly), this is a trend you can’t afford to miss! In our experience, we’re seeing more people viewing our stories than we reach with regular newsfeed content. That means if you want to get noticed, you need to be creating stories. And if that doesn’t convince you, here are a few power stats (via 99 Firms) that might…
- 1 in 4 Millennials and Gen Z-ers look for Stories of the products and services they want to buy.
- One-third of the most-viewed Instagram Stories are from businesses.
At the end of the day, Stories are such a great way to share your day-to-day activities, let your audience get to know you in a more personal way, show less “produced” content and to give your audience a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes!
Originally, those stories only lasted for 24 hours and then disappear. But with the addition of “Highlights” you can take your favorite story segments and save them into a highlight reel that lives on your Instagram profile for as long as you want to keep them there.
Since these highlight reels are front and center on your profile (below your bio and above your posts) it only makes sense to brand them to enhance your profile and attract your users to view them!
Here are a few examples of some of my favorite branded highlight reels:
Ready to Make Yours?
Method #1 – Graphic Design
There are a number of ways to create your highlight reel cover images, but hands down our favorite is Canva! And with their new Stories Highlight Templates creating a custom highlight reel is so simple and the design options are endless! While you’re there, be sure to check out all their Instagram Stories Templates to help you brand and create content for your Stories.
If you’ve got mad skills in graphic design and choose to use another design program, remember that that you’ll only see what is placed in the center of the image. You’ll also have to send any images you create to your phone photo library in order to get it into your story and then on to your highlight reel. You’ll want to create an image that is 1080 pixels x 1920 pixels – Ratio 9:16.
Method #2 – Inside Instagram
There are a number of different ways to create a branded highlight reel cover right in Instagram stories. I’ll show you how to do with a step-by-step tutorial in this blog video, so be sure to check it out!
Wrappin’ it Up!
Bobbi Baehne
President, Think Big Go Local, Inc.