How to Make Top-Notch Instagram Highlight Covers 

Instagram stories highlights are a great way to strengthen your brand identity, solidify your brand aesthetic, and, simply, make your Instagram feed more exciting and professional looking. This is because Instagram stories highlights are a great first introduction, and it allows users to see your stories based on specific categories and engage with your best Instagram story content. 

Of course, having great content in your Instagram highlights will go to waste if you do not have great highlight covers for each of your different highlights. Located below the bio section of your page, above your Instagram posts, these highlights might be what a person first sees upon clicking on your profile, maybe even before seeing your posts, so this first impression is crucial for influencer marketing, as well as for just about any brand or business. 

In this article, we will cover in-depth the ways that you can make incredible Instagram Highlight covers, so you can start taking advantage of this great feature right away. 

How to Create an Instagram Highlight

Create highlights to keep your best Story content at the top of your Instagram profile permanently.

1. In your Story, tap Highlight in the bottom right corner.
2. Choose the Highlight you want to add to your Story.
3. Or, tap New to create a new Highlight, and type out a name for it. Then click Add.

It is easy as that! You have now just created an Instagram Highlight. 

How to Create a New Instagram Highlight from your Profile

If you have a new idea for a highlight or want to add multiple stories to a highlight, you can follow these steps!

1. Go to your profile and tap the +New button (the big plus sign).
2. Pick the Stories you want to add to your new Highlight. Instagram gives you an archive of your stories going back years, so you will likely have a lot of material to choose from.
3. Tap Next and name your new Highlight.
4. Choose your Highlight cover, and tap Done.

What are Instagram Highlight Covers?

Instagram Stories Highlights are located directly below your Instagram bio (aka front and center on your profile) — which means your choice of covers can make or break the first impression of your brand. The cover is what represents the story highlight because it is the image that people see and can click on to view the highlight. With the right design, your covers can drive more views to your Highlights — generating valuable extra airtime for your Instagram Stories content. 

Tips for Creating Top-Notch Highlight Covers 

1. Create Instagram Stories Highlight Covers that Elevate Your Brand Aesthetic

Incorporating your brand assets into your covers is an excellent way to make your Highlights feel more cohesive and professional. Consider how your brand colors, fonts, and design trademarks can be incorporated into your covers. From playful patterns to bespoke lettering, there are endless opportunities to tap into your brand aesthetic to create your Highlights covers!  

2. Make Your Instagram Stories Highlights Covers Descriptive

A beautiful aesthetic may go a long way, but your Highlights covers should also act as a visual signpost for the content they contain. A good Instagram Stories Highlight cover will make it as easy as possible for your audience to understand what they’ll get from viewing a highlight.

Descriptive covers will encourage more taps, which means more views for your content!

3. Make Your Instagram Highlights Covers Cohesive

Once you’ve landed on your chosen cover style, it’s important to keep your covers cohesive. So if you’ve chosen to use icons for your covers, make sure every highlight cover uses an icon — or at least looks great alongside an icon. A mishmash of jarring covers will confuse your aesthetic and could make your brand look less professional on Instagram.

How to Make Custom Instagram Highlight Covers 

There are multiple websites, apps, and software that you can use to make great Instagram Highlight cover images. In this section, we will give a step-by-step guide to making story highlight covers in the free design platform called Canva. Canva is a (super easy) design tool, which allows you to make great designs even if you are not an experienced graphic designer.

You can use it on your computer or on your phone. However, only the app has cover templates for highlight covers, so you will want to download the free app and follow along. Alternatively, although the computer version doesn’t have templates for Insta Stories, you can still do it on your computer if you want to. If you are using your computer, select “Custom Dimension” and your Insta Story dimension (example: 1242 x 2208 px for iPhone 6S Plus).

1. Open Canva and select “Your Story”

This will be a simple design with a background color and an icon. After selecting “Your Story,” Start with a blank template (the first one on the list).

2. Choose a background color

Your blank template is loaded.

• At the bottom of the screen you can choose a background color for your cover
• Press “+” if you want to choose your own color
• You can also type your own color code (great if you want to stick to your brand or Instagram theme colors)

3. Choose an icon or add text

Now that you have a background color, you can add an icon, emoji or text. It’s up to you. To add an icon to your cover:

• Select the “+” button on the bottom right corner of your screen
• Select “Graphics”
• You can scroll to discover all the graphics they have, or you can search for a specific icon (example: “heart”)
• Press on the icon you want to use for your cover
• Choose the color of your icon

4. Add pages to design more covers

You can continue to design more covers for your Insta Story Highlight.

• Press on the “+” button on the bottom right corner of your screen
• Select “Pages”

Design another cover with another icon. Repeat the process to design more covers.

How to Design Instagram Highlight Covers with Adobe Photoshop

For those who are a little more advanced with graphic design, you may want to use Adobe Photoshop to make your icon covers. If you are a beginner, it is probably best that you stick with Canva or spend some time getting to know Photoshop with a free trial, since access to this software can get pretty pricey. But for those who want to use Photoshop, we have provided an easy tutorial below:

1. First set up your document. Open a New Document at 1080 x 1920 pixels, the perfect size for Instagram.
2. Now decide which color or graphic you want to use for the Instagram story highlight icons background. For an easy result, simply Fill a New Layer with any color using the Paint Bucket Tool (G).
3. Now add the cover icons. This will involve downloading icon files, and luckily there are many sites that provide different free icons that can easily be used in Photoshop. You will want to create a new layer with your icon and position it in the center. 
4. You can now export your new highlight cover!

How to Upload Your Instagram Highlight Cover to Instagram

Option 1: Add a Cover to a New Highlight

After you’ve selected the stories for a new highlight, you’ll be prompted to choose a title and select your cover photo. From here, you can upload your new cover designs from your camera roll! Tap “Edit Cover” and then tap on the photo icon to upload a design you created earlier.

Pinch and drag your cover to make the icons bigger or smaller. You can also edit the title of your Instagram Stories Highlight by clicking in the “Name” field and typing a new title. 

Option 2: Add a Cover to an Existing Highlight

If you want to update the cover photo of an existing Highlight, start by opening the Highlight and tapping the ellipsis button in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Select “Edit Highlight,” “Edit Cover,” and then tap on the photo icon to add your design you created earlier. It’s that easy!

What Makes Story Highlights so Valuable?

1. Longevity

Unlike regular IG Stories, highlights allow your content to stay for much longer than 24 hours. One major benefit of the new Instagram Stories Archive feature, specifically for brands like us, is that it eliminates any anxiety around losing valuable content. As long as you keep the auto-archiving feature turned on, you can save and re-share your best Instagram Stories even after the 24-hour period has passed.

To do this, head to your Instagram profile, open your settings, tap on Privacy and Security, and then Story Controls. Here you can toggle the Save to Archive option to on. Archives allow you to auto-save stories, and then stores the content in your profile’s backend. Old Stories can even be curated and Highlighted later, making the content available to the public again.

2. First Impressions 

Location is key!  Because Highlights are featured right below a brand’s bio and above its feed, followers see this content first. Make a good first impression to your followers and potential customers by giving them easy-to-access content front and center.

The prime location makes Highlights the perfect place to direct followers to your most valuable and interesting content. Every story highlight can be edited, so the content can be ever-changing—  once a certain post loses its timeliness, it can be updated, so you’re always putting your best foot (or content) forward.

3. Branding

Highlights are the perfect opportunity for your store to tell its brand story. Bering live front-and-center on your Instagram profile, they’re the ultimate place for helping new visitors discover what your company is all about. You can be as creative as you want with your stories!

Take this chance to express yourself, show off your products, drive traffic, market your business, or personalize your brand! This is a way to humanize your brand. Whether its highlighting office culture, content creation, or product production, brands can share their unique stories—inviting followers into their world. By peeling back the curtain a bit, brands can better connect with their followers on a personal level.

4. Easy Navigation 

Sometimes your viewers might be looking for something specific from one of your stories, like more information about a new launch or a sale you’re running. For this type of content, Instagram Highlights are the perfect way to reach out, without putting a time limit on when viewers can watch!

Grouping your Instagram Stories Highlights together into various categories, events, or topics makes it super-easy for audiences to find the stories that are of most interest to them.You could also organize your Instagram Stories Highlights based on your follower demographics. For example, you could create Highlights for target customers depending on what you sell: Women’s, Men’s, Kids, Beauty, Accessories, Shoes, etc.

5. Eliminate Clutter

There’s no such thing as too much content! But, if your brand has a large amount of content that your regularly posting on your Instagram account, then things can quickly get disorganized and cluttered. Highlights are a great way to keep everything organized and looking sleek.

You can even step up your creativity with options to customize the Highlight category covers. Creating matching graphics, colors schemes or associated icons to each section will help set your brand apart from the competition in an aesthetically-pleasing way!

Making the Most with Instagram Highlights and Highlight Covers 

As we’ve shown in this article, Instagram highlights are an extremely important aspect of social media marketing on Instagram. They are a tool that any brand, influencer, or business should make use of, and, of course, personal accounts can make use of them as well. 

But making Instagram highlights does not immediately mean that you will have a more professional-looking page. What really makes the page look more professional are great-looking Instagram highlight covers. These covers can make your whole feed look more cohesive and play a major role in making it easy for followers to find the content that they are looking for. Now, you can use Canva, Photoshop, or some other software to level up your feed!