Highlights
Instagram Stories disappear after 24 hours — unless you rescue them. Highlights are the feature that lets you pin your best Stories permanently to your profile, right below your bio, where anyone visiting your page will see them before they even reach your grid. Done well, Highlights work like a mini homepage for your brand. Done poorly, they are just a cluttered row of forgotten circles nobody taps.
What are Instagram Highlights?
Highlights are curated collections of past Stories that live permanently on your profile instead of expiring after a day. You create one by tapping "New" under your bio (or the "+" on an existing Story), choosing which Stories to include, and giving the collection a name and cover image. Visitors can tap through a Highlight the same way they would a live Story, and it stays there until you delete it.
Why Highlights matter for your profile
Highlights sit in one of the most-viewed positions on your entire profile — directly under your bio, above your grid. For a new visitor deciding in a few seconds whether to follow you, Highlights often do more work than your actual posts. A well-organized set can answer the exact questions a new visitor has (What do you sell? What is this brand about? How do I contact you?) without them having to scroll at all. For creators, Highlights are also a way to keep valuable, evergreen content — tutorials, FAQs, behind-the-scenes — permanently accessible instead of letting it vanish after 24 hours.
How to organize Highlights that actually convert
Think of your Highlights row as a table of contents, not a scrapbook. Common categories that work well across niches include an "About" or "Start Here" Highlight introducing who you are, a "Reviews" or "Results" Highlight for social proof, an "FAQ" Highlight answering the questions you get asked most in DMs, and a "Shop" or "Services" Highlight linking to what you sell. Keep the list short — five to seven Highlights is usually plenty; more than that and visitors will not bother tapping through all of them.
Cover images matter more than most people think. A consistent visual style — matching fonts, colors, or icon set across all your Highlight covers — makes your profile look considerably more polished and can be the difference between someone deciding you look established versus abandoned. Plenty of free templates exist specifically for this, and it is worth the twenty minutes to set them up once.
Refresh Highlights periodically rather than treating them as permanent fixtures. Outdated promotions, old pricing, or stale testimonials sitting in a Highlight can actively work against you, since visitors assume what they see there is still current. Set a recurring reminder every couple of months to review what is pinned and swap out anything that no longer represents your business accurately.
Mistakes that make Highlights less effective
The most common misstep is leaving the default gray circle as a cover instead of a custom image — it signals an inactive or half-finished profile. Another is cramming dozens of Stories into a single Highlight with no clear theme, which makes it feel like a chore to tap through rather than something helpful. And many accounts forget Highlights entirely after the first month, letting genuinely useful content quietly go stale while newer, better material never gets added.
Highlights are one of the lowest-effort, highest-visibility parts of an Instagram profile. A little bit of curation up front pays off every single time someone new lands on your page.
Related terms in our Knowledge Hub
Frequently asked questions
How many Instagram Highlights should I have?
Around five to seven is a good target. Enough to cover the key things a new visitor would want to know, without overwhelming your profile with rows of tiny icons.
Can I add old Stories to a Highlight after they expire?
Once a Story fully expires from your archive it cannot be added to a new Highlight, which is why it is worth saving anything valuable to a Highlight within the first 24 hours.
Do Highlights help with the Instagram algorithm?
Highlights themselves are not a direct ranking signal, but they increase profile visits and follow rates, which are engagement signals that can indirectly help your future content perform better.
Should I use custom covers for Highlights?
Yes. Consistent, branded cover images make a profile look more professional and noticeably increase how often visitors actually tap into a Highlight.
