Using Instagram Story Highlights to Show Off Your Business

If you have a hand in the marketing strategy at your company, you’re in luck. Instagram recently introduced Instagram Story Highlights, a brand new feature that’s perfect for promoting and humanizing your business. Highlights allow you to take any Instagram Story you’ve previously made, pin it to your profile, and customize the name and thumbnail.

Why should you care about this update? Look at is as a chance to solidify your brand identity and shine a spotlight on multiple facets of your business, whether it be your team, your product, your office, or even your office dog.

A quick rundown of how it works

When choosing your Highlights, think about what it is that you want to, well, highlight about your business.

For us at Wistia, starting with a few categories seemed just right: our product, our team and culture, our love for educating people, and our brand.

We then scripted, shot, and edited separate videos for each of these buckets. The one catch? We made sure to shoot them vertically (gasp!) at a 9:16 aspect ratio, which is ideal for Instagram viewers. From there, we exported each of the videos into 15-second segments to upload to our Instagram Story, then posted each one over time.

Once you’re in Instagram, all you have to do is add a new Story Highlight, select the proper Story clips, and customize the text and thumbnail. Easy as pie! The next time a follower (or potential follower) lands on your Instagram profile, they’ll see these cozy little thumbnails, and when they click, they’ll get a curated video experience that’ll delight them from head to toe.

What’s that, you say? You want an example that will get you started on the right foot? Thankfully you’re in luck — check out these Highlights we made for the Wistia Instagram account to get those creative juices flowing!

The “About” Story

For our version of an “About” Story, we wanted to get across succinctly what Wistia does and what products we offer, while also conveying a fun tone. In this Story, we show a quick snapshot of Wistia to give new followers an idea of who we are.

Not only do “About” Stories tell the world why your product is so great, but also they help personalize your brand — two great results for the price of one video!

The “Team” Story

In our “Team” Instagram Story, we produced an edit that showcases a little bit about our office culture and team. This entailed gathering shots of life around the office and saying a quick hello to various team members.

One quick suggestion: Don’t be afraid to utilize all those fun emojis, GIFs, and polls that are inherent within the Instagram platform! Again, showing that your company knows how to have a good time is perfect for a medium that’s as hands-on as Instagram is.

The “Learn” Story

Our “Learn” Story was an excellent way to take a piece of existing content that’s performed well on our site and repurporse it for a new platform, allowing us to gain more exposure with a different audience.

How did we do it? By shooting a low-effort, bit-sized learning video that gives our followers a taste of some of the types of pieces we publish.

Although email and social are tried-and-true options for distributing content, we’re always looking for more inventive ways to share our best posts. With Instagram Story Highlights, it’s possible to breathe new life into older articles by spicing them up with head-turning visuals and graphics.

The “Brand” Story

Other businesses might use this category to show off company events, outings, or swag. But for us at Wistia, we chose to highlight our star employee, Lenny the dog. Anyone who follows the Wistia brand knows Lenny serves as the face of our company, which is why we created Paw & Order, a spin-off series created exclusively for our Instagram Story Highlights. (You’ll have to head over to the Wistia Instagram account if you want access to that flaming hot content.)

If you’re looking for a new testing ground for all of your zany, experimental content, the “Brand” Story could be the perfect home for it.