How to Make a Highlight Reel on Instagram

Your Instagram profile is the front door to your brand, and you only have a few seconds to make a great first impression. Directly below your bio, those little circles serve as your personal movie trailer, giving new visitors a curated look into who you are and what you offer. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about creating, managing, and optimizing your Instagram Highlight Reels to turn casual profile visitors into dedicated followers.

What Exactly Are Instagram Highlights (and Why Do They Matter)?

Instagram Highlights are collections of your past Instagram Stories that you can group together and save permanently to your profile. Unlike regular Stories that vanish after 24 hours, Highlights live right under your bio, acting as a curated menu of your best content for anyone who visits your page.

Think of them as organized folders or categories for your brand. They allow you to showcase important information, share evergreen content, and tell a deeper story than a single grid post ever could. For a business, this could be your product catalog or customer reviews. For a creator, it might be your travel guides or behind-the-scenes moments.

Here’s why they’re so valuable:

• First Impressions Count: They are one of the first things visitors see. A well-organized set of Highlights immediately communicates professionalism and tells people what you're all about.
• Extend Your Content's Lifespan: You put effort into creating great Stories. Highlights rescue your best work from the 24-hour expiration clock, giving it permanent value.
• Answer Questions Proactively: Use Highlights to create an "FAQ" section. By answering common questions here, you save yourself time and provide immediate value to your audience.
• Drive Business Goals: You can link directly from your Stories to products, blog posts, or signup pages. By saving these Stories to a Highlight, you create a permanent pathway for your profile visitors to take action.

Before You Create: Planning Your Highlight Strategy

Jumping straight into creating Highlights without a plan can lead to a disorganized and confusing profile. Taking just ten minutes to strategize will make your Highlights infinitely more effective. Ask yourself these three questions:

1. What is the goal of my Instagram profile?

Are you trying to make sales, build a community, establish yourself as an expert, or share your creative work? Your Highlights should directly support that goal.

• Goal: Drive Sales → Create Highlights for "New In," "Sale," "Services," and "Reviews."
• Goal: Build Community → Create Highlights for "Q&A," "Ask Me Anything," "Team," and user-generated content (UGC).
• Goal: Educate Your Audience → Create Highlights for "Tips," "Tutorials," "How-To's," and "Myth Busting."

2. What information do my followers actually need?

Put yourself in the shoes of someone discovering your profile for the first time. What would they want to know? What are the top 3-5 questions you get in your DMs over and over again? These are perfect candidates for Highlights.

For example, if you run a coffee shop, your followers will probably want to know your menu, opening hours, location, and maybe even see some "behind the scenes" of a barista at work. Create a Highlight for each of these topics.

3. What are my core content pillars?

Your content pillars are the main themes you talk about. Your Highlights should reflect these pillars. If you’re a fitness coach, your pillars might be "Workouts," "Nutrition," "Mindset," and "Client Results." These translate directly into a clear and effective set of Highlights that reinforces your brand identity.

Creating Polished Highlight Covers That Pop

While you can use a frame from one of your Stories as the cover, custom Highlight covers create a much more professional and branded look. A cohesive set of covers signals that you’re intentional about your presence and makes your profile visually appealing.

Creating them is simpler than it sounds. You don’t need to be a graphic designer.

Tools for the Job

Hands down, the easiest tool for this is Canva. They have countless templates specifically for Instagram Story Highlight covers. Simply search for "Instagram Story Highlight Cover" to get started. You can also create one from scratch using a 1080x1920 pixel blank canvas.

Best Practices for Designing Covers:

• Keep it Simple: The covers are tiny on your profile. A complex design will be lost. Think bold, simple icons or clean text.
• Stay On Brand: Use your brand colors, fonts, and overall aesthetic. This creates consistency between your feed, Stories, and Highlights.
• Use Clear Icons: Icons are a great way to communicate the topic of the Highlight without text. A shopping bag for "Shop," a question mark for "FAQs," or a location pin for "Locations."
• Ensure Readability: If you use text, make sure the font is thick and large enough to be easily readable, even at a small size.

Once you’ve designed your covers, save them to your phone's camera roll so they’re ready to upload.

How to Make a Highlight Reel: A Step-by-Step Guide

You can create a new Instagram Highlight in two main ways: from your active Story (something you’ve posted in the last 24 hours) or from your Story Archive (any Story you’ve ever posted).

Method 1: Creating a Highlight from Your Active Story

This is the simplest way. As soon as you post a new Story you want to feature, you can add it directly to a Highlight.

1. View your own active Story.
2. In the bottom right corner, tap the Highlight icon (it looks like a heart inside a circle).
3. A menu will pop up. You can either add the Story to an existing Highlight or tap the "New" button (the plus sign) to create a new one.
4. If you tap "New," you will be asked to give your Highlight a name (e.g., "About Me," "Services," etc.).
5. Tap "Add," and the new Highlight will immediately appear on your profile.

Method 2: Creating a Highlight from Your Story Archive

This method is perfect for building Highlights with content you've posted in the past. As long as your Story Archive feature is turned on (it is by default), all your past Stories are saved for you.

1. Go to your Instagram profile and tap the + New icon right under your bio. (It’s the circle with a plus sign in it.)
2. This will open your Story Archive, showing you all the Stories you've ever posted, organized by date.
3. Tap to select all the Stories you want to include in this specific Highlight. A blue-and-white checkmark will appear on the ones you've selected.
4. Once you're done selecting, tap "Next" in the top right corner.
5. Now, you'll be prompted to edit the cover and add a name. To set your custom cover, tap "Edit Cover" and then tap the image icon on the far left to select an image from your camera roll.
6. Give your Highlight a clear and concise name (you have up to 15 characters).
7. Tap "Add" (on iPhone) or "Done" (on Android), and your new Archive-based Highlight will be live on your profile.

How to Edit and Manage Existing Highlights

Your business and content will evolve, and your Highlights should too. Managing them is simple and keeps your profile relevant and up-to-date.

Adding or Removing Stories

1. Go to your profile and tap and hold the Highlight you want to edit.
2. Select "Edit Highlight."
3. You’ll be taken to the "Archive" tab, where you can uncheck any Stories you want to remove or check new ones to add.
4. When you're finished, tap "Done."

Changing the Cover or Name

1. Tap and hold the Highlight you want to edit.
2. Select "Edit Highlight."
3. To change the name, simply type a new one in the "Title" field.
4. To change the cover, tap "Edit Cover." You can choose a new frame from one of the Stories inside the Highlight, or you can tap the image icon to upload a new one from your camera roll.
5. Tap "Done" to save your changes.

Reordering Highlights on Your Profile

An annoying quirk of Instagram is that you can't just drag and drop your Highlights to change their order. Highlights are ordered by the most recently updated. The one you added to last will appear first (on the far left).

That means to move a Highlight to the front of the line, you just need to add a Story to it. You can even post a temporary Story, add a blank piece of text to it, add it to the desired Highlight to bump it to the front, and then delete the temporary Story.

Final Thoughts

Instagram Highlights are an endlessly flexible tool for storytelling, brand building, and customer service. By planning out your categories, creating clean covers, and keeping the content updated, you transform your profile from a simple photo gallery into a valuable resource for your audience.

Thinking strategically about your visual content, from the feed to your Stories and Highlights, is the mark of a pro. At my company, we spend our days in the trenches of social media, and that's exactly why we built Postbase with a visual calendar at its core. Having one beautiful place to see your entire content plan laid out helps you create a more cohesive and professional presence without drowning in spreadsheets. After all, great Highlights often start as well-planned Stories.