There is no question that today’s parents are parents of the digital age. About 9,000 babies are born to American millennials each day and approximately 85% of those parents use social media regularly. Gen-Zers spend about 53 minutes a day scrolling Instagram, many of whom are parents. If those millennial or Gen-Z parents are searching for childcare and your center’s Instagram leaves a positive impression, you may just have a new family coming on board!
When millennial or Gen Z parents connect with one of your Instagram Stories, they may navigate to your profile to learn more, follow your page, and grow attached. When your center’s Stories pop into a parent’s Instagram feed every day alongside their morning coffee or during their baby’s nap time, you’re building their connection with your business. That is the kind of attachment you want your future families to have to your center.
Engaging information at every click, including your posts, Stories and highlights, can help you draw interest beyond your Instagram and onto your website or even an in-person tour. Creative Instagram highlight covers, backed by easy-to-follow information, could have your childcare center well on its way to success.
Instagram Stories vs Instagram Highlights
Both Stories and highlights can be a great way to offer important information to followers about your business and drive interest to your childcare Instagram—in a way that’s casual and eye-catching. Having a clear understanding of the difference between Stories and highlights can make your page cleaner and help future clients find information more easily.
Instagram Stories
An Instagram Story is a picture, other visual or text that can be viewed by clicking on your profile picture in the upper left-hand corner of your Instagram page. When you add a Story to your page, your profile picture gets a bold circle around it. The main, and most important, difference between Instagram Stories and Instagram highlights is that Stories only last for 24 hours before disappearing.
When you post to your Instagram Story, you have the choice to save that specific slide in a highlight. Then, instead of disappearing after 24 hours, the image can be accessed from your profile until you remove it.
Instagram Highlights and Highlight Covers
Instagram highlights are mini photo albums where previous Instagram Stories are kept. Followers can click an Instagram highlight cover to learn more about certain topics and to see the Stories they may have missed or want to view again. You can title each highlight with a name describing the content within it, which helps make it unique from the highlight next to it. It’s also a great way to stay organized and, as a childcare center worker, you know organization is key!
Instagram highlight covers encourage the parents that visit your profile to click to view and read more. Usually, covers are visually pleasing icons that help create a clean, crisp aesthetic for your center’s Instagram page. When you look at someone’s Instagram, the highlight covers are the circular icons below the biography and before the “grid” of images.
Why do Highlight Covers Matter?
Instagram is a visual social platform. This means parents visiting your profile are more likely to scroll your timeline and dig through your highlights if your posts have high-quality, relevant imagery. Therefore, a clean, consistent style is important when maintaining a professional page.
This goes for your highlight cover images as well. The Instagram highlight icons add functionality and personality to your Instagram. If the cover graphics match the aesthetic of the rest of your page, followers are more likely to take your page seriously and, in return, take your childcare center seriously.
Why Should Your Center Use Highlights?
Once you have a solid Instagram posting schedule, you’ve followed similar childcare centers, and have some intriguing posts in your timeline, you may want to add Stories on a regular basis and create Instagram highlights with on-brand covers. Programs such as Canva and Easil are terrific apps for creating clean, professional Instagram highlight icons that will attract interested families to your platform and your center.
Highlights can also help interested families learn more about your center without going to the website and being overwhelmed with text. By clicking through highlights, parents can read short snippets of information alongside captivating pictures or graphics. Instagram highlights provide a quick and easy way to connect those interested families with the information they need using relatable content and engaging visuals.
