Optimizing Your Instagram Highlights For Bookings And Sales For Your Indoor Playground Business

As you are reading this I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season with your families and staying safe and warm! 

(And if you prefer to listen, you can get this same information anywhere you listen to podcasts on episode 146 of my Profitable Play podcast!).

As you may know I am in Buffalo, New York and we certainly got our fair share of wind and snow and while this holiday looked a lot different than expected since we were unable to travel and spend Christmas with our families, my husband and i were reminded of how lucky we are that we only lost heat for a short while, we never lost power, and we had plenty of food on our table so all in all we felt so blessed since so many went without. 

But because of all the holiday craziness I wanted to give you a super simple “Play of the Day” today– and this is one you have probably been meaning to do for a while but always let it get pushed to “the back-burner” or “saved for tomorrow”. 

In episode 3 of my Profitable Play podcast I talked about how much I love Asana for task management and organization and while I do still use asana religiously I also am notorious for having a few tasks just perpetually hanging out on my list and just constantly pushing the date back and back and back until I finally force myself to complete it. And my friends, this is one of those tasks so if it’s something I have been pushing off– chances are many of you playmakers listening can relate.

So this is a task we are going to do TOGETHER. I will be completing this right alongside you, and feel free to check my instagram in a few days and hold me accountable if I don’t get this done but today’s play of the day is about cleaning out and organizing our instagram story highlights. 

If you are unfamiliar with this feature or need a refresher, your Instagram story highlights are those circles on someone’s instagram profile located directly under their instagram bio. You have to enable this feature, so you might not see it on every single account you come across, but head to mine if you are looking for an example– my profile is linked here. Or you can view a great example of a Play Maker Society member's IG below (and give them a follow, they're doing amazing things)!

Something you know I love to do is poke around (i.e. stalk) indoor playground and soft play rental social media accounts and websites and see if there are any trends or common places that are in need of improvement. And when I was stuck on the couch snowed-in this weekend, I definitely saw a huge potential for improvement when it came to Instagram story highlights.

Almost every single profile I came across HAD highlights and most of them were set up correctly and in the way I am going to recommend in a moment– but here’s the thing. After that initial set-up, it seems like most account owners had forgotten about this section of their profile and were therefore neglecting it just a bit. 

When I swiped through their highlights all of the included stories were months or even years old and many only had a few stories saved under each section. 

And this is a huge missed opportunity because so often when I come across a new business, whether that’s an indoor playground im researching or just a new local restaurant or shop– one of the easiest and quickest ways to acclimate myself with their business and their mission is to do a quick scroll through of their instagram highlights. 

This section of your profile can essentially act as a portfolio of your offerings and – just as I said– allow your potential followers and customers to know exactly what you have to offer without scrolling through dozens or hundreds of posts and trying to gain their footing that way. And this is especially helpful for those businesses that have been around for a while and have VERY long grids or who are very active and post a lot.

So in order to use your instagram highlights most effectively, I want to go ALL the way back to episode 4 my Profitable Play podcast where we came up with our social media pillars, or main topics that we post about which usually directly correlate to the services we offer. 

So for example, one pillar might be birthday parties– and if you are very party focused you may have even broken this down further into first birthday parties, second birthday parties, etc.

But other examples of “pillars” or topics in our business could also be– play area, events, classes and education, news and announcements, our team, ratings and reviews, cafe offerings etc. 

This is the perfect opportunity to work smarter not harder and re-use the pillars you brainstormed way back in that exercise in episode 4 or some similar variation of them.  

These are perfect titles for your instagram highlights.  And if you need a refresher or some more examples or inspiration just go back and listen to that episode, it’s a major listener favorite.

Now if you have been looking up instagram accounts while listening to this episode or if you’re already familiar with this feature, you’ve likely seen that many businesses have created really nice story covers or story icons– and again, if you need an example of what I’m referring to here just click over to my instagram here or view the example below again!

If you’re wondering how to get this polished look when executing this strategy just go to canva, (and yes you can do this with a free account) and type in “instagram story highlight covers” and you will see all of the templates you could possibly need to create that polished on-brand experience for your potential followers and customers.

And once you create your highlight covers or icons, all you need to do to move them over to IG is save the canva covers you create to your phone. 

Then, hit the plus sign where your highlights are indicating you want to create a new highlight reel. Next, name your highlight. So maybe it’s “birthday parties”. 

Next, choose at least one story to add to create the highlight from your archive. 

Finally, hit the “edit cover” link above where you are naming it. And instead of choosing a story to become your cover, choose the story covers you saved in your camera roll from canva. Adjust to make sure it’s centered– and then boom– you’re done! You have a branded instagram story highlight cover. Then, you can rinse and repeat for your remaining highlight categories.

So that is the FIRST part of your play of the day today– to set up your IG story highlights if you haven’t done so yet. If you do already have yours set up, I want you to take a second and click through what you have and pretend you are a potential customer finding your business for the FIRST time.

And I want you to let some of these questions flow through your mind as you are doing this little audit.

 Are the pictures and stories included in your highlights representative of what you offer? Do you feel proud clicking through them? If you were a potential customer, would scrolling through these help you truly understand your businesses offerings? 

Would these pictures you’re seeing make you want to become a customer and book? Are many of these pictures and stories outdated and no longer accurate or representative of your business? Do you have better photos and examples you could showcase instead of what you see in front of you now?

The end of the year is one of my FAVORITE times to do this type of clean-up maintenance stuff– so today I want you to take a few minutes and clean up your highlights. Make sure they give the clearest and most accurate account of your service offerings. Make sure you include your BEST photos and BEST examples of what you and your team can do. And if you haven’t added a highlight called “love notes” or “reviews” or “happy clients” yet– here’s your sign to do that now as well. 

If someone is looking through your profile deciding whether they want to book or not– they likely aren’t going to comb through hundreds of posts looking for reviews or past client stories. It can be much more effective to include them in your story highlights so your customers can quickly and easily check that box off in their mind– that you are trustworthy and have delivered excellent results before. 

And while you’re cleaning up your instagram you can also go back to episode 13 of my Profitable Play Podcast and optimize your bio for bookings and sales as well, to actually convert those scrolling through your highlights into paying clients. 

But your play of the day today is to audit your instagram highlights and make sure you are putting your absolute best photos and examples of your work there so anyone coming across your profile can gain an understanding of your business and say HECK YES, that play area looks amazing my kids would love it there or HECK YES, that looks like exactly what I want for my family's next event. 

If you’d like to learn more about what’s working RIGHT now in the indoor playground industry from current owners, download my FREE What’s Working Guide right now! Inside, 7 owners will share exactly what they are leaning into as we head into 2023 to maximize the profit (and joy!) they get from their businesses.