5 Quick Ways to Clean up Your Instagram RIGHT NOW!

If you are looking for a quick and easy way to clean up your Instagram, like right now… then follow these 5 steps below.

Step 1) Archive

Take a look at your current profile page - if you see anything that doesn’t fit your ideal aesthetic or the story of what you are trying to portray, archive it! You can always un-archive posts if you change your mind! This helps declutter your page so your message and what you want to be known for is obvious to new and current followers!

For example: If you are wanting to be known as a songwriter then that should be clear at first glance. To do that you can update your profile from a random collection of photos to make sure your posts about your craft are front and center.

How to archive: tap on the photo you want to archive — then 3 dots to the top right of the image — a menu will pop-up, select “archive.” — To add something back to your profile from the archives: go to your profile page — tap the menu icon (3 horizontal lines at the top right of your profile) — Select “archive” — then at the top of the page where it says archive tap the down arrow — select “posts” — find and tap the photo you want to retrieve — select those 3 dots at the top again — hit “show on profile.”

2) Add covers to highlights

Highlights are saved stories that are kept at the top of your profile. They are in the space between your bio and your “grid” aka the photos on your profile. If you use Instagram stories and have relevant content that to what you want people to get from your profile - then you should be utilizing story highlights. Because they take up such valuable real estate and they are right there at the top it’s important that you pay attention to the cover image of each highlight.

You can make the cover anything you want! I’d just suggest they are focused and align with the theme of that highlight. For instance, if the highlight will be about your favorite food spots the cover image should be something that indicates that thats what the highlight is about. An image of food, you clearly eating, or an icon that represents food. Some people opt for just a blank cover image and just state what the highlight is about in the title of the highlight, and that's great too! Other times, if the title has more characters than Instagram gives you, then you can type it in the cover photo.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure it’s clear what the highlight is about and that it matches the vibe of the rest of your profile page!

How to add or change the cover of your highlights WITHOUT adding it to your current story: tap on the highlight you want to update — select the 3 dots at the bottom right — tap “edit highlight” — “edit cover” — and select the photo icon (square icon with mountains and a sun) — then you can pick any image you want from your camera roll!

3) Change highlight titles

Sometimes the highlight titles users chose may make sense to them personally, but don’t to visitors on their page. Additionally, titles like “stuff” or “cool things” or “random” don’t really entice anyone to watch the highlight at all. Instead try to use the title to accurately describe whats in the highlight. Instagram only allows 16 characters in the titles (and still might not show all 16 on your profile), so get creative and leverage the cover photo and the title to get your point across. Narrow down what your highlight will consist of so all the stories go together and break them into smaller more direct groups. If the highlight title is too long you can always type out the title in a graphic for the cover photo and opt for a symbol or emoji in the title.

The main thing I want to drive home is that if your highlight is an image of you and the title doesn’t clearly tell people what the stories are about why would they click on it?

For example, a highlight that has your dog doing cute things could be a clear, close-up photo of his/her face or an icon with a pup on it, and the title could say “Dogs” or your dog’s name. If you want a highlight of your favorite food places around your city, you could have the title be the name of your city and the icon be of food.

4) Refresh your biography

When people land on your page their first clue about who you are and what you do is your bio. The most important piece of information should go at the top. That one sentence that says what you want to be known for first and foremost.

Something I see that is a huge pet peeve of mine is when the bio points to an old or no longer relevant link. For example, “Check out my favorite songs from 2021”…. but it’s 2023. This can give off the impression that you aren’t keeping things up to date or paying attention to details.

So make a habit of revisiting your Instagram bio! At least once a month and just check that everything is still correct.

Examples of 2, 3 and 4:

5) Add a link to your bio

Even if you don’t have a blog or a website homepage to send people to, it’s a polished and high-touch look to have a link present. Instagram allows up to 5 links to be added to your bio! Which is great, espeically if you have just a few places you’d like to direct people to. You can also use a service that hosts multiple URLs and links out to different places, think of it as an Instagram landing page (Linkinprofile.com, Linktr.ee, Tap.bio). That way if you are referencing an article or page for people to keep reading, a BuzzFeed quiz or whatever, then it’s all in your bio and you don’t have to change the link, just add the new link to the backend of the service you picked.

I created my own Instagram landing page here on Squarespace. That way people are immediately directed to my website (which is my main goal). This also helps keep my tracking and analytics consistent - a topic for another time. Making your own Instagram landing page is actually a lot simpler than it may sound.

On the Squarespace backend, I created a “not linked” page and put the correlating links to my most recent Instagram posts. I chose to make my Instagram landing page not linked so it won’t appear in my navigation but can be found via the direct link. Now, when you click on the link in my Instagram bio, you see a photo matching what they tell you on Instagram, and you can read the blog post.

Check out my Instagram landing page here: hannahrothermich.com/instagram-links

I hope you found these 5 tips helpful in cleaning up the appearance of your Instagram. If you have topics you’d like for me to cover in the future leave me a comment below! And sign up for my email list if you want new blog posts sent straight to your inbox.