BH instagram highlight research project

Instagram Highlight research project

by Vinny Laz

critique of what we currently have

Let’s get right into it. Out of our 5 highlights, 60% of them are used to showcase past events and pre competition promotional materials. The remaining two are the Support SICA highlight and the Langford construction which were both posted over 4 years ago.

The event recaps are great, they generate hype for people at home and at the event. The more insight we can provide on these special days the better.

However from a user perspective, attempting to looking back on these events are difficult. You are forced to scroll through multiple slides of registration and other promotional posts that are outdated before seeing footage from the competition.

This strategy lacks instant stimuli and often leaves viewers unmotivated to dig further and explore more content. Regarding the “Support SICA” and the “Langford constructions” these highlights are outdated.

All of these memories have a place on the instagram but I’m not sure the highlights are the best place for them.

Research

Potential change to instagram highlights in 2025

Instagram story highlights have been a popular feature on the app since they were first introduced back in 2017. Testing for the new highlights feature began in 2024 and we should expect a change sometime in 2025. Although Instagram confirmed they are not getting rid of highlights, something to keep in mind is the format may change from what we are currently used to.

Key information

Instagram Highlights can function as a great marketing tool. The way Instagram profiles are currently set up, the highlights are some of the first things people see. Utilizing them to share key information has been proven to be extremely valuable to businesses.

At a first glance, what information do you want to put forward? What value are you providing and what questions are you answering? For some Businesses it might be directions, store hours, new products that are available, upcoming and past events, FAQ’s and more.

What key information do you want people to see first?

Engaging content

With so much content out in the world, standing out and capturing your audience’s attention is not easy. Attention spans have been on a steep decline since the 2000’s and it’s only getting worse. The average human attention span in 2025 is about 8 seconds. How can we capture people attention within that time and convince them to care about BoulderHouse as much as we do.

Engagement is vital to creating a space for your business to grow online. Complex algorithms reward engagement and boosts your profiles visibility; impacting your influence and growth on the platform. It can be the difference that turns casual followers into loyal fans and drives traffic to your business. This will ultimately increase participation, awareness and sales.

Engage your audience by posting good content, offering something different and by being creative and consistent. Instagram stories have a lots of features that regular posts don’t. Utilizing these special features like direct links to websites, directions to various locations or engaging followers with questions and polls.

Utilizing some of these features in your instagram highlights is an easy way to boost engagement with people visiting your profile by connecting them quickly to your business and culture.

What are others are doing?

I took a look at what people are doing outside and within the world of climbing. Here are some pages that stand out to me and why I thought they were interesting.

Karma8a

Karma8a is an apparel / fashion that aims to share the underground culture and creative side of bouldering.

They have chosen a unique approach for their instagram highlights showcasing their culture / community. Separated into three highlights, On the wall, On the rock and On the street.

Focusing on Bouldering indoors, climbing outside and climbers living their life off the walls repping their gear in the streets.

I think this is a cool approach that makes the community feel like they are part of the brand. They are creating a unique culture and including the climbers metaphorically speaking the same language that want to participate.

Visit Instagram page

Boulders climbing yeg

Boulders Climbing yeg is a rock climbing gym in Edmonton Alberta.

They have some cool different highlights for their gym. My favourite is the ones on the climbers dogs, it creates a fun unique community at the gym indirectly promoting a healthy routing of bringing your dog to their climbing gym. They also showcase their coffee shop and delicious treats and sandwiches they sell. Finally also have a cool program where they offer free climbing for people who are willing to deep clean the gym overnight.

I like the simple approach they have taken towards their highlights. I feel like I am always more likely to checkout a profiles highlights when they are refined and simple.

Visit Instagram page

Visit website

Jenkem mag

Jenkem is a skateboard magazine that captures and promotes the underground skateboarding scene often not promoted by the big brands and other magazines.

They started a few years ago and have grown a big following telling stories and shining a light on what happens behind the scenes in the life of people that skateboard around the world.

They have a lot of highlights on their page and focus on telling different stories and projects. I really like the disposable project they did where they gave a bunch of skaters disposable cameras. When these people took all their 36 photos, Jenkem developed the images, had an art show and created a cool instagram highlight. Bu clicking through you can see different skaters photographs and a glimpses on their point of view on whats unfolding before them.

They also do a great job with their Story Time series with skaters. Sharing different stories with visuals and different perspectives telling stories with text, photos and videos. Jenkem does a good job at grabbing your attention on the socials and leaving you want more.

Visit Instagram page

Conclusion

My take away from the research, how can this help Boulderhouse

Instagram highlights remain a great marketing tool that can be utilized to provide key information to people visiting your profile. What it comes down to is “What are we giving to the customer?” what value are you providing and what questions are you answering. Here are some of my ideas for the gym.

I think it would be great to dedicate a highlight to our “Hours / Rates”. One of the biggest issues I’ve noticed while working behind the desk is the volume of people that get turned around to climb the Treehouse. Nothing is worse then having to squash that built up excitement in the kids and parents because they didn’t understand the Drop in Hours for the Treehouse. Making the Drop In Hours crystal clear on our socials should help minimize this issue and can even help boost kids climbing throughout the week during our after school drop in hours. We can add the Victoria and Langford hours of operations on the next slides. While were at it we can also share our Drop in prices for kids, students and adults as well as special discounts for military and first responders.

Another good idea can be showcasing our different “Locations” and having clickable directions on how to get there. Victoria, Langford and the Treehouse again making it crystal clear that the Kids Climbing is located in Langford.

A fun and fresh idea to keep our highlights simple could be a “Whats New” folder. It’s an opportunity to be original and inspire people to visit the gym and climb. Having an open ended folder could allow us to promote whats going on in the gym and create a fun exciting experience for people following along.

In this highlight we can promote whats important to the gym RIGHT NOW. Whats the first thing we want the customer to see and what other stories do we want to share. Do you want to promote our; programs, upcoming / past events, BH Merch, products, staff, culture, resets and gym closures. It would also be a great opportunity to find ways to including the community and making them feel welcome. This is something that we can loosely plan and rebuild fresh every month. A tool that helps us shine a light on all the amazing things happening at our gym right now.

These are some ideas that I think would be worth exploring.

What do you think?

Bonus social media thoughts

Improving other aspects of our social presence

instagram stories

Instagram stories are essentially quick a 24 hour marketing promo. I think we could be doing more by:

Engaging with the community
Simple easy BH comedy
Variety / balance

How do what we post look like on our profiles as a collection. How well does our grid represent the business and it’s culture.

The quality is definitely there. Great graphic design work, interesting images, videos and events. Where I think we could be doing better is balancing these elements to better represent the BoulderHouse culture on our account. We are forgetting to push different aspects of the climbing gym. Heres what I think we should post more of.

Kids climbing
Training (workout area)
Information
Different Videos
Cool Photographs
promote our Programs
Lessons
Recaps
Engaging and promoting the community
Staff doing cool things
Products for sale / snacks
Crash pad rentals
outdoor climbing
Kilter board sessions*

Lets utilize all these cool things thats were doing to get people hyped on climbing. Touching on these forgotten aspects will create well rounded and accurate representation of the BoulderHouse culture.

instagram profile / Grid

conclusion - the encore

Instagram highlights are a great place to start. Second we should be working on balancing our instagram grid promoting all aspects of the gym.

It would also be smart to look at expanding our online presence to different social platforms like TikTok and YouTube. You never know when something is going to become absolute and you don’t want to have all our eggs in one basket.