Instagram Highlights for Nail Techs
Quick answer: A nail tech needs five Instagram highlights, in this order: Prices, Book Me, Aftercare, Recent Sets and Reviews. Highlights sit directly under the bio and are the first thing a new visitor taps, so they should answer what a set costs, where you are, and how to book, before anyone has to send a message.
Someone finds your account at eleven at night, likes three photos, wants to know what a full set of gel-x costs, cannot find it anywhere, and closes the app.
None of that shows up on your end. You just see a like and assume the account is ticking along.
Why do highlights matter more than the grid?
Because the grid answers whether you are any good, and highlights answer whether they can book you.
A visitor who has decided your work is worth having still needs four facts before they will message: what it costs, where you are, when you are free, and how to pay a deposit. Those facts are almost never in a caption, because captions scroll away, and they are almost never in the grid, because the grid is photos.
Highlights are the only permanent, above-the-fold surface on an Instagram profile. They sit between the bio and the first row of posts, and on most phones the first four or five circles are visible without scrolling sideways.
That position is the whole point. Everything you have ever explained twice in DMs belongs in one, which cuts the reply-to-book path down to no reply at all. This is the same friction problem covered in how to get nail bookings from Instagram, just solved from the profile end rather than the caption end.
Which highlights does a nail tech actually need?
Five. More than that and the ones that matter get pushed off the visible row.
Prices goes first, because it is the single most common DM in the industry. Put a readable list in it: service, duration, price. Full set, infill, removal, nail art per nail, the lot. Techs worry that publishing prices scares people off, and it does, which is the benefit. The enquiries you lose are the ones that were never going to book.
Book Me goes second. Screenshot of your availability, the booking link, the deposit amount and the policy. One story per point, not one story with a wall of text.
Aftercare is third. What to do in the first 24 hours, when to book the infill, what causes lifting, why picking gel off takes the top layer of the nail with it. This one saves you repair appointments, and there is a full breakdown in nail aftercare posts clients actually read.
Recent Sets is fourth, and it is the one people underestimate. A new visitor wants proof you are working now, not in 2024. Add to it weekly and clear it out every few months.
Reviews is fifth. Screenshots of Google reviews and DM compliments, with names cropped off unless you asked.
Anything else, a Meet Me highlight, a Location one, a Nail Art gallery, is optional and goes behind those five.
How should highlights be ordered and named?
Instagram shows highlights in the order you last updated them, oldest updates drifting rightwards, which means the order looks after itself badly.
To force the order you want, add a story to each one in reverse: update Reviews first, then Recent Sets, then Aftercare, then Book Me, then Prices last. The most recently updated highlight sits leftmost.
Names should be short and literal. Prices beats Investment, Book Me beats Let's Chat. A visitor scanning five circles for a number is not in the mood to decode a brand voice, and highlight names truncate after about ten characters anyway.
Covers are the least important thing about highlights and the thing techs spend the most time on. A consistent colour is enough. Nobody has ever booked because the icons matched.
How much should go in each highlight?
Fewer stories than you think, in a fixed order that makes sense front to back.
Instagram caps each highlight at 100 stories, according to EmbedSocial, and nobody in the history of the app has watched 100. Most people tap through three or four then leave, so put the answer first.
Aim for four to eight stories per highlight, with the most important one at the front. In Prices, that is the price list itself, not a photo of a set with the price buried in the corner.
One idea per story. A story is on screen for five seconds and it is being read on a phone in one hand, so text should be big, dark on light, and short enough to read at a glance. If you need three sentences, use three stories.
Where does the booking link go?
In the bio, and in the highlight, and in both places for different reasons.
The bio link is the one that always works, and how to set it up properly is covered in link in bio for nail techs. It should be the first thing anyone sees after the bio text.
A link sticker inside a Book Me story is worth adding on top, because someone deep in a highlight has to back out to the profile otherwise, and every back-out loses people. Link stickers are available to all accounts now, not just large ones.
Where should a client find your prices?
| Option | Visible without asking | Stays visible over time | Effort to maintain | Time it costs you per enquiry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answering DMs individually | No | No | High, forever | 2 to 5 minutes each |
| A caption on one post | Only on that post | Buried within a week | Low | Some, people still ask |
| A pinned post | Yes, top of grid | Yes, until unpinned | Low | Low |
| A Prices highlight | Yes, above the fold | Yes | Minutes per update | Almost none |
A pinned post and a Prices highlight together is the strongest setup. The pin catches people browsing the grid, the highlight catches people who never scroll.
A one-hour highlights setup
- Write the price list in your notes app first, then screenshot it as one clean image with dark text on a light background.
- Post five stories covering prices, then save them into a new highlight named Prices.
- Repeat for Book Me, Aftercare and Recent Sets, four to eight stories each, one idea per story.
- Screenshot four reviews, crop the surnames off, and save them into Reviews.
- Add one story to each highlight in reverse order so Prices ends up leftmost on your profile.
Where NailTech fits in
Highlights are made of photos, and the ones in Recent Sets are doing the same job as your grid: convincing someone your work is worth the price sitting one circle to the left. Story photos get compressed harder than feed photos, so a shot that was already slightly yellow from the desk lamp arrives yellower still.
That is where a couple of minutes pays off. Correct the colour before the story goes up, and the price list next to it looks like it belongs to a different tier of tech.
NailTech is a nail image editor, so the sets you drop into a highlight can be tidied in the gap between clients.
- Fix the warm cast from salon bulbs before a photo gets compressed into a story.
- Even skin tone on the hand so the nails carry the frame.
- Clean up the background when the desk was in shot.
- Keep colour consistent across a highlight so a set from March matches one from August.
It edits photos and nothing else. It does not run your bookings, and the price list still has to come out of your own numbers, which is what how to price your nail services is for.
Five highlight circles sit above the fold on a nail tech's profile, and if none of them contains a number, every person who wanted to know the price has to type a message to find out. Most of them will not.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Instagram highlights should a nail tech have?
A nail tech should have five Instagram highlights: Prices, Book Me, Aftercare, Recent Sets and Reviews. Those five answer the questions that otherwise arrive as DMs, and they sit directly under the bio where a new visitor sees them before scrolling the grid.
Should nail techs put prices on Instagram?
Nail techs should put prices on Instagram, ideally in a dedicated Prices highlight. Publishing prices removes the most common DM in the industry and filters out enquiries that were never going to convert. Clients who close the app rather than ask a price were unlikely to book at that price anyway.
How do you change the order of Instagram highlights?
Instagram orders highlights by the time each was last updated, with the most recent on the left. To control the order, add a story to each highlight in reverse priority, so the highlight you want leftmost is updated last. There is no manual drag-to-reorder option.
How many stories should be in an Instagram highlight?
Four to eight stories per highlight is enough. Instagram allows up to 100, but most people tap through three or four before leaving, so the most important information belongs in the first story. One idea per story, with large dark text on a light background, reads best on a phone.
Do Instagram highlights help you get more nail bookings?
Instagram highlights help get nail bookings by removing the steps between interest and enquiry. A visitor who can see the price, the location, the deposit and the booking link without messaging can book at eleven at night. Highlights are the only permanent surface on a profile that sits above the grid.
Final Takeaways
- Build five highlights: Prices, Book Me, Aftercare, Recent Sets, Reviews.
- Publish the prices. The DMs you lose are the bookings you were never getting.
- Update in reverse so the highlight you care about most sits leftmost.
- Keep each one to four to eight stories, answer first.
- Put a link sticker in Book Me as well as the link in your bio.
- Refresh Recent Sets weekly so the account looks alive.
The NailTech Team
We build NailTech, the nail image editor that helps nail technicians and salon owners turn quick phone shots of their work into portfolio-grade photos.
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