What are Instagram guides?

Have you heard of a recent addition to the Instagram features called Instagram guides? Instagram guides allow you to collate content into bite-sized ‘guides’ which you can share with others.

Instagram describes guides as “a way to more easily discover recommendations, tips and other content from your favorite creators, public figures, organizations and publishers on Instagram.”

Instagram

I like to think of them as miniature, visual blogs or catalogues of content that may be interesting to you and your target audience.

There are three types of guide you can select from:

Places

You chose posts that have been tagged into a chosen location. For example if I wanted to share my 5 favourite restaurants in the local area I can add the location and it will pull through content for that specific location.

Products

This type of guide allows you to select products that have been tagged in an Instagram shop. Another key reason to have an Instagram shop set up if you are an e-commerce business. You could share your recommended products for your audience or share catalogues of your favourite items from your own range.

Posts

This allows you to select posts which you have created on your own Instagram page or saved from others. For example I regularly share Free tools that I recommend for other marketers so created a guide collating some of these posts.

Where to find them?

Here are a few pictures on how you can find Instagram Guides on your phone.

Head to your profile and select the '+' button in the top right.

In the dropdown selection, you will see 'Guides' with a little magazine icon. Select this icon to start creating a guide.

You can then select which type of Guide you want to create from Places, Products and Posts. Once you have created your Guide you will then be given the option to share.

Once you have created your first Guide you will be able to access them in your own Guides feed. Here is an example of the guides on my Instagram page.

How can you use them for your business?

I love the potential applications for Guides even for service-based businesses. You could create guides on:

• The services you offer that would best support your target audience
• Create guides on other businesses you love (or even ones you would love to work with)
• Create a guide full of testimonials or reviews from your clients to showcase them in once place
• Create a guide with Top tips, hacks or advice on particular topics that you may have shared on your page or saved from others
• Share your top selling products or create seasonal guides like (My favourite products for Easter/ Christmas/ Mothers Day etc)

I think guides are a great addition to the Instagram toolkit and it is a great way to repurpose existing content in a new format for your marketing too. The bonus is you can keep adding to guide too so as your content and posts grow, so can your guides.

Start considering how to use Instagram Guides in your content marketing or if you want some inspiration on how can start using them in your marketing I would love to help.

Head to my social media pages or Contact Us form to learn more.