ICYMI: Earlier this month, Instagram released a new format for sharing content: Instagram Guides. This new feature allows users to share relevant content to share tips, recommendations and more in a more streamlined manner. Here’s everything you need to know about this feature. 👇
What are Instagram Guides?
Guides are just another way for your followers to consume your content. These guides allow you to share a flow of photographs with your brand’s commentary to offer tips, tricks, advice, recommendations, and so much more. Think of it like an easy-t0-digest Powerpoint presentation on Instagram.
While Instagram first released this feature for health and wellness experts to share updates of COVID-19, the feature is now being rolled out to all users.
Why Create a Guide?
Before we walk you through creating a guide, here’s why you should even consider making one in the first place. To start, Guides are a great tool for all businesses (yes, even yours) to add extra commentary to their online shop. Struggling to effectively communicate the benefits of your product in a short Instagram caption? This is where Guides will come in handy.
But what if you don’t have a product to sell, just a service? Guides are perfect for that too! They open up new opportunities for you to present yourself and your brand as an industry expert, by allowing you to share tips, tricks, and knowledge in a way that is much easier for consumers to digest. Let’s be real – people’s attention spans are short nowadays and it’s much easier for your followers to scroll through a quick Instagram Guide to learn new information from you than it is to click the link in your bio and read a 700-word blog post.
How to Create a Guide
Luckily, you don’t have to be a social media all-star to create an Instagram Guide — the process is fairly simple! To create your first Guide, click on the + icon on the corner of your Instagram profile.
From there, select Guide and you will be prompted to pick from 1 of 3 Guide formats.
- Places: Allows you to recommend places in your city and around the world
- Products: Allows you to recommend your favorite products
- Posts: Allows you to recommend posts you’ve created or saved
Each Guide format is designed to suit a unique set of needs. For example, a Posts Guide will allow an influencer to share a series of posts on a specific topic so their followers can easily find and read each one. All in all, it’s a versatile storytelling format that can be used for a number of different reasons.
This new feature can be found below a user’s Instagram stories, as well as in the Instagram Explore Page.
Tell us — what do you think of this new feature?
