Founded in 2010, Instagram was once a photo and video-sharing social networking service. But not anymore. Today, it’s an integral part of social media marketing strategy.
People not only share photos on Instagram but buy products and review them, write blogs, read travel guides before visiting a country, and even create business partnerships.
Since its launch, the platform has significantly evolved. Instagram Guides is one of the latest features introduced by the app.
The brand-new features allow users to discover places, tips, and various other forms of content from individual creators, small businesses, and brands.
In this article, we are going to teach you how you can create and use Instagram Guides to boost your Instagram visibility. So without further ado, let’s get down to business!
What are Instagram Guides?
Instagram guides are like a miniature blogs or a cross between blog posts and carousels. You can create them with pre-published posts, places, or product listings from the creator’s account or public accounts.
Instagram Guides let users scroll through a curated flow of content with commentary. You can curate content roundups, FAQ guides, gift guides, product highlights, travel recommendations, restaurant reviews, and much more with these guides.
Every guide you create has a cover image, title, intro, and a short description of the guide. Since the launch of this feature, Instagram Guides have been widely used by social media marketing agencies in the USA.
image- source: pocket-lint.com
Types of Instagram Guides
Instagram Guides are nothing to be confused about. They are quite similar to the ‘post’ option. All they do is make your content more specific, so the reader can immediately understand what the post is about. You can create Instagram Guides in three different types:
- Posts
- Products
- Travel
Posts
This is the simplest way to get started with Instagram guides. An Instagram Posts Guide is for covering an umbrella topic and connecting it with other specified posts you have created(similar to internal linking in websites). This type of guide is used for creating how-to-posts from DIY posts, FAQs, or providing any additional information that your audience will enjoy reading.
Products
As the name suggests, Product guides are for promoting a certain product. It can be yours or one of the affiliate programs you are promoting. Normally, the Instagram marketing service provider uses this type of guide to advertise a new collection of gifts. Instagram is used by over 25 million businesses to market their services and products.
Places
This feature was primarily launched to promote places and create travel guides. But with pandemic-induced travel restrictions, they expanded the use of this feature. This option lets you highlight your favorite places in a particular city, town, and neighborhood, recommend popular restaurants, share vacation travel ideas, and much more!
How to Use Instagram Guides for Your Business
Creating an Instagram isn’t a big deal. It’s quite simple. Just log in to your Instagram account and click the plus symbol in the upper right corner. Select ‘Guide’ and choose the type of guide you want to create.
The real deal is using Instagram Guides in such a way that you eventually grow your Instagram followers and boost engagement.
To Make An Instagram Guide, Follow These Steps:
- Press on + select “Guides”
- Choose a topic to write about:
- A location: tag a location (great if you’re a travel blogger or want to review a city, country, business, or restaurant).
- A product: Pick a small business and share your favorite product with them.)
- A blog post: Select your feed posts
- Select your images: posts from your feed or saved posts
You May:
- Include a title.
- Include an introduction.
- Add extra posts (if you wish to include more photographs in your Guide. Please keep in mind that you can only add images, photos, and videos that you have previously shared on your feed or that you have saved using Instagram’s “Save” feature. This brings me to my next point.)
- Click “Saved” to add other people’s posts you’ve saved.
- Remove a post
- Rearrange the posts in the Guide’s sequence.
- Post the Guide or save it for later.
Thanks to The Preview App for an amazing visual representation of steps if you may find the text difficult to understand:
Here are some exciting ways to use Instagram Guides:
1. Create a Gift Guide
At Digital Gravity Agency, we see Instagram as a massive part of our social media marketing services. And when it comes to making full use of Instagram Guides feature, creating a gift guide can do wonders for the client’s business.
You can repurpose product listings into gift Guides for Christmas, Mother’s Day, and other holidays and sell them to your followers in a highly engaging way. People don’t always buy for themselves, but occasionally for their loved ones.
When you tag products as a gift, the whole perspective is changed. People take more interest in them if their friend or relative has one’s heart set on that particular product.
2. Tell a Powerful Brand Story
Likewise, you can tell highly engaging stories to your audience about your brand. Stories keep the old followers engaged and communicate your brand values to the new followers.
Guides can also break down new initiatives, highlight important milestones, your journey from top to bottom, and a lot more. Guides are easy to consume; they are ideal to grab the attention of typical skimmers.
So if you are seeking to build a connection with your Instagram audience, tell stories with guides.
3. Promote Causes
As an individual content creator, a social media activist, or an influencer, you are promoting multiple causes at a time. Each of those needs equals attention, thus they need to be highlighted on a regular basis.
Instagram guides let you highlight the issue and summarize efforts to grab the attention of people.
The best bit about these guides is you don’t always have to create content from scratch. You can regroup the previous posts and create an entirely new guide to present the same information from an entirely different angle!
4. Create a Travel Guide
The travel industry is heavily reliant on Instagram. At Digital Gravity Agency, we have managed several clients from the hospitality industry and we can vouch for the fact that Instagram is an integral part of their social media marketing campaign.
You can leverage Instagram Guides to prepare a powerful combo of text and visuals and depict the beauty of a certain place your clients might be planning to visit.
Likewise, a travel Vlogger Guide let you review countries and popular locations in detail.
Also Read: The Upsides & Downsides of Social Media Marketing (2022)
5. Create Partnerships or Do Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing can be a game changer for your online business. Digital marketing services in the USA offer collaboration with influencers who vouch for your product and direct traffic to your store.
Likewise, you can create partnerships with another content creator to promote their product and in return, they will promote yours.
Whatever the case, Instagram Guides come in handy for both strategies. Your guide can also feature your newly appointed brand ambassador—who may be a celebrity or an individual content creator himself/herself.
image-source: smartinsights.com
Why Should You Create Instagram Guides?
At Digital Gravity Agency, an SMM agency in the USA, we highly recommend our clients create Instagram Guides. Here are some of the noteworthy benefits of these Guides:
According to SocialPilot, “70% of people watch Instagram stories daily“.
High User Engagement
Guides let you create long-form content without boring the reader. Unlike normal posts, Guides don’t show up on the news feed while scrolling, thus they are not annoying at all. A reader will only see them when he wishes to read one.
At the same time, Guides let users learn more about your brand, products, and access premium content on the go. For this reason, Guides get more shares, likes, and comments.
Posts containing at least one hashtag generated 12.6% greater engagement than those without. Posts with location tags also garnered 79% more interaction. Look at more Instagram analytics to better understand the platform’s engagement dynamics. (SocialPilot)
Opportunity to Add More Keywords
When it comes to growing an Instagram account organically, keywords play a huge role in every post you create. These Guides give you the opportunity to add as many keywords as you want to in the long-form content.
Furthermore, now users can search for content by broad keywords in addition to profiles, hashtags, and locations. If your guide is optimized, you will get significant traffic and engagement.
Increased Sales
Nowadays, there are thousands of eCommerce businesses trying to grab clients from Instagram. Some get success while some keep trying various techniques until they find the magic formula.
If you want to amp up your sales via Instagram, try these Guides. Using them, you can highlight the best-selling products and create compelling gift guides, and ultimately expand your reach.
image-source: Statista.com
Looking to Grow Your Instagram?
Instagram is a goldmine. All you need is strategy and premium quality content to build authority and become a name etched into your prospects’ minds. At the Digital Gravity Agency, we do exactly that.
To book a free consultation, fill out the form and our presales team will contact you the same day!