Have you had a little nosey around Instagram Guides yet? If you haven’t, make it your goal while eating the chocolate eggs this weekend, as it is a fantastic feature to enhance your content plan. And if you are not on top of your content plan right now, have a look at my IGTV on ‘content pillars’ to give you some inspiration.
The Guides feature is fun, quick and you can be as creative as you like, and just like the Content Pillars I talk about in my video, a Guide can help you create a ‘one-stop’ shop for different content groups.
How do I use Instagram Guides?
The perfect way to use them would be to mirror your Content Pillars. So, let’s say your Content Pillars are: Your ethos; Your Products; and Social Value, your Guides would mirror these as follows:
Your ethos
Here’s your opportunity to share with your followers who you are and what you care about. Use Guides to explore topics and themes that are important to you and your business and by doing so you will show your authentic self to your audience.
Your products
Guides is the perfect tool for highlighting the products and services you offer or the brands with your most-used products. For instance, if you have a physical or online clothes shop, your Guide could show off your top picks for spring dresses, create a ‘blue colour board of items’ or showcase all your gold jewellery items.
If you offer a service, you can have an Instagram Guides for your time-saving tips and another for ‘how-to’ tutorials. Similarly, you can use them as a to link through to your ecommerce shop or content you have on your website or blog.
Social Value
Be an advocate for those small businesses and creators you love.
By grouping content in a Guide you will help solve potential customer’s problems in an engaging way, particularly as they will have it all in this one-stop shop, rather than being forced to sift through numerous posts. The potential for how you use them is really exciting!
How to get started
Step 1: Find Guides by going to your profile page, then choose the box with the cross in it in the top right-hand corner.
Step 2: Select ‘Guide’, where you will have the choice of uploading into Places, Products or Posts. All three of these guides are meant for every type of creator and are completely customisable and adaptable to your needs.
Step 3: After you select your Guide type you can start choosing what to add.
Step 4: You’ll need a title for your Guide and each post within it. Then select your Cover Photo, which needs to be one of your posts, and add captions for each post included in the Guide. You can be as customised as you want. Note that you can tag accounts in the descriptions, URLs are not hyperlinked (yet).
Guides must have at least two items in them – which makes sense, as otherwise they’re effectively just a post.
Step 5: Click “Next” in the top right corner of your screen and then tap “Share.” Once you tap “Share” your Guide is public to your followers. To access your Guides your followers will click the “Guide” icon on your Instagram’s profile page.
An added bonus, particularly for someone like me who loves to fuss around with content after it’s gone live, is you can always go back and edit your Guides to accommodate the way your business or brand evolves. You can remove old products, update evergreen content, and more!
AND THE REALLY IMPORTANT BIT: When you first launch your Guide, make sure you post it to Stories so it does not go unseen! Also, make sure you look at other’s Guides – if they have them, you will see them on the user’s profile page – see below.
Get in touch if you would like some support with Content Pillars or Instagram Guides; my content planning services are offered by the hour.