How to Use Instagram Guides to Gain New Value From Your Posts

How to Use Instagram Guides to Gain New Value From Your Posts

What if we told you Instagram is a one-stop hub to promote your businesses? After all, Gary Vee and The Honest Company were built on social media and largely credit their success to Instagram. Sharing photos of the brand, product, and services to instant shopping, immediate engagement, and creating mini-blogs on Instagram – you can make the social network your digital marketing hub. Yes, we said it – mini-blogs on Instagram. How? The Instagram Guides feature! Haven’t heard of it, but excited to use Instagram guides for business? Mindstorm can help! Our social media marketing company in Mumbai helps brands optimize Instagram to grow businesses. Read on to know how to use Instagram guides for business.

(Read: 5 Easy Ways to Optimize Instagram Profiles for Businesses)

What are Instagram Guides? 

Instagram Guides are a compilation of products, places, and posts that a brand or content creator curates for their audience. It is rich in collaboration, as creators and brands can compile mini theme-based blogs or guides from other accounts. This album-like content guide helps share information, product categories, insights, thoughts, and relevant posts on specific themes. Instagram guides offer your audience easy access to the content they’re looking for without having to scroll through the entire feed.

Think guides like Summer Collection 2022 or Immunity Boosters for better health, or Best Hummus places to try

The Instagram guides feature rolled out in 2020 as one of their pandemic initiatives. Instagram enabled the feature for wellness content creators initially to curate content that could help audiences during tough times. Today, any brand or creator with a business account can create an Instagram guide. In 2022, brands and content creators can create guides that offer audiences:

– a glance into top-selling products,

– most popular or loved post content,

– and help them discover new experiences and places.

Wondering how to use the Instagram guide feature? It’s simple but needs a creative bent of mind and an ability to see your brand from the customer’s perspective. A skill our teams possess and service we help brands with as a digital marketing consultant in Mumbai. Let’s get started.

How to Use Instagram Guide Feature?

Though the feature has been accessible since 2020, few brands are leveraging its marketability. Start with these few steps to create Instagram Guides:

  1. Start the Instagram app, and the top right corner will have a “+” icon that gives you posts, reels, stories, and guides. If the guides feature doesn’t exist, you need to convert to an Instagram business account.
  2. Choose a guide type: Places, Products, Posts.
  3. For POSTS, you can select content from your feed or save posts from other Instagram accounts and add them. Similarly, follow the process for the PLACES guide. You can also find places via hashtags. For PRODUCTS, pick from the saved list of products in the wish list or add the products from various posts.
  4. Give the guide a catchy title and description, add a custom cover photo or pick the default photo.
  5. Tap next to share your guide with the world.

The set-up process of Instagram guides seems simple. However, as a business, we must understand how to use this feature to add more value to existing content. Guides can help keep customers engaged with your page weekly or monthly. Brands can even share these across stories and other platforms. Think about it, wouldn’t you come back to an Instagram business that offered you a guide on affirmations, weekly product or market updates, or simple hacks and tips? Let’s look at how a business can use Instagram to grow.

How to Use Instagram Guides for Business? 

Guides are a tool to simplify the clutter of existing content. Thus, when creating guides, remember whom – the audience – they are for because you can go all creative with Instagram guides. Instagram is going huge on collaborations. Guides offer a unique opportunity to build relationships with other creators, influencers, and competing or complementing brands.

Here are 7 Ways How to Use Instagram Guides for Business

1. Quarterly Post Guides 

A simple way to start using Instagram guides for business is to curate a list of popular posts from your feed. A no-brainer guide – you can simply list the Top 5 Posts with the highest performance. Find these on your app in Insights. Instagram shows you the most popular posts for a specific time frame. Take your pick! 

Check out Conde Nast Traveller’s guide on moments:

2. Instructional Guides 

Have a business or service that can offer advice and a step-by-step manual? Instructional guides work fantastic for B2B tech, photography, or finance businesses. Think of explainer videos and how they break down each step through the video. Start with a concept such as ‘Managing Finances with Mutual Funds’. Here you showcase how great it is to invest with mutual funds and where to begin. Now highlight 5 – 7 mutual fund houses you’d like to garner attention or business. This way the audience gets credible information, and brands collaborate at the same time. 

Check out this instructional guide created by Colorbar to generate buzz around the testing kit.

3. Brand Story Guides 

Brand lovers and loyalists work hard to convert other customers online and offline. A guide with B-T-S information or sharing the growth, production, and development story can help elevate your brand.

Check out this interesting history guide behind the pashmina shawls by Jaypore:

4. Gift Guides or Shopping Guides

One of the easiest and quickest ways for your brand to create a guide is to start with your products. Make a list of all the products of the season or around a festival. Just go crazy with this idea. Everyone needs a good shopping guide, especially around the festive seasons. Compile a product list or a list of stores to find your products.

Check out the Honest Company guide for Christmas:

Or if you’d like the Winter Collection for Pets by HUFT:

5. Community highlights

There are only so many things you can say about your products in posts and reels. Here’s your chance to enhance your Instagram handle and promote your products by highlighting your community. Create guides with user-generated content posts and make them interesting. The community finds your brand involved and further wants to promote it. The brand gets a human review guide to the amazing products.

Check out this uber-cool guide by Red Bull:

6. Reviews and recommendations

If you are an Instagram user, chances are you check products and place reviews before putting your buck to use. One of the easier guides that creators or influencers can create is reviews. It’s a fabulous content idea for tourism and travel brands too. 

Check out this guide by Tourism Australia that would make you pack your bags:

Or a review of these cool places that need to be on your bucket list by travel influencers – Bruised passports:

7. Theme and Topical Guides

What’s the trending theme of your industry or competitors? Is there a topic you would like to establish your expertise with? Then curate an Instagram guide – from flavors of the season to mental health day and Halloween themes. Pick a theme or topic every month and build a guide around it. 

Check out the Tasty Guides by Buzzfeed: 

Or the Teen Vogue Guide on a societal issue:

Brands can go all-in to add creative and insightful guides to their feed. Businesses – B2B or B2C – can do several things to make Instagram an enriching experience. Read more on how to use Instagram for business: features and benefits. We hope our quick guide has inspired you to use Instagram guides for business. Too busy to build one for your business? Give us a shout at aniketh@mindstorm.in

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