What are Instagram Guides?
Instagram has just started to roll out it's the latest feature, a longer format to curate content on the social media app. But What are Instagram Guides?
What are Instagram Guides?
In simple terms, these are a way to share content that you've put together showcasing products, guides, locations and so on. These will work really well as a how-to, or a gift guide, and I'm sure once people get to grips with it a whole host of interesting things. You can comment on the items, giving your own take, you can tag products from any accounts shop.
Do you need help setting your Instagram shop up?
How to create an Instagram Guide
The first thing to do is in your profile view, click on the + in the top left corner. (No doubt Instagram will change this in the next update, I mean that's what they always do). That will bring up a list of things you can create and at the bottom you'll find Guides.
From here it will give you the choice of which guide you'd like to create:
• Places: Recommend places in your city and beyond
• Products: Recommend your favourite products
• Posts: Recommend posts that you created or saved
Each one has a different function and will suit different accounts, as an example I created a 'Products' guide. The guide was titled Gift Ideas for Social Media Managers, it was easy to set up and allowed me to add products to the guide from an Instagram shop, I didn't need to be following them. The account does, however, need to have their Instagram shop set up and have the products listed.
If you're a shop you could get up a guide for Christmas, or showcase a new range of products. Instagram have given you this new tool so it's up to you to use it to your advantage. For small business owners this could really give you an advantage and up on quickly to this.
Where to find created guides
Once a creator or account has made their first guide you'll see a new 'book' logo on their profile page. By clicking on this it will take you to their series of guides.
My like with the IGTV section, these guides can be shared to stories, and if you view someone else's guide you can quickly tap the shopping basket icon and it'll give you a list of all the used products so you can quickly buy them if you like.
This is a new form of content creating from Instagram and could be a big plus for independent business owners and creators.
Here is the guide that I made as an example. Gift Ideas For Social Media Managers
Have you used this feature? What do you think of it?
