There are seven different ways to share your content within Instagram and one of those is both underused and highly effective.
Instagram Guides is a wonderful new feature that rolled out to all accounts in October/November 2020. The feature is an ideal tool for all creators and businesses in any industry whether you have physical products, digital products, or services.
You spend time and effort and sometimes money creating the wonderful content that you are posting on Instagram and repurposing that content is a key element. Instagram Guides is a great way to repurpose and package your content.
“We all know that not everyone sees
all of our content all of the time.”
If you have a specific product or service, collection, or something you want to promote and you have already posted it to your feed then making a Guide is a great way to reshare them.
step by step how to create your first guide
- A Guide can be created by collating your posts, saved posts, places and products
- From the + icon on your profile page, from the posting options select Guide
- Choose your created posts (or saved posts) from your feed
- Give your Guide a title
- You can change the cover photo. Unlike with Reels you can’t add a created cover image it has to be from a post
- For each post in the Guide give it a title and a short description
- To save your Guide it must have a title, cover photo, a minimum of two posts and titles for each post
- Next > you can save it as a draft or share on your profile and your follower’s feed
- Once your Guide is saved you can edit adding more and reordering the images.
- Copy the Guide link, share to other channels and send to contacts
showcasing your guides
As soon as you have created your first Guide the book icon image will appear in your profile. You can share them to Stories and Instagram users can like, share, save and comment on each one.
I believe the process of creating a Guide is exactly the same for iPhone and Android phones and whatever version of Instagram your account has.
Guides are a great compliment to other Instagram accounts. If you have created a Guide of saved posts from other creators, they get a notification when you publish your Guide that includes their content.
Creating a Guide of your product posts is a great way to showcase your physical product promotions. You can send Guides to interested customers or clients and new followers to highlight specific content to save them from scrolling through your feed looking for it.
what to put in your guide
I have created a few different types of Guides some have been specific to the services I offer and others a collection of posts or subjects.
Some Guides will be ongoing where I can keep adding relevant posts when necessary. This means new and existing followers can keep track of consistent topics in a handy collection.
There is nothing you cannot add to a Guide.
There is nobody who should not use them.
Think of a website navigation menu. We catalogue our products and services into packages and collections to help customers easily and quickly find what they are looking for on the website. An Instagram Guide offers this same opportunity.
in a nutshell: tLDR
Create a Guide from your posts, saved posts, places or products
Guides can be gift lists, recipe ideas, workout tutorials, how-to instructionals
Repurpose all of your fantastic content
A great feature for all businesses to promote products and services
Share to your follower’s feed
Using Instagram Guides is a very quick and easy way to reuse your valuable content and showcase your products and services.
- This was a guest blog written for Digital Women
If you’d like help with any of the information above, I’d love to help you. Book a call