Posted by If you have been keeping a tap on the photo-sharing platform Instagram, it has introduced a new feature called the Guide that allows you to share content in an easy-to-digest format for your consumers.
Top brands like Prada, Red Bull, and Buzzfeed are already using it to their advantage. But it works for small brands as well.
So what actually is Instagram Guide, and how can your brand use it to further engage your audience?
Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of Instagram’s new feature and see how your brand can benefit from it. But before that,
How do you create Instagram Guides?
It is easy to create your Guide. Go to your profile page, and on the top-right, tap on the plus icon. You can select Guide from there.
Instagram gives you three Guide format options to choose from.
You can choose the “Places” option to recommend popular places. On the other hand, the “Products” option is for recommending your products, while the “Posts” option allows you to recommend the posts you created or saved.
With these three formats, you can create a Guide to suit your brand’s needs.
Moreover, once created, you can share your Guide to Instagram Stories and even with other users.
Great, isn’t it? Now, here are 10 ways your brand can use Instagram Guide:
- Provide resources
- Create travel guides.
- Highlight products
- Create how-to’s
- Link the posts and give shoutouts
- Create FAQs
- Craft a brand story
- Support small businesses
- Showcase your best reviews
- Motivational quotes
The Guide feature was originally created to highlight useful resources about health and wellness owing to the pandemic. Initially, the feature was enabled only for some health and wellness advocates. No wonder providing resources remains one of the best ways to use the feature for brands.
Here’s how Teen Vogue’s Instagram team created their Act for Racial Justice guide with vital explainers while also promoting a cause. They basically reposted the content that has been already shared by the followers.
Here’s another example from Instagram user @gisellebuchanan. The guide quickly presents how people who want to be an ally but are not sure what to do can become one by following the tips.
Depending on what your brand stands for, you can create or gather resources for any subject and share them as guides for your followers to digest easily.
According to statistics, 67% of travel enthusiasts use Instagram to find inspiration for new journeys, while 61% use the platform to discover things to do while they’re traveling.
So what better way to provide value than by creating a travel guide?
Take Montreal’s travel guide, for instance:
Tourisme Quebec uses Instagram’s guide feature to bring light to 10 unique places to stay this winter in Québec.
You can also create a guide highlighting the things visitors can do when they are traveling in the city or about restaurants in and around certain hotspots.
Using the product format, you can showcase your products via Instagram Guide. While you are at it, you can organize your products. The categories could be new releases, bestsellers, and so on.
For instance, @alohas offers an organized content Guide for their followers.
For example, when they say, “Looking for shoes in Black?” they are engaging and straightforward. The followers instantly know what they are getting from the brand.
Moreover, the followers can tap the products to buy. It paves the way for a fast and seamless sales process.
Creating engaging titles is essential.
Since you will be working with content creators from professional SEO agencies while creating your content to get your products featured in the Instagram guides, ask them to craft the content in such a way so as to create brand awareness organically and subtly.
People are always looking to learn new things. Offering how-to’s content is thus a great idea. You can collect old posts and create an easy-to-follow guide.
Even the most complex subjects can be turned into a simple and digestible guide.
Here, the guide from The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention breaks down a complex topic about how to have a real conversation about mental health into simple Do and Don’t steps.
A brilliant way to give shoutouts is to provide links to other influencers for brands on your own product guide. It also helps you connect with people in your niche and gain more followers.
Here’s how The Secret Mountain created a guide about places and gave a shout out to the indie booksellers that stock its books.
It’s a given that you will be receiving questions about your products or services. It’s essential to always be ready with the answers to engage your customers and provide good customer support.
Luckily, you can leverage Instagram guides for that. You can collect the most asked questions, answer them, and offer them as a guide.
For instance, @vestaireco, a garment brand, crafted content about taking care of the garments and offered it as a guide.
The key is to create simple yet informative content and direct your followers to click on every post to gain more information.
Statistics indicate that when followers love a brand story, 55% of them are more likely to purchase the brand’s product in the future.
So, why not increase your ROI by crafting a guide around your brand story?
It could be anything from behind-the-scenes or a story that introduces new followers to your brand values.
You can also relay your company’s history by including stories about its founder, process, ladies-first strategy, and so on in the guide.
People are always on the lookout to shop for gifts, especially during holiday seasons. And social media platforms are among the best mediums to find the best deals. It is also worth mentioning that 88% of impulse purchases come from special offers.
Using Instagram Guides, your brand can offer your community a list of ideas for holiday gifting, best-sellers, and so on.
Or you can go a step further and support other small businesses by recommending their products via your Guides during the holiday season.
Here’s how Beats by Dre promotes small businesses on Small Business Saturdays.
They are highlighting their products and at the same time sharing the success stories of the businesses and promoting their Insta accounts.
As per stats, 91% of 18-34-year-olds give equal weightage to online reviews and personal recommendations – while 93% of buyers say that reading online reviews played a role in their buying decisions.
Clearly, highlighting your product reviews via Instagram’s guide feature can do wonders for your business.
Here’s how IGN, a US video game, and entertainment media site displays the rating for each of the latest games.
Sharing motivational quotes is a great way to develop an audience-centric social media plan.
You can create or share motivational quotes on your guide that you have saved or posted on your feed to inspire your followers. Just make sure that the quote aligns with your brand’s identity.
Wrapping-Up
Instagram Guide is a relatively new feature, but it is fast gaining popularity. Many brands are already using it to offer easily digestible content to their followers, including tips and recommendations, product highlights, guides, resources, and more.
The Guide can also be used to create and share brand stories, showcase reviews, answer commonly asked questions, give a shout out to other brands and influencers, and share motivational quotes.
The new feature gives brands an excellent opportunity to engage the audience, offer information, create brand awareness, and increase sales. You are definitely missing out on a lot if you are neglecting this feature.
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