Instagram Guides have moved in to the Instagram platform. The question is are you using them yet for your business? Do you even know what they are?
And before you start with the eyebrows yes Instagram has released yet a new another new feature that you SHOULD be using but NO…it doesn’t involved dancing around like a silly person on the screen like Reels does..Instagram Guides are genuinely an incredible new tool that will really be a game changer for small businesses looking to better present their services and products and to engage with their audience in a completely different way.
Instagram Guides were soft launched to a handful of lucky accounts back in May but only rolled out to the masses in November 2020. They are super super new so we’ll forgive you if you haven’t yet heard about them.
Quite Simply, Instagram Guides are a way of curating your instagram content and creating long-form posts for your audience to get to know you a little bit better without having to scroll through thousands of historical posts on your grid.
At the time of writing this article there are three types of post you can create.
If you are a retailer and you have an instagram shop then you really should get onto Product Guides. You can tailor them to showcase your best collections, seasonal trends, colour palettes and special offers.
How can you use Instagram Place Guides for small business? Well the sky is your limit..perhaps you are a venue wanting to show off where you are, you are a local high street retailer wanting to showcase the local area, you might be a destination wedding planner wanting to curate your top ten wedding destinations. You might be a photographer planning a photography trip. You can think of anything!
If you are more service based and you have a series of posts with a similar message than post guides may well be something you want to explore. These are a perfect opportunity to tell a bigger story and to join the dots with your message. You are not just limited to the posts on your own grid. Feel free to share saved content from other creators you have seen on the platform. You know we wholeheartedly believe in collaboration over competition!
Be sure to check out the video above to see a couple of real life examples of how we have used Instagram Guides for our own profile.
So will you be adopting Instagram Guides in your own social media strategy? We’d love to know if you are already using them or what you might do moving forward. Leave us a comment and let us know!
Did you know that Yellow Tuxedo works with businesses just like you to help get you where you need to be with your own Digital Visibility? If you are looking for some support or would like to chat about how we can help you drop us a message , we would love to chat to you about your digital visibility strategy.