What are Instagram Guides & How To Use Them? In depth tutorial
If you’ve been living on another planet or under a rock, and you’re, not aware. Instagram has released their biggest update, yet we thought the big change was going to be instagram reels, but boy were we wrong if you’re looking for a rails tutorial, make sure to check out my youtube video in the card above anyway, so the Design of the instagram app has completely changed, along with many new functionalities that we were not prepared for.
The newest feature that i’m. Going to be going over today is instagram guides. Instagram guides has been slowly rolling out and being tested on certain accounts before it went global. If you do not have access to this feature yet stick around because i’ll, be showing you a trick for how you can get it on your account.
What are instagram guides? This is a new tool that allows anyone to share their favorite products, places or posts in the most beautiful editorialized way on instagram. This basically means that users now have the ability to create a long-form text.
Content in a dedicated tab on instagram, think of them almost like blog posts, they give off very uh pinteresty vibes. If you will instagram’s, goal with instagram guides was to make it easier for users to find curate and share certain products, places and posts.
They also want their users to stay on their platform longer so by creating a blog like content option. Instead of having their users direct their followers to their website or blog, they can now direct their followers to a guide overall, making the instagram app more successful.
Before i jump into the visual tutorial using a screen recording on my phone, i want to know what you guys think about the instagram update. What do you guys think about it? Where do you think instagram is going to take this in the future so now to create any sort of new piece of content? The quickest way to do that is using the plus button in the top right, almost middle of your iphone.
This plus icon right here, but as you can see there’s, nowhere to do a guide. So you have to go to your profile, then press the plus button, and then you have more options for creating content there. So from your profile top right hand, corner plus sign you could then in the bottom you see guides.
So that is what you would select for. Those of you who are thinking i don’t have instagram guides on my account. I don’t. Have that option. What do i do? Um? What you can do is go to an account that has an instagram guide already on it.
As you’re watching or by the time you’re watching this video, i will have guides on my instagram, so you can go to mine and use this hack there. You’re gonna go to an account that already has instagram guides and the guides tab is the little newspaper click on that and at the when you open one of their guides scroll to the very bottom, and you’ll, see This option that says create guide by clicking this option, or by clicking this button you will then be able to have, or you’ll force.
Almost this feature onto your account. So that is how you can create a guide. If you don’t have that option already. We are just going to do it. The good old classic guideway and the three options that they present to you are places products and posts.
When you are creating a guide, you can think of it more like a list of recommendations. So when you click places, you can choose a place and then you’re, able to select photos that have tagged this location and create a guide based off of those photos.
You could also go to your saved photos or your own posts to create a place guide for products you can search through different brands products. I believe it starts with brands that you’re already following, but you could search for a specific brand and then select products that they have listed right now.
I’m, really loving, um, iris and bose skincare line, so i can make like my skincare routine guide and select all of the face products that i use for my skincare routine and create a guide solely on that alone and then posts.
And then you could create a guide, like i said, with all of your posts. Now what i suggest doing, if you’re, going to create a guide based off of your post. If you’re, somebody like me, who already has a bunch of captions written, i would first start by going through your feed and saving your posts into its own um folder.
When you save a photo, you can save to a collection, and i right here you see all my guide ideas, so these are going to be guides. So i’m going to do a vegas guide. A palm springs guide, instagram, basics guide.
I also want to do like this photo is very motivation, so i could create one called entrepreneur, motivation, guide, save and then, when i’m ready to create my guide and publish it, i’ll, go to posts saved and then at The top, where it says all saved there’s, an arrow and it’ll, actually pull up all of your saved collections or folders, so that’s like the quickest way to be able to create a guide right now.
I think the guide that i’m going to create is the let’s. Do the vegas guide, i’ll, select all these photos next and then you can add a title. You could change the cover. I think i want my cover to be insta worthy, oh my goodness wow places to shoot in vegas, and then you put a description in your titles and descriptions.
If you’re, not already familiar with seo or like keyword research, then i highly suggest you start looking into it because rumor has it, or people have been talking about that. The fact that instagram might be making their search bar in the explorer or in their explorer a little bit more seo friendly.
So in the future, you might not even have to have hashtags to be discovered as long as you’re using keywords or searchable terms within your captions titles descriptions, your content could pop up and then you can add a title and a description to Each post, so when you click next there’s, a few options that you could do so you could preview it.
So this is what your followers, or anybody who comes across this guide, would see. This is exactly what it would look like. So very simple, maybe in the description when i go back, i could add, like the addresses to each of these spots and a little bit descriptions about what, where to find the more tips on how to get there um to make it more kind of blog, friendly And then you could save it as a draft or share.
Now i’m going to share this one publishing and now i have the guides tab in my instagram another thing to mention. When you post your guide, you can still edit it afterwards, so it’s. Okay, if there’s um, i guess an error or mistake.
But if you wanted to go back and add more posts, say i go back to vegas and i find more places to shoot. I can come back and edit this specific guide and keep adding places to shoot there like you can see at the bottom.
It says, add posts, so i could always keep adding more to keep going a little further, the top right corner the three dots. These are a few options. You could delete the guide edit guide copy link so that you can maybe link this guide on your website or send the link to other people and even share.
So if i wanted to share this guide, i could add it to my story: change the background boom. I could do something like that if i wanted to share the guide with my followers that’s, pretty much the basics of a guide, how to post a guide, a really cool thing that’s.
Important to note is, if i do have a guide from a little bit ago, like this one. If i had posted this say two months ago, and then i visited vegas again and wanted to add more posts, i do that and it’ll show to your followers right here.
You see last updated nine seconds ago. It’ll show to your followers that, even though the guide was posted like say three months ago, it ‘ Ll show your followers the most recent edit. So it’s, basically telling people that you are staying up to date.
On these certain topics – and i think that’s – something that’s really valuable, because people want the most new current and valuable information out there, as opposed to reading a guide that was maybe published a year ago, et cetera et cetera.
Another thing that’s important to note, is when you publish a guide, it actually does not post in your feed. So we know that reels. You have the option to post in feed versus just your reels tab, whereas guides you don’t have that option as of right now guides go directly to the guides tab and they do not post on your feed.
I’ve heard that this is actually a really great way to be discovered is creating product guides. I did listen to a live teaching from somebody at instagram and they pinpointed, or they focused on the product guide.
Being the guide that’s, probably the easiest to be found with – and this is because product guides are now being shown in the shop tab on the bottom of your instagram. So if you go to the shop tab, it ‘
Ll show more than just specific items from specific brands. It ‘ Ll also show instagram guide. So if i make a product guide, like 10 holiday gifts, to give your significant other or 10, really great stocking stuffer ideas, if i create a product guide like that, that product guide can get featured on this shop, tab and people who are not following me – can See that product guide does that make sense.
I’m, not sure the algorithm of how that works or how they choose which guide to present to people yet because this is so fresh. But that was something that they talked about in the instagram live teaching that i watched okay.
So now that we went over the basic tutorial visual tutorial of guides, what it looks like on your phone, the basics of posting, a guide and editing a guide. I want to answer a few important questions when it comes to instagram guides.
The first question that you might be wondering is: why should i create guides great question and i have three good answers for you. The first one is to be favored by the algorithm. We already know that the more functionalities that you use that instagram offers to you, the more instagram, will actually favor your account when it comes to algorithm guides are or will be another new way to discover, especially if the rumors are true.
That instagram is going to be expanding their seo and search capabilities within their app. This is something that you might want to hop on ahead of the game, because when those changes start to shift, maybe hashtags won’t matter as much i don’t know things can get crazy.
We don’t know the third one is. If you’re a multi-passionate person like me, i think this is so perfect for you, especially for somebody who is like a lifestyle, blogger and somebody who has a hard time pinpointing their niche or niche.
I think it’s, important to, of course, pinpoint your niche niche just because that helps you grow a lot faster is, if you have this specific thing that you talk about, but now you’re able to kind of highlight those different Avenues that you’re, passionate about within guides.
If you’re, a lifestyle blogger and you love fashion, food, interior, decor, coffee and you love a wide variety of things. I think it’s. It’s almost like you have a mini website on your instagram. So if you’re multi-passionate person, i think this is a great way to kind of categorize and organize your passions in a editorial way.
So the next question you might be wondering is how will creating guides benefit me? I think we all know that right now, like the pressure, is on you to post consistently and be on top of things, because the bookshelf life for a photo is like 24 hours, and i just mean when you post a photo.
People only see it for about 24 – maybe 48 hours until they forget about it, and they never go back to that piece of content ever again, whereas on youtube the bookshelf life of a video can can go on for years.
So you could look up something in a video from five years ago might get suggested to the top, so that’s, a really long bookshelf life, instagram’s, bookshelf live for content is 24 hours or sometimes more not often, and now, With instagram guides, it’s, a really great way to repurpose your content.
So, for example, like me, i have posts that i did a year ago or more, where it’s. Talking about the basics of instagram, i have to keep recycling and reposting, and now, instead of reposting that content, i could just repurpose them within guides in an organized way where i could just say: hey: instagram, 101, everything you need to know to start on instagram and They could go and look through my post, which reminds me when you have a guide, you can actually reorganize and reorder the order of the photos in the guide.
So if you had posts it, doesn’t have to be in order of when you posted them, like oldest to newest. I can organize it by. However, i want so you go to any of the posts and click the three dots and you can reorder the posts.
So if i want the paris hotel to be second, it doesn’t matter. How long ago i posted these photos in my feed, i can arrange them. However, i want within my guide. The last question is like what should you be putting within your guides and honestly, the options are endless.
If you’re somebody who already has your branding figured out, then i would suggest creating guides based off of your brand pillars. So, for example, my brand is it’s, modern millie, under its modern millie.
I have five different topics that i rotate talking about. They’re, all still related to my niche or niche. I keep saying it both ways, because no matter which way i say it, i get haters i get haters. So i’m.
Saying it both ways you can’t hate anymore. So, for example, my niche niche is um social media or online educators. Social media tips tricks that’s like a very broad one. But under that i could talk about instagram growth, hacks, youtube growth, hacks entrepreneur, mindset how to organize your business and working with brands.
These are like the five topics that i will rotate talking about and now i can create guides per each of those topics. I think maybe start thinking about it. That way, if you’re really feeling uninspired just go to pinterest because guides are basically like pinterest.
Now you go to pinterest, you see a post click on it and there it ‘ S like it gives you all the content you could ever want. I’m, going to create more in-depth videos about instagram guides. So if you guys have any specific questions about guides or if you want more in-depth info for what content to put in your guides or how to do xyz with instagram guides, let me know down in the comments below, because i take your guys suggestions and that’s, that’s.
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