Have you ever used Instagram guides? Well, even if not, you have definitely been using Instagram in general, or else you wouldn’t end up on this post.
Instagram guides have a lot more value than we give them credit for. But many Instagram users do not know how to create them yet, so they don’t use them. If you want to show or share your favorite meals or traveling spots, you don’t just highlight them in your Instagram stories. You also create an Instagram guide. You can use Instagram guides to make summaries of your vacations or to answer questions that your followers ask in DMs.
When Instagram guides first came out, many people saw their potential to make their lives easier. The main reason for this is that they make grouping posts easier so that the audience can understand more clearly what you are trying to show. But others did not put in the effort to learn how to use Instagram guides and were thus unable to benefit from them.
If you are one of those who still need to learn how to create an Instagram guide, you have come to the right place. We will teach you how to create an Instagram guide in this post. Maybe you want to use them for your business, or you want to utilize them for personal reasons, such as increasing your followers and sharing your lifestyle with the world. The truth is that using Instagram guides for your business works pretty much the same way as using them for any personal goals.
Many organizations these days use Instagram guides for marketing. They know that Instagram is a huge and popular social media platform, and they do not want to lose out on such a massive crowd for reaching out with their marketing messages. Therefore, they use every feature that Instagram has, such as Instagram guides, to make sure their marketing campaigns get to the largest portions of their target audience.
But before moving on to our step-by-step guide on how to create an Instagram guide, let’s define this awesome feature first.
What are Instagram Guides?
Instagram guides are a combination of Instagram carousels and blog posts. This means they are created using pre-published places, posts, or product images from the user’s Instagram account or any other public Instagram account.
Instagram guides include a cover photo, a title, an introduction, and other optional elements such as descriptions for entries. Initially, Instagram guides were introduced to use for sharing vacations and travel. But when the whole world went through lockdowns and travel restrictions implemented, the feature and its purpose were expanded for being used for all kinds of topics.
Once you create an Instagram guide, it appears in a dedicated tab in your Instagram profile. You can share it in your Instagram stories or DMs with your followers. You can add, edit or remove the entries that you make in it.
How to Create an Instagram Guide?
Are you new to Instagram guides? Don’t worry! We will guide you through the process of creating them. Once you learn, you can use Instagram guides for marketing your personal brand or promoting your business overall.
Step 1:
Go to your Instagram profile and look for a plus sign on the top right corner.
Step 2:
Click the plus sign, and select ‘Guide’.
Step 3:
Next is choosing the type of guide you want to create. If you’re going to create a guide from Instagram posts, click or tap ‘Posts’.
Step 4:
Select a post from your Instagram feed or any saved post published by another publicly viewable Instagram user’s account.
Step 5:
Tap ‘Next’.
Step 6:
Write down the title and description of this Instagram guide. You must do this manually because the guide will not automatically pull in any information or captions you wrote on the original post.
All Instagram guides must have a title and a brief description. If you don’t add a title, you will get an error when you proceed to the next step. Using clear and concise titles is the best, but you can go with anything you think is suitable.
Note here that if you feel your cover photo is not going with it after writing the description, you can change it anytime by tapping on ‘Change Cover Photo’. Most likely, you would need to change from the default to a more custom cover photo at this stage. The photo image has to be in a 3:4 portrait size that can be cropped accordingly to upload it to Instagram.
Note that you cannot drag your cover photo to reposition it. You can only change it by replacing it with a post from your Instagram feed. This is basically the step where you properly and fully format your guide.
Step 7:
Double-check that the place name showing up is correct, or else edit it. You can also add a description of the place here if you want.
Step 8:
Tap ‘Add Place’.
Step 9:
Repeat steps 4 to 8 until your Instagram guide is complete. Start with tapping on the plus sign that says ‘Add Posts’. You will find this at the bottom of the guide formatting screen.
Step 10:
Look at the upper right corner once you are done adding as many posts as you like. You will find the ‘Next’ button. Tap ‘Next’.
Step 11:
In the next screen that shows up, tap ‘Share’.
Ways to Use Instagram Guides for Your Business
Did you know that you can use Instagram guides for your business? They allow you to reach wider audiences and make your marketing campaigns very interesting and creative. The specialty of Instagram guides is that they can be used for marketing a product, as well as simply sharing your personal life with your followers.
Here are a few ways of using Instagram guides for marketing your products and business.
1. Create a Gift Guide
Instagram guides offer a convenient way of repurposing your product listings to turn them into gift guides. You can use these guides for Christmas, new year, Mother’s Day, birthdays, and other occasions or holidays. Some good ideas for giving gifts to your customers include flowers, greeting cards, chocolates, or discount coupons.
Image taken from a Strikingly user’s website
Businesses often offer free gifts to customers who take a specified desired action. You can use Instagram guides to describe your marketing offer to your followers.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
2. Compile a List of Tips
Hootsuite, a social media management tool, uses Instagram guides to compile tips from their blog posts and share them with their Instagram followers. Usually, each of their tips is featured with a different brand post. This gives their guide concrete grounds for diving inspiration.
3. Gather Posts Under a Theme
Many organizations using Instagram guides for marketing reorganize their feed using Instagram guides that catalog their related posts together. This is a good marketing strategy for presenting your products or services more organized. If a customer wants to choose a product, they don’t need to go through the entire Instagram feed of the business. They just have to go through their Instagram guides to select a product from the catalogs.
4. Create a Ranked List
You can use Instagram guides to showcase your most popular posts or best-selling items. You can showcase your top recipes in your Instagram guides if you are running a restaurant or catering business.
5. Share a Brand Story
Think of the posts in Instagram guides as different storybook pages. You can use Instagram guides for marketing and sharing your brand story.
Sharing Your Instagram Guides and Feed on Your Website
If your website is built on Strikingly, you can share part of your Instagram feed on your web pages. This special feature on our platform allows you to display a little bit of what you share on your Instagram account on your website. This allows your visitors to get a glimpse of your Instagram account without coming out of your website.
Many of our users are using this feature and growing their Instagram followers and their website traffic through it.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Image taken on Strikingly user’s website
If you do not have a website on Strikingly yet, you can create one completely free of charge and in just a matter of hours. Simply sign up for your free account with us, select a suitable and ready-to-use template from the options given, and add your content to the web pages using our user-friendly editor.
You can then create Instagram guides and share your Instagram feed partly on your website. This works very well for promoting your products, as it helps in getting a crowd from your Instagram to your website and vice versa. We are dedicated to ensuring our users a smooth journey of building and running a website on our platform.
