Instagram is a fast growing social media platform that started as a photo sharing app to the foundation for a lot of businesses, many of which started on the platform.  Instagram has appealed to many businesses for its unique way of telling stories and content that inspires people to start movements and better their lives.  Of the over 1 Billion users on Instagram, 80% follow at least one business, according to Search Engine Journal.  Some of the most viewed stories (a feature on the platform) are from businesses.  It’s no longer viable to only have a website, but to have a presence where your customers' attention lies, and that is social media, mainly Instagram.  

Adapting to the Competition 

Instagram has evolved quite a bit over the years and have had new competition to contend with.  Adding stories following SnapChat, then adding Reels following TikTok.  Even with new platforms emerging Instagram has stood its ground as a foundational piece of any business’ online strategy.  

Appealing to Online Businesses 

In the past year Instagram has doubled down on business features by adding shopping features like product tagging in posts, making it really easy to create a shopping list within Instagram and not having to leave the platform when doing online shopping.  Now they have a new feature called Guides.  Guides was rolled out to a few accounts earlier in the year and is now platform wide this starting this month.  

Welcome to Guides

Guides is a unique feature that is waiting to be utilized.  When you first create a Guide it asks you what type.  The three main types currently are Places, Products, and Posts.  

Places:  

Just like it sounds this is a way to highlight any posts taken in a known area.  For example, if you wanted to highlight things to do in San Francisco you can browse recent and top posts from San Francisco, similar to how you see them in the explore tab.  Select any you want to highlight and give it a unique title and description.  This is perfect for bloggers writing about a particular vacation or tourist location.  The original posters profile shows in the Guide as well, enabling people to expand their network and community and finding new profiles.  

Products:

When you click on a product Guide you are first presented with a list of profiles that have products and marketplaces or you can search for one in particular.  This is perfect for individual businesses to make collections or gift guides with fun descriptions of how to use each product.  This will ultimately lead to new ways to create mini product blogs especially during the holidays.  

“This is perfect for individual businesses to make collections or gift guides.”

If you are a part of a business community you can also highlight other shops and create a collaborative product guide and share in stories and tag each other.  The perfect idea for a small business Saturday campaign.  

Posts:  

This one is personal.  You can now highlight and group posts into an all in one place.  You can now group how-to posts, IGTV testimonials, or even customer inspirations all in one place.  

Helpful Ideas

In summary, Instagram Guides is unique because it is not just for creating new content, but repurposing old content and sharing other people’s content that might be similar to yours.  I can see it being used by businesses to collaborate with gift guides this holiday, Travel agencies, highlighting things to do in the top vacation locations, and other entrepreneurs wanting to share valuable content in a one stop shop to teach a skill or share insights about a product.  

This could also be a way for bloggers to highlight products and services by utilizing the title and descriptions fields and use keywords to draw attention and draw people in.  I could see bloggers utilizing Guides in a similar way as they use Pinterest to tag products they find helpful to them.    

“Instagram is becoming more than a marketing tool, it is now the tool box field with tools to use to grow your business.”

If you haven’t seen or used guides, give it a try and see how you might utilize them for your product or business.  Instagram is becoming more than a marketing tool, it is now the tool box field with tools to use to grow your business.  As with all new features, being an early adopter can be a benefit as Instagram tends to push new features more as well have seen with Reels.