Lastly, if you are an... Oh no.
My student Malik recently asked me about the new Instagram Guides feature that
you might be seeing.
If you too have also noticed the Instagram guides feature popping
up in your feed or on your profile and you're kind of curious about how you can
use this brand new feature for your business, well, you're in the right place,
because in today's video, I'm walking you through what Instagram guides are.
I'm going to show you how you can use them for business.
And I have got so many examples for you.
And stay tuned until the end where I'm going to walk you through how to make a
guide with me. I haven't made one yet, so let's do it together.
I'm Elise Darma and I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs, freelancers,
and creatives like yourself use Instagram to actually grow your
business. And in today's video,
I'm going to walk you through Instagram guides for business. First off,
what are Instagram guides? According to Instagram,
Instagram guides are a way to more easily discover recommendations,
tips, and other content from your favorite creators, public figures,
organizations, and publishers on Instagram.
That's a long-winded way of saying that guides are kind of like magazines for
Instagram.
Guides are a collection of recommendations and tips in an easy to read
and digest format.
They also allow your followers to follow a flow of curated posts that you put
together along with your commentary.
So guides can be really powerful for anything that's step-by-step. Now,
Instagram first released guides in May of 2020,
just to a select few Creators.
And their whole goal was to help people and their mental wellbeing deal with
COVID. So,
initially a lot of guides had to do with mental health and self care.
So today guides aren't exactly new, but now they have expanded to everyone.
Okay let's get down to brass tacks.
Why should you as a business owner care about Instagram guides? Yes,
it's yet another feature, but do they help your business grow?
My short answer for you is yes. Guides can definitely help your business grow.
They're actually a really great way to curate and organize the posts that you
have already created and put together. But now,
you can create kind of a roadmap of sorts for your followers to follow so that
your content continues to get seen long after you've created it.
So as a business owner,
this is good news for us because posts that we created six months ago,
they don't have to collect dust. They can be repurposed and used again today.
So currently with guides, you can make three different types: one for places.
So recommendations of places to go; one for products,
which is perfect for an e-com business; and one for your posts.
With those types of guides,
you can see that Instagram guides can help your business grow,
whether you offer products, coaching, services,
or even if you are an influencer.
So let me cover all those types of business models.
If you are a product based brand,
check out how Ana Luisa does it with her guides,
they're kind of like catalogs.
You can see that she's created different product categories,
some products that are under $150, some that are under $89,
some that are trending, some that are sustainable.
So she's created different categories to recommend products for.
So if you're an e-com brand like Ana Luisa,
you can see that guides are perfect for any product collections that you already
have. So take a look at your website,
look at the collections you've already curated.
And go ahead and turn your posts into guides for your followers.
Now, if you run a local business with a physical location,
I'm talking a retail shop or a restaurant,
you can also create a guide that's more based on recommending places.
So with this kind of guide,
you can highlight user-generated content centered around the location of
your business. As a product based business,
beyond the collections of your products,
you also want to think about upcoming holidays.
So take a look at how BoxFox does it with their guides,
where they're actually recommending gifts that you can buy for the holidays.
Let's talk about service-based businesses and how they can use guides to grow
their business. So we found kind of an atypical brand on Instagram:
an accounting firm called Pretty Penny Accounting.
And yet they've created a guide to grow their business. Take a look.
This guide focuses on what someone can ask themselves before hiring a
bookkeeper. So this is a great guide for this brand to develop the know,
like and trust factor with their followers. Here's another example,
guide by Sarah, a copywriter called SEO 101.
And here's another guide by Jacqueline,
a nutritionist called My Favorite Baked Goods. Now,
if you're a coach,
Instagram guides are perfect for you to showcase your expertise.
Just like Lexi D'Angelo has done here in her guide that shares tools for
transformation. Alicia,
a health coachm has many guides showcasing meal ideas and recipes.
As a coach, beyond your expertise,
you can also use Instagram guides to showcase your offers.
Take a look at how Kari Russell does it,
where she has a couple of guides featuring her masterclass and her coaching
services. Lastly,
if you're an influencer and you work with brands,
guides are perfect for you to collect posts that you've already created for
brands into one cohesive place.
So like this example in the fashion space here,
we have a couple guides featuring tips and tutorials for men's fashion.
If you're a travel influencer, the Places guide would be perfect for you.
Just like this example done by a tourism board.
Notice how Instagram pulls up all public information tagged with that location,
regardless of who posted it. By now,
I hope you're seeing how useful guides could be for your business.
So let's dive in and create a guide together.
Here I am on my profile.
So the best place to create a guide is to hit the plus button in the upper
right. And then you can see that there's the option to create a guide.
So tap that. Now for my kind of business,
I am going to create a guide based off of posts that I've already created.
So I'm going to choose that type of guide.
And you can see here that Instagram is showing me my posts and I can go ahead
and choose the ones that I want to put together in a guide.
So a lot of my content has been around Reels for business.
So let's create a quick guide on Instagram Reels for business.
So I'm just going to go ahead and find my posts about this topic.
So here we have one,
a carousel post on how to make Instagram Reels.
We also have a video on how to do that. So I'll select those two.
I also have, let's see,
my Reel idea for the day as well as eight Reel ideas for business.
And then I'm going to include 'What if I don't have the music option?' 'Cause
that's something I get a lot and then the best feature of Instagram Reels.
So there's a couple of my posts that I know are really good for people to read
when it comes to Reels. So those are my posts.
Then I'm going to go ahead and hit 'next', and
you can see that my guide is coming together.
Here are the posts that I chose in order,
and I can also click to add a title.
So let's just do Reels for Business.
And then I also want to change my cover photo. So my options are,
again, I can look at my posts.
I can also go to any saved posts that I have saved to my account.
And I can also choose the images from the guide that I just put together.
So let's use, let's see how this one looks. Okay.
So I can't really move it around and it's cut off a little bit.
So let's go back and let's try that one. That one works. Okay.
So we have our cover image. We have our title.
Now I'm going to write a little blurb, so I'll go ahead and do that.
There we go.
So I just did a small description of my guide and I do know that Instagram
is emphasizing SEO or keywords a little bit more.
So that's why I wanted to make sure some of my keywords were in this
description. Now, now that I have the top part of my guide done,
let's look at the first post. I can add a title. Maybe we just call it,
Start here for Reels. And again,
I can add more commentary.
I can give my viewers more direction as to why this is important.
So let's just say your first step.
It's kind of reiterating what I titled it, but this is just a demo.
I know I can always go back and add and edit. At least I hope so. Okay.
So let's keep that one there. How to make an Instagram Reel.
Let's just add in brackets 'video'.
So this first one is a carousel post that they can swipe through.
And then the second one is a video.
Um, try this Reel idea first.
So I'm kind of guiding them with the order and then I am emphasizing that order
with my titles.
Here's eight more ideas.
Okay. So I think the flow works.
I'm just going to emphasize, because this is a common question I get,
I'm just going to say,
what if - let me put it in quotes - "What if I don't
have music yet?" Okay.
So that answers that.
And this video is about the green screen effect.
So, "use this top
effect in your next Reel."
And then maybe I will add a little bit more about why this is important.
Okay. So with this one,
I added a little guidance as to why this is a great effect to use.
Okay. So that was really quick. My guide is pretty much done.
Of course I can add a little bit more context and commentary to all of my posts,
but I'm happy with the order.
I can see down at the bottom that I have an option to add more posts,
but I'm not going to right now. So I'm going to go ahead and hit next.
There's my preview. Okay.
So I just tapped preview and this is showing me what it's going to look like
published. Awesome. And now I can share.
So it's going to appear in the guides tab of my profile. Again,
this is my very first guide.
So my profile is going to change after publishing this, but I'm happy with it.
Let's go ahead and hit share.
Boom. My profile just changed. I now have one, two, three, four,
five icons, right above my feed.
And this fourth icon is my brand new guide.
There we go.
So the three dots are always your best friend when it comes to Instagram.
When you tap those, you can go ahead and delete the guide or edit it,
or you get a link that you can share. And then of course,
there's the paper airplane icon,
where I can add this guide to my story and drive my followers to it.
There you have it,
a brand new Instagram feature that's not too overwhelming and also super
useful for you to repurpose some of your older posts. Now,
if you liked this training on how to use Instagram to grow your business for
free and organically, then I think you're going to like my free masterclass.
Head to EliseDarma.co/secrets
to learn my top three secrets that you as a business owner need to
know. A lot of these secrets are mistakes that business owners are making.
I don't want you to make those mistakes. So in the masterclass,
I walk you through what you can do differently so that your profile does not
make those mistakes.
It actually stands out in the feed and you get leads and customers back to your
business. To ease and revenue. I'll see you in the next video.
It's as good as it's getting Effie. I think I hit my mic.
Did it just gets darker? I haven't talked in days.
Super paranoid about my mic as per usual.
I hope I'm saying posts correctly. Lastly, if you are an inf... Oh no.