Amongst the newest updates to come from Instagram comes their newest feature for creating curated content – Instagram Guides.
This enables users to create a short guide with recommendations and tips in a scrollable and easy-to-read format. For affiliate managers, this could prove to be invaluable for passing on information to affiliates or onboarding new partners.
What are guides?
The guides feature initially rolled out to health and wellness experts at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. They proved to be the perfect testers as they were able to create important content and resources for those who might have been struggling as the pandemic goes on. However, the feature is now being released for all users.
Guides are a certain flow of posts that have been put together with commentary. You can use them for step-by-step guides, recommendations, or top tips depending on the content that you have in mind. They are as flexible as regular posts and can be made to fit whatever your brand or affiliates might need.
How to make a guide
Creating guides could not be easier. If you can’t find the option yet, don’t panic! It should be with you shortly once Instagram has rolled it out to more accounts!
If you do have it, you will be able to find it at the bottom of the Create tab on your profile page. This will allow you to create one of three different guides:
- Products – allowing you to recommend your favourite things
- Places – allowing you to recommend amazing places around the world
- Posts – allowing you to recommend posts you have both created and saved
It is an adaptable format that can create a lot of interesting content for your followers. Posts can have custom headlines and commentary added to them to give some further insight. Places are a great way to interact with affiliates to create an excellent customer culture – or could even be used to explain or introduce a new jurisdiction. Products can only be used with those products in the Instagram Shop, but it could be a fantastic opportunity if working with an influencer as part of a marketing campaign.
How do we find guides?
The guides are easy to direct your affiliates to. Once you have created your first guide, it will appear on a special tab on your profile page – just as feed posts and reels do. If you create multiple guides, your followers will be able to find and browse through all of them on this tab.
They can also be shared to your Story or to other users through the platform. Finally, they will be available to browse through on the Explore page.
Instagram Guides are a fantastic feature to introduce. They should be able to bring a lot of interesting variations in content to the platform. Start thinking about how you could use these new guides to offer tips and insights to your affiliates, and create your first of many Instagram Guides soon.
