Whether you are in your professional life or a school student, you are connected with social media in one way or another. Almost every business or professional work is connected with social media today. For example, if you are a blogger and like to write on different topics, you would look into the trends on social media. People look forward to listening to your opinions when you talk about trending topics. If you don’t follow the social media trends, your visitors will simply ignore you.
Instagram seems to be one of those social media platforms that have gained a lot of attraction over the past few years. The big question on this platform is how to use Instagram guides. If you are unaware of these guides, you will likely use Instagram for general purposes only. For example, if you want to talk about a traveling spot, you don’t just include it as part of your Instagram highlight. Instead, you can create a guide to make summaries of your vacations.
What are Instagram Guides?
If you want to create a social media presence on Instagram, you must understand what Instagram guides are. They are a combination of Instagram carousels and blog posts.
Simply put, they are created through pre-published places, posts, or product images from the user’s or someone else’s Instagram account. The guides on Instagram include the following:
• Cover photo
• Content title
• Introduction
• Optional elements (for example description for entries)
Image taken from Instagram
These guides were introduced on Instagram so that people can use them to share vacations and travel. However, the usage of these guides hasn’t been easy, especially during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic came to the floor in early 2020, traveling stopped abruptly. However, individuals started using this feature to expand on other topics. Once you have created a guide on Instagram, you will have a specific tab in your account. You can share these guides in your friends’ chats or stories. You have the authority to make changes to the entries you include.
Best Ways to Use Instagram Guides
1) Gift Guide
If you want to promote your eCommerce products, you can use Instagram guides for marketing purposes. Instagram is a social media platform that allows you to convert your product listings into gift guides. You can use them on special occasions like New Year, Christmas, Mother’s Day, etc. If you look at the Strikingly website below, you will see a collection of handbags that you can send as gifts to your friend or relative. Most importantly, it has a reduced price, so customers feel more inclined to buy it from the website.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
There are many ways to display gift guides, such as a greeting message, inclusion of flowers, coupons, etc. If a customer has landed on your website for the first time, you can embrace them by including a 15% discount on their first purchase. You can use guides to explain your marketing offers to your visitors or followers.
2) Use Hashtags
When you think about a social media post, you eventually think of a hashtag. When using Instagram guides for your business, hashtags play an important part. A hashtag is a phrase or word used to deliver your word to a specified customer base. The hashtag is created using the symbol ‘#’ and any keyword afterward. On Instagram, the hashtags are even more critical regarding your promotional strategies.
Image taken from Instagram
If you create a fantastic guide on Instagram or write a fantastic Instagram post, it would have no value if there is no one to recognize it. To get attention, you must include hashtags so that people with the same habits as you start taking notice of your content and your Instagram account in general. People tend to include hashtags at the end of their posts. There is no limit to how many hashtags they want to add. Regarding professional work, you must go with the formal approach of adding not more than five hashtags.
3) Gather Posts Under a Theme
Many companies using Instagram guides for marketing purposes create a newsfeed structure for themselves, allowing them to catalog their posts together. This is a quality marketing strategy because you will be able to present your related products and services simultaneously.
4) Give Shoutouts
As a social media person, you must understand that when you use Instagram guides for marketing reasons, you shouldn’t just focus on your content. You must also involve other content and brand as part of the conversation. This will help you increase your Instagram followers and create recognition for your company. If you have guides full of content from multiple sources, it will be more helpful as you have to communicate more information rather than going for content with a single source.
When you include the content of others, it is important that the content aligns with your idea. When they see that you have used their content, they will embrace it as they will realize that you share the same ideas as them. Through guides, you create an online community and establish important connections. For example, if you include a brand in your guide, it is likely that they would need another partner with you on the giveaway.
5) Polls and Questions
The best way to gain the attention of visitors on social media is by asking them questions. If you want to create Instagram guides for marketing purposes, you can include questionnaires and polls as part of your marketing policy. For example, if you have launched a new product in the market, you can ask questions about the features that the customers would like to read about. Similarly, you can also create polls about the different attributes of that product.
Even though videos and blogs are eye-catching if executed properly, they are not necessarily the pivotal elements in gaining your customer’s attention. To make sure that your followers keep their focus, you must keep them involved by asking questions. Moreover, you will also get an idea about the kind of products or services your customers want to see from you. Feedback is pivotal for social media presence, and just asking a few good questions would generate feedback from your respective followers.
6) Travel Guide
The travel industry started understanding how to use Instagram guides as soon as the feature came to the surface. Regardless of whether your Instagram followers visualize your trip plans or targets, get inspiration from them, or dare to dream, the guide feature is very engaging and has become a source of attraction for many people.
However, some exquisite thinking can create an alignment of your brand with almost any geographical location. For example, if you have paid a visit to a tennis company, their team would tell you about the latest tennis tournaments taking place in the country. Similarly, the cat food business could bring the idea of cat-friendly areas within your colony. If you are living in countries with beautiful landscapes, such as Switzerland, you will see many guides in which an individual or multiple people tell you about the places you must go to or the priorities you must have in the country.
Share Instagram Feed on Strikingly Website
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
Strikingly is a free website builder that helps you to integrate Instagram pages on your website. When you have understood how to create an Instagram guide, you must rely on Strikingly for its promotional purposes. Many Strikingly website owners tend to use this feature to increase their website and social media traffic.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
Strikingly fully embraces the idea of social media marketing as we follow all the specific strategies to increase your social media presence. We help you to integrate social media platforms in the form of social media icons, which you can include in the last section of your website. If you have an Instagram account, your website will update all the happenings on that social media account and keep your visitors informed (even if they don’t go to the social media platform). The displayed social media icons act like a bridge for the customers to prove from the website to a particular social media platform.
Conclusion
As we are moving into the digitized world, social media platforms are also evolving with time. Instagram is one of the social media platforms that has evolved massively in the past decade. Now, individuals are learning how to use Instagram guides to make the most of this feature. We will likely see even more extraordinary Instagram features in the coming months and years. For now, the guide feature has been a breath of fresh air and has gained much popularity.
To increase your following through these guides, you must have a fully-functional website at your disposal. By relying on Strikingly, you can make savings on your marketing budget and create the website of your dreams without breaking a sweat. If you are having problems developing a fully-functional website today, you can collaborate with our Happiness Officers. So, take advantage of the guide feature on Instagram and use it to build your fan following.
