Everything You Need to Know About Instagram’s New Guide Feature
Instagram just released a new posting format called “Guides”
Instagram recently released a new feature called Guides dedicated to helping content creators bundle their photos, videos, and ideas in beautifully formatted, scrollable posts.
Guides is a new posting format that is more similar to typical blog posts on the web than to usual Instagram posts. They can be found on a new tab on user profiles between the usual Photo Grid and the Tagged Photos.
This new type of content consists of several posts that were already published on Instagram, and there are lots of ways to format Guides beautifully and share in-depth knowledge and inspiration with an audience.
Here’s what Instagram says about their new Guides feature:
“We want Instagram to be a place where you can easily find reliable information and inspiration from your favorite accounts. That’s why we are introducing Guides, a way to more easily discover recommendations, tips and other content from your favorite creators, public figures, organizations and publishers on Instagram.”
Through Guides, creators can pair different posts and create long-form content without the use of videos. So, you don’t even need to create new content. Instead, you can simply curate your own or even other’s existing content, pair it and create a nice post that might help your community to solve a problem, get inspired, or simply learn something new.
Here’s how to use Guides, according to Instagram:
“When viewing a Guide, you can see posts and videos that the creator has curated, paired with helpful tips and advice. If you want to learn more about a specific post, you can tap on the image or video to view the original Instagram post. You can also share a Guide to your story or in Direct by tapping on the share button in the upper right corner.”
Here’s an example of how a Guide might look:
As you can see, Guides can be extended tutorials: beautifully designed, and most importantly, if created well, they might keep the user’s attention for longer than a typical post in the Story or Feed.
According to Instagram’s official company announcement, the idea for Guides came up to help Instagram users during COVID-19 by providing mental health guides.
Yet, this new type of content might be exciting to various content creators. It could, for example, be used to create travel guides, tutorials, recipes, and so much more.
Right now, however, the use of Guides is limited to a handful of accounts, and these are mainly related to mental health and wellbeing to help the population deal better with the coronavirus pandemic.
Here are a few accounts that are already using Instagram Guides:
(As Guides can’t be accessed through the web version yet, make sure to check these accounts through the Instagram app.)
Through various possibilities such as combining photos, text, and video, Guides make it easier to find and create recommendations, tips, and other helpful content in multiple areas.
If users wish to learn more about a specific post that is inside the Guide, they can simply tap the image or video and they’ll be taken to the original post.
Even though the use of Guides is currently limited to a handful of partnering profiles, they’ll soon be presented on the Explore tab.
Until the feature is released to all users, Instagram might do adaptations and little changes but as for now, here’s everything you need to know about Guides:
Once created, you can find Guides next to the usual feed posts of a creator.
A Guide always starts with a heading and a vertical title picture, which is separate from the rest of the content. (The title picture is also the preview of the Guide.)
You can start Guides with a little introductory text.
After the introduction, you can add several posts which you’ve already published on Instagram. You can’t add posts you didn’t previously publish on the platform.
The posts in your Guide can also be content from other creators.
By clicking on a specific post within a Guide, you can access the original post.
Currently, Guides are only visible through the mobile version of Instagram.
If you use a Carousel-Post within a Guide, only the first picture will be shown, and users won’t see that it’s a carousel consisting of several pages.
Just like regular posts and videos, Guides can be shared via Stories and Instagram Direct by tapping the share button.
Currently, it’s still unknown when exactly Guides will be accessible to the masses. However, once the feature is fully rolled out, everybody can use Guides — so, it’s not a feature dedicated to verified or large accounts only, but to the whole Instagram community.