How To Increase Engagement Through Instagram Guides
One of the essential parts of posting on Instagram is the engagement your content brings. Your engagement can often be seen as a proxy measurement for how valuable your content is: the higher your engagement, the better.
One element that goes without saying is making sure that your content is high quality and appropriate for your target audience. Curating your content to appeal to your target audience and meet your business aims is the most effective method. Then, when a new user discovers your content, they can see exactly what you are about, what they can expect from you, and what they will gain from following you.
Given that your Guides include posts from your feed, your posts will need to be relevant to your Guides. Chances are, users will click through from your Guide to the original post, boosting engagement there. The posts you include in Guides will receive more attention than those not included.
Guides should include content from other users, as well as your own. This will help your content to reach new audiences and boost your engagement.
The engagement may not be direct, but it can lead to immediate results—for example, new followers or purchases of your content. The important thing is to measure your engagement and see what influences it constantly.
It is also important to dispel the myth that gaining followers is the most important goal of social media marketing. It is not. Instead, what you want to be aiming for, is engaged followers. There is no use having tens of thousands of followers yet not getting any likes, comments, or shares of your posts. The number of engaged followers is critical, not the total number.
Including a call to action in the captions of your posts is a great way to remind your audience to interact and encourage them to tag a friend or share your posts.
To conclude, many methods can be utilized to build your engagement through Guides. It is important to remember that, sadly, there is not one guaranteed solution. You should be actively checking your analytics after trying new things to see how they have benefited your engagement. The only way to know what works is to try something, check the analytic statistics, and replicate the things that work.
How To Know If Instagram Guides Are Right For You
Instagram has a multitude of different post types available for its users. Each kind of post has other benefits and can be used differently. With the release of the new feature, Instagram Guides, it is more important than ever to ensure that you are using the correct post.
The first kind of post is a standard feed post, where users tend to post the majority of their content. It needs to be aesthetically pleasing and match the theme of your brand.
It is also important to remember that Guides can only feature content that has already been posted to an Instagram feed. Therefore your feed posts will inform your Guides (and vice versa).
Stories are semi-permanent post that appears at the top of a user’s feed and your profile for 24 hours. They are great for brief updates, check-ins, and posting short-form content.
Stories are the best way to promote your posts by sharing the post to your story, which will draw your audience’s attention to it.
Highlights are a method of saving your stories on your profile permanently. They are a way to draw your audience’s attention to specific accounts, usually organized around a particular theme.
Instagram’s foray into video content began with IGTV. These are longer videos that users can create and are a great way to explore new content. They appear in a different feed for users, easily discoverable.
Reels are another recent feature. They are short videos that are often highly edited with music and transition.
And, finally, Guides. Guides are a way to sort and collect posts around a particular theme in one post that resembles a blog post, and it is a fantastic way to share information with your audience more detailed and professional.
Audiences love to engage with high-quality posts—regardless of the style.
To conclude, make sure you use the most appropriate type of post for your content type and audience. You do not have to use the kind of post that is most popular on all of Instagram, merely use the kind of post that will work best for you. Mixing your post types up is a great way to keep your audience engaged.
How To Promote Your Business Through Instagram Guides
Three main types of Instagram Guides can be used in different ways to benefit your business. The three main types of Instagram Guides are products, places, and posts.
If you have a physical business with a location-tagged on Instagram, using the places Guide is perfect. You can use your posts or benefit from user-generated content and advertise and capitalize on the recommendations of others to share their posts in your Guide. Posts that include a location geotagged tend to receive a higher level of engagement than ones that do not.
If you have a product set up through an Instagram shop, you can create a Guide that runs the reader through the benefits of the product, the production process, or anything. This is a great way to get recommendations and explain your products in further detail. It may also help people who are shopping for others choose something they think they will like. It also is a great way to explain what is in gift boxes or multi-product packs.
The posts Guide is the most versatile. You can promote your posts are the posts of others within one. You can, of course, recommend places and products within this type of post, too. You can have a whole load of posts on any topic you wish. This is a great way to promote your content, grouping posts around a specific theme.
Having other people use your post in their Guides is a fantastic way to promote your brand. There is a possibility that it will happen organically without you having to put in any effort–the best type of marketing!
Additionally, including relevant posts of other users in your Guides is fantastic. This means that your audience will not have to take your word for it; they will see natural and accurate representations of your business.
Although, of course, creating Guides on something that is not your own business can still be a great way to reach new audiences and engage with your own. Often audiences want to use the same products, attend the same places and read the same posts as the people that they admire and are following; so, you’re able to use your platform to build a brand in this way too.
To conclude, the only limit when promoting your business through Guides is your imagination!