Kassaundra 0:00

You asked, so here it is an episode dedicated to guides the most underrated Instagram feature. So teacher authors, go ahead and reheat that cup of coffee, because I'm your host, Cassandra Foster. And we're about to get schooled in socials. Welcome back to school and socials. Now, way back in episode seven, where I talked about why you should bother posting on Instagram, I mentioned guides as a way to organize content. And you guys blew up my DMs, asking what guides were, so I knew we needed a dedicated episode. In my opinion guides are the hidden gem of Instagram, and I wish more people would utilize them. So today we're covering what guides are, how you create them, and how you can use them effectively. Let's dive in. Guides are a way for you to group your posts together under a specific topic. So for example, I have a lot of Instagram posts that talk about repurposing. So I pulled them all together into a guide, titled The guide repurposing, and now my audience can go to that guide and scroll through the post and choose the ones that are most helpful for them. They're basically a way to recommend a certain set of posts to your audience for them to review and allows your audience to easily consume your content on a specific topic without having to scroll through your feed, or having to click through each slide in a highlight until they find what they want. And this is why I think guides are truly underrated. Because being able to give your audience access to your similar content in an easy to navigate way. And also an easy to consume way can have so many benefits. We know people's attention spans are dwindling, which means people probably aren't going to be scrolling our feed looking for posts that can help them or won't click through too many highlight slides to find something they want. This means your content has a pretty short shelf life. But if we pulled all of our most important content together and served it up to our audience in an easy to navigate and consume way, we have prolonged the impact of those posts. And we are actually more likely to get people to interact with and take action on those pieces of content. Sounds amazing, right? Which is why I'm not sure why so many people are sleeping on the power of guides. My hypothesis is that probably because for a long time, Instagram was just rapid fire with the updates and the new features. Some features got a lot of attention and others didn't. And guides just happened to be one of those features that got overshadowed by another. But it doesn't mean that they can't be effectively used in your social media strategy. So let's work on making guides a thing. Before we chat about how to effectively use guides. You're probably wondering, how do I even create one. So here's what you're going to do, you're going to go to your profile on your device, you're going to click the plus button in the top right corner. Or for some people this might show up down at the bottom of your screen, you're going to select guide. Now you do have the option to recommend places or posts. So you're just going to select the option that says posts. This will then bring you to a screen where you can select content you have saved to create a guide with or your own posts. So at the bottom, you're just going to click on see all of your posts, and this is going to bring you to a screen where you can scroll through all of your posts. You'll just simply tap the posts that you want to be part of the guide, and then click Next in the top right corner, you'll then be prompted to add a title and it also automatically populates a cover photo using one of the posts from the guide, it does give you the option to change it. So you can simply click on Change cover photo, and you can choose from one of the other posts in the Guide to be the cover photo for that guide. Then it's going to prompt you to add a description of your guide if you want. And from here, you're going to need to give each of your posts a title as well. It won't let you post the guide until each of your posts have a title. So just make sure to be specific about what that post covers so that your audience can easily decide if they want to view it. You're also given the option to give a small blurb about each post but this is optional. So don't feel like you need to fill that piece in. Then you're just going to click Next in your guide is going to be published that is it. It's not too complicated and it doesn't take a ton of time. You basically just go through select the posts that you want to group together. Give your gun Add a title and give each of the posts a title so that your audience can easily decide if they're going to click on that post. And then you are good to go. There is so much pressure this time of the year to buy more stuff from Black Friday sales to Christmas ads. But I don't want you to buy more stuff, I want you to get the right things you need to uplevel your business in this season. So that's why I've opened up my mini Social Media Console schedule for the next three months. So that we can make resources that are going to get stuck in your downloads and courses that are going to go immediately to your desktop graveyard, like thing of the past. Instead, you're going to get my brain and your business for a focus 30 minutes, so that you can make sure you have a solid plan moving forward. And you know, your social media will help you reach your business goals. This is not a one size fits all solution. Instead, you're going to get targeted advice that is focused on you and your business. And for Black Friday. And until the spots sell out, you're going to be able to get it for $47, which is the lowest price point these mini consults have ever been. We're talking transformational advice that will make your social media work harder for you. For less than a night out. This isn't stuff, it's the thing, you need to get clarity and move forward with your social media marketing, you can grab your discounted spot right now in the show notes. But hurry, because once these spots that I've opened up for the next few months are gone, this price point will be gone too. I can't wait to make 2020 for the year that your social media marketing helps you reach all of your big business goals.

Now, since guides aren't a super popular feature, though, I think we can change that, there are a few things you want to keep in mind in order to use them effectively. First, don't add too many posts to a guide. Again, this can become overwhelming just like scrolling your feed and clicking through a bunch of highlight slides can be and you've risked losing people's attention and then just clicking out. So just provide the most important posts about that topic. Also, try to limit the amount of guides you create just have the most important topics and information you want your audience to have access to, we run the risk again of overwhelming our audience with too many options when they click to that guide section in Instagram, if we have a lot of guides there for them. Then when it comes to putting the guide together, make sure the title of the guide and the title of each of the posts, use keywords that really describe what they're about. So if people don't know what they're getting from a guide, or from a post within that guide, they're more likely again to click out and move on. We want to make it as easy as possible for them to access that content. So for example, I probably wouldn't want to Title One of my posts just repurposing content, because that leaves some questions from my audience. What kind of content is she talking about? Do I even create this kind of content, etc. So instead, I could say tips for repurposing long form content. So now my audience knows what type of content I'm talking about. And they can easily assess if that post would be helpful for them. If they don't have a form of long form content for their business, it probably wouldn't be, but if they do, it could be really helpful. And finally, you want to make sure your audience knows that you have a helpful guide there for them. Again, people are not aware of the power of guides. So we need to let them know that there is a chance for them to access all the information that they need. So since guides don't post to your feed, like regular posts, they have their own section on Instagram, just like reels do. What you're going to want to do is make sure to always share your guides in your stories. So when you first make them and periodically as it's appropriate to share that topic again with your audience. And that makes it easy for your audience to just click right in your story and get to the guide and access it. Also, consider showing your audience how to actually get to your guides. So like I said, it's its own section just like reels are. So make a few quick stories, just letting people know that you set up some guides for them. Let them know the topics and just like show them a screenshot with an arrow of where they're going to go on your page to get that information. That can be a really helpful step to make sure that your audience is actually taking advantage of your guides. Okay, that's it. That's guides 101 In the underrated feature allows you to group like posts together so that your audience can easily access information on a certain topic without having to scroll your feed. And it's so unfortunate that it's been overshadowed by other features and updates because it truly has the potential to make your content go farther, and be an amazing reference for your audience members. So let's work together to make guides a thing, because we will all definitely benefit from it. Now, you have a little bit of homework. I want you to go and play around with guides. Take a look at your posts. Think about what topics could go together that could be most helpful for your audience, and try creating one to just get started. And then once you do send me a DM because I want to check it out and show it some love. All right, cool. Coffee friends. Thanks so much for listening. If you're loving getting schooled in socials, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Also, I would love it if you left a review so that other teacher authors like you can start getting schooled in socials too. All right, I'll see you in the next episode.