COVID-19 has caused a variety of innovations in a variety of industries. It turns out, COVID-19 has also assisted with some innovations in our favorite platform to love/hate, Instagram.
One such feature is called Guides. Essentially, this feature was brought on by the pandemic as a way to create curated guides and lists of resources for people to well...learn. As we all know, our stories (and the stories of others) have been saturated with sharable content, and it can get rather hard to keep track of all of this information.
For those who have guides (only a select amount of people have this feature - it's believed that this will become more widespread over the months to come) - you can create guides that are a composite of informational sources into one...well..guide. You can share this guide on your story, just like you would with IGTV and feed posts.
Shown: this is the search bar Instagram. Normally, you get a curated list of content - IGTVs, photos, and now guides - based on your search histories and interactions over the last week plus. You'll notice that the top right hand corner (for me) has Racial Justice Guides. For you - based on what you have been searching, it will be different. Because yanno, customized algorithm.
Shown: Nestled right in between the feed and the IGTV is - well - look! The guide! Please note, that not everyone has this, in fact it initially started with healthcare organizations and brands but has expanded to other accounts under this umbrella.
These guides aren't just account sourced content; they can be a collection of content rom several sources into one destination. Cool huh?
Image of @afspnational
Clearly, not all of us have this yet, so why am I talking about it - and more importantly, why am I spending time talking about what this feature means for the future of Instagram?
I believe that in order to be more successful and current with the wills and desires of the Zuck/IG gods, one of the preferred types of content that IG wants to see is visually pleasing educational content. And what I mean by that - is something eye catching that will get shared...a lot.
More on that idea of sharing - Instagram is prioritizing sharable content. That's one of the key metrics going into Summer 2020. The more you can share content, the more your brand is going to reach (organically) but also the more you will be bumped up in the algorithm. While the platform is truly amping up their eCommerce game, I wouldn't discredit spending time, energy and other resources creating visually striking content that your audience can share with their followers.
Excited to see how this shapes moving forward.