In the middle of November Instagram has launched Guides, a new feature for publishing digest-like articles, recommendations and step-by-step tips within the app. This format was first introduced in May, but was initially available only for a small number of influencers who were keen to create guides focused on well-being tips. From now it is available for all types of accounts, so media and journalists get a new platform for written content. But how good are Guides for these purposes? The Interhacktives is sorting it out.
Why give it a try
Guides are a good alternative to Instagram’s omnipresent pictures and videos. By giving users more ways to express themselves, Instagram also provides a proper editing tool for media outlets that they’ve been longing for.
Guides feature offers several types of custom headlines, text section and, of course, space for visuals – a cover for your article and embedded pictures and videos with automatically created credits.
Elements are easy to add, reorder and remove within the editing tool allowing you to update you Guide as often as you need it (while showing your followers the date of the last update). Another good thing about it is shareability: your final product can be posted on Stories, it’s always available in the special Guides tab and has its own link to stick in other social media, messengers or websites.
Why it’s not perfect
Guides are not text-centric as Instagram still wants users to be committed to visuals, so the feature doesn’t give us a lot of freedom to create. The entire new format revolves around pre-uploaded Instagram posts and turns your headings and text into ‘descriptions’ to pictures and videos. Moreover, every paragraph of text in your Guide is numbered and there is no way to get rid of this.
It would be fair to mention that even visuals don’t always look good in Guides. Even though videos are being auto-played while scrolling, a carousel of pictures doesn’t work within Guides and Stories are not available here at all. Furthermore, the editing tool doesn’t allow you to add any external links in your Guide yet.
In a nutshell
Guides is a nice feature for journalists and publishers to promote step-by-step instructions, recommendations, lists, ratings and explainers. But it will take you some time to come up with how to adjust other types of articles to it. Even though Insta Guides aren’t as beautiful on a desktop as they are on mobile, it’s still worth trying them as they might have a promising future.
Russian journalist with a weighty news background exploring digital tools at City University.