Instagram Launches New 'Guides' Feature To Help Users Discover Wellness Recommendations & Tips
Source: Instagram
Instagram kicked the week off on a high note with the launch of Guides, a new feature aimed at helping users "discover recommendations, tips, and other content" from creators, public figures, organizations, and publishers on Instagram.
Guides can be found on the profile of select creators and organizations. A Guide is made up of individual posts and videos that a creator or organization has curated. It also includes additional language tying the posts together, such as tips and advice. When a user clicks on a post or video feature in a Guide, they will be taken to the original Instagram post. As with other content on the platform, Guides can be shared as a Story and privately via Direct.
"We know many people are struggling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so we are first focusing Guides on wellness content. We’ll enable creators to connect with expert organizations to share resources during this time, including tips on how to look after your well-being, maintaining connection with others or managing anxiety or grief," the Facebook-owned platform shared in a blog post.
At launch, the following creators and organizations have Guides enabled on their profiles: @afspnational, @heads_together, @vitaalere, @klicksafe, @headspace_aus, @deepikapadukone, @sudahdong and @eenfance.
Over the coming weeks, Guides will also be part of the Explore page.
Insights & Analysis:
Guides are an extension of Instagram's continued effort to leverage the power of its platform to reach and help those impacted by the pandemic. They serve as a quick and easy resource for users who are seeking out information about wellness.
While the current iteration of Guides is focused on wellness, Instagram head Adam Mosseri revealed on Twitter that Guides were "originally designed with the travel use case in mind," however the platform pivoted to focus on wellness due to COVID-19 pandemic.
Fun fact, Guides were originally designed with the travel use case in mind, but we pivoted them to focus on wellness because of the pandemic.
— Adam Mosseri 😷 (@mosseri) May 18, 2020
Since travel content has been prevalent on the platform since its beginning, the fact that Guides were created with travel in mind shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Not to mention, travel guides specifically have been a big part of the Instagram experience, especially when it comes to influencers sharing content. The pivot makes a lot of sense due to travel having been significantly impacted by COVID-19 and Instagram's overall focus on rolling out new features, tools, and experiences related to COVID-19.
Based on the original design for Guides, it's likely that the Guides feature will ultimately be available to creators and organizations outside of the wellness vertical, especially travel.
As someone who shares a lot of travel content on Instagram and on my own blog, this would be a helpful feature in curating previously posted content to create a Guide. While travel is a no-brainer, other verticals such as fitness and cooking/food come to mind as great fits for Guides. For example, fitness creators could create a Guide around easy workout and diet tips to live a healthy lifestyle.
A full rollout of Guides would enable creators and organizations to provide value by sharing guides around specific topics with a native feature. This is something that many creators and organizations are already doing through in-feed and Story content and outside of the platform (i.e. personal blogs/websites and Pinterest).
Guides bring a Pinterest-like aspect to Instagram as they are the platform's version of Pinterest Boards, where users can collect and organize Pins around a specific topic or theme.
Overall, I like the addition of Guides to Instagram and hope that the platform rolls out Guides to more creators in the near future.
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