Your Guide to “Instagram Guides”
I don’t know about you, but in 2020 I’ve been extremely appreciative of small wins.
For me, most of those wins include a good cup of coffee and reading a great book. But the other day, one win came in the form of a new feature on Instagram. I had seen this feature used before, but it was reserved for famous people and accounts that had a ton of followers… so… not me.
But that just changed. This new feature is called “Instagram Guides.” It provides a way for you to compile several of your own posts, posts that you have saved, and add your own commentary to create long, scrollable blog-like “guides.”
When Guides first rolled out, they were being used for mental health and social justice initiatives, so the ministry wheels in my head instantly started spinning.
You can use guides for Young Life
Guides are changing the way people share content on Instagram. The options are virtually endless for ways this can benefit your club and Campaigners.
Imagine that you’re preparing a Christmas devotional for your friends. Instead of posting just one verse for them to read, you can now add that post to a Guide and then enhance it with awesome pictures and graphics from other Christian content creators. If you really wanted to get innovative, you could even add an IGTV video of a Christmas worship song that fits with the theme. Next, add your own commentary and headers to each picture, title it, and suddenly you’re an Instagram Guide pro! The guide will now be live on your Instagram profile and can be easily shared on your story.
Here’s what I did
I decided to use Instagram Guides for something else: to highlight some of my favorite ministry moments from the past 7 years.
I scavenged through my old posts, pictures that I was tagged in, and posts that had been shared with our area hashtag, and then I added them to the Guide. As I looked through the pictures, it brought back so many great memories of pre-COVID ministry and reminded me just how many kids the Lord had let me share the Gospel with. Another benefit was that in sharing these pictures, I got to include kids that had been graduated and gone from our ministry for a while. I also got to remind them of something that had brought them a lot of joy in high school, and in doing so, I hopefully reminded them of the Gospel that they heard every week at club and Campaigners and saw lived out by their leaders in the stands at soccer games, at fall weekends, and at summer camps, sitting in a muddy floor during cabin time.
Needless to say, it was worth the few minutes I spent building it.
Getting started
Hopefully, you feel inspired to try out Instagram Guides.
To get started… click the plus button at the top right of your Instagram homepage, and then choose “Guide.”
If you can’t find it, you might not have the feature yet, but you will soon. You can still create a Guide by finding someone who has posted one, scrolling all the way to the bottom of theirs, and then clicking “Create Guide.” From there, it’s pretty straight forward and Instagram helps you along the way!
If you want an example of what you can do, just go copy mine and swap out the pictures and comments with your own. My name is @DylanFrercks on Instagram. On my profile, you’ll see a little icon above my posts that looks like a newspaper. Click that!
When you have created a guide, I’d love to see it, so feel free to share it with me!
