How To Use Instagram Guides For Your Business

The latest Instagram update has provided us with this rad new feature called “Guides.” There are three types of guides that you can create Places, Products, and Posts. Creating one of these guides is an excellent way to combine your content and share other people’s content on Instagram.

What Is Instagram Guides?

Guides are collections of your posts and other users’ posts related to a particular topic. Think of guides as Instagram’s version of a Pinterest board, a highlight reel for your posts, or as your very own curated digital content zine.

The guides you set up can be about anything you want, but I would encourage you to create relevant guides for your business. For example, when this feature rolled out, I made my first guide for Holiday gift ideas from Women-Owned Business Owners. One of the most significant parts of guides is that they are shareable, meaning that other users can share your guide as a DM, in their story, or as a post.

How Can My Business Use Guides?

With the three categories; Places, Products, and Posts, the possibilities for how your business can make use of this feature are endless. 

If you are a retail business, you can use the product guide to feature your specific products and share other companies that go with your product. For example, sell artisan body care products and feature your products. You can add towels or other home accessories that enhance the user’s experience with your product. If you are a store, you can create a guide representing the products available in your storefront.

I have had a few B2B and other service providers reach out and ask me how they can use guides. If you are a real estate agent, you can use the “places guide” and share posts related to specific neighborhoods of cities that you specialize in. 

B2B service providers can create guides related to your industry’s news, your posts related to the industry, and share other users posts that resource another part of your industry that you do not specialize in but are essential. 

Share Your Guide 

Since this is such a new feature that snuck in the right under the holiday time, many users are not aware of this feature. To bring awareness, make sure that you share the guide that you worked so hard to create in your stories and on your feed. 

If you need ideas on how guides could benefit your business, reach out for a FREE 20-minute consultation on making this feature work for you.

Why Customer Service Is The Best Business Strategy You Could Ever Have

There is a Maya Angelou quote that says, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

Customer Service is at the heart of any business, be it a product or a service provider your customer service needs to be on point because if it is you will be rewarded a hundred times over with new customers and continue to retain current customers.

I recently had one of the most incredible customer service experiences that I’ve had in a while, and it involved a record store and the holy grail for my vinyl collection.

If you follow along with me on social media that I am a huge Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks fan, you might also know that I am building out a 70’s rock vinyl collection and refurbishing a 70’s system to listen to said vinyl. A record that has been on my list for years and one that will finish out my Fleetwood Mac collection is a copy of “Buckingham Nicks,” the only album released by Stevie and Lindsay which helped Mick Fleetwood find them when he was looking for a replacement when Bob Welch left the band.  

I have searched every flea market, garage sale, estate sale, and record store to find this elusive personal holy grail of music. Still, every record store, estate sale, or flea market that I went into, I would look and every time come up short until I walked into a record store in Victoria BC.

Turntable Records is in the tourist hub known as Fan Tan Alley; I had zero expectations for this place. I figured that I would walk in dig a little bit and then walk out, my experience with record stores in tourist parts of cities is not all that great. I walked straight to the Fleetwood Mac section and started digging; there was a lot, so much early stuff that I thought well maybe. A gentleman with a sizeable dark mustache came over to me and said, “Rumours is way in the back.” I said, “Thanks, but I already have that. I’m looking for something else.” The next record that I flipped was the cover of “Buckingham/Nicks,” I held it up and said, “This is what I’m looking for.” His entire demeanor toward me changed, in his body language, I went from some American Fleetwood Mac fangirl that only knows Rumours to a woman who is invested in all the music and history of this band. The next thing he said .”You know that those are getting incredibly difficult to come across.” He opened it up and said, “let’s take a listen.”

It was amazing. I had never heard any of these songs before that moment because it is not something that you listen to on Spotify when Stevie’s voice started singing my eyes filled with tears because I had found it, in fantastic condition. This man was teaching me more about this record that I didn’t even know.  

Gary is the owner and the gentleman that was along with me for my Buckingham/Nicks journey. While he held the door open for me to walk out, I felt as if we should hug or something because we had just shared that experience.  

The Turntable offers plenty of excellent condition vinyl products, their tiny shop in Fan Tan Alley is stocked to the brim with it. The customer service that Turntable sells is the experience. Selling the type of experience they do replaces any marketing budget; a satisfied customer is the best business strategy you could ever have because they will forever tell people about you.