Why EDOs Working in Talent Attraction Should Consider Guides on Instagram

In the competitive world of attracting a talented workforce to your community, staying ahead of the content generation curve is essential.

That’s why guides on Instagram should be on the radar for economic development professionals. With one simple click, you can curate content from a variety of sources to create an attractive and engaging guide that drives potential talent to your website.

Here are a few reasons why we should consider guides on Instagram as part of your talent attraction social media strategy.

What are Guides? 
Guides are a new(ish) feature on Instagram that allow users to make collections of posts in one place. These collections can include posts from people you follow as well as saved posts — all without needing any rights or permission from the original creators. This makes it an efficient way for economic development organizations (EDOs) to leverage user-generated content (UGC) in their marketing to gain traction and attract more people to their social media profiles.

In addition, guides allow EDOs to repurpose copy and itineraries already posted on their website to create attractive visual guides about their destination.

We saw this strategy work well with our partners in Northern Virginia. As part of its talent attraction marketing campaign, Work in Northern Virginia, the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority wanted to showcase the amazing neighborhoods that make this location a hot spot for job seekers in tech, financial services and aerospace.

The staff at FCEDA took the content already created on the website and transformed it into an engaging guide on Instagram. The guide featured UGC from local businesses within each community and helped to showcase a little flavor from each of these neighborhoods.

How Do Guides Work? 
Creating a guide is simple – just search through Instagram for pictures that best represent your community and the companies and employers that make this a great place to live and work and click “save.” Once you have enough pictures, click “draft collection” under “Guides” in your profile menu. From there, you can add titles, captions, tags, etc., and even share your guide in stories or tag partners.

We love how Partner Tulsa used guides to feature local partners. This was such a simple and effective way to showcase the importance of collaboration within this community that is looking to build opportunity for all.

An additional bonus: the content will remain on your feed indefinitely so people can keep revisiting it whenever they want. The only downside is that while we can see basic engagement metrics such as likes/comments/shares, you don’t get detailed reporting like you do with ads or boosted organic posts – but we look at this tool as a way to generate awareness and repurpose content in another way, which from our team’s perspective is always a win.

In conclusion, guides on Instagram are a great way for organizations looking for talent attraction or community engagement solutions such as Partner Tulsa or Work in Northern Virginia to showcase what they have to offer quickly and effectively with minimal effort. Curating content from existing sources puts no additional burden on staff members who may already be stretched thin – yet still provides effective results thanks to its easy sharing capabilities across stories and feeds. Ultimately, guides are becoming increasingly popular as an invaluable tool for organizations looking for more visibility online – so why not jump onboard today?

If you need help with your content marketing strategy and want to learn additional tools to help drive engagement with your EDO feel free to reach out to with any questions to Hanna Gbordzoe our Vice President of Content at [email protected].