Are you frustrated by the lack of options to have clickable links in your Instagram content? It can be challenging to drive website traffic unless you have over 10,000 followers, which most of us don’t. How many times have your read ‘Click the link in our bio? With only 1 click option, we end up changing the link often based on the IG content we are featuring and where we want to drive consumers, however this gets messy because if someone views an old post of yours, the link may no longer be relevant to the content. So what do we do? While we still can’t have clickable links in our captions or comments, there are several Instagram hacks you CAN use to generate traffic towards your website, booking sites, etc.. by sharing links. Let’s take a deeper look.
IGTV
IGTV allows you to have fully clickable links in the description of your videos! Any account of any size can do this! Since videos are are more engaging than photos and are being given more exposure by Instagram, it’s an excellent opportunity to start using this feature more – especially because you can include as many links as you want! In your video, simply tell your audience with a call-to-action that they can click on the link in the video description. This is a simple yet effective way to get the most out of your links on Instagram! Here's a great article on using IGTV to build your brand.
DIRECT MESSAGES
Another way that anyone can share clickable links in Instagram is in Direct Messages. When you send messages to another Instagram user, you can include fully clickable links that will direct that user exactly where you want them to go. Now this may not seem as useful when you are trying to get strangers to visit your website, booking page or online store after seeing your IG content. So let’s look at a way that we can use Instagram Stories to encourage strangers to message us so that we can send them links!
STORIES
Only Instagram accounts with more than 10,000 followers or Creator Accounts are able to share direct links in their Stories via the ‘swipe up’ feature.
However, there are still several ways to use Instagram Stories effectively to be able to promote links. The first is that anyone can add a link to your IGTV video. It does become 1 extra step, but when used properly, you can drive people from your story to your IGTV video, and then use the tactic explained in the IGTV section above to have a direct link in your video description. Another creative way to use your Stories is to encourage people to DM you.
If you have captivating content in your Story, you can include a call-to-action and ask people to DM you for the link (to whatever it is that you are talking about or featuring). “Send me a DM and I’ll send you the link!”.
This strategy will also help you generate more engagement on your Story which helps you get even more visibility because the IG Algorithm rewards content with more engagement. A true win-win!
You can use the DM ME sticker in Stories to make it even easier for people to message you, at which point you are creating a personal relationship with these individuals as well. Think about it – they are messaging you asking you to send them information (and a link). The door becomes wide open to potentially doing business with that individual!
BIO
The typical link that we have all known about is the 1 basic link that Instagram allows in your Bio Profile. This gives you another option in your Stories – to include a call-to-action that drives people back to your Bio. You can do this by simply writing the text ‘click the link in our bio’ in your story. A much more creative and fun way to do this is to @mention your Instagram name in the story itself.
When you @mention a name, it becomes clickable and takes the user directly to that profile page. You can overlay a ‘Click Here’ button over your @mention name – doing so will send someone directly to your profile page when they click on it (because they are actually clicking your @mention name!).
The Bio Profile link is still tricky, because you can only put 1 link directing to 1 website. So here’s a great pro tip. Why not create a special IG landing page on your website that is set up for mobile viewing (think www.yoursalonname.com/IGlandingpage)? You can then display simple options that the consumer can click to access the various other web pages they may be interested in (services, booking, online store, etc...).
Just make sure that it is clean, easy to read quickly and does not have too many options.
So as you can see, although Instagram makes it a bit tricky to share links in your content, there are still some pretty creative and powerful tricks to help you get the traffic you want to go to your web pages.
And while you may not get as much traffic as you get from other platforms, you will get better quality traffic because you are essentially targeting your links based on your content. For more Instagram tips, check out How to Create an Instragram Strategy for your Salon or Spa and Tips to Build Your Business with Instagram.