Thereâs no way you havenât heard of Instagram Stories; easily one of the biggest social media features in the world for both personal and social users and businesses alike. With the average Instagram user now using the IG app for an extra ten minutes, on average, since the introduction of the feature, this is the prime way to connect with users and get your content in from of them.
You probably already know how to add a link to an Instagram story.
However, while this is a very popular and creative feature, getting traffic, leading people onto other places, such as a sales funnel, or basically giving anyone else the ability to go further with what youâre offering, the feature is minimal. If you have over 10,000 followers or youâre a verified Instagram user, youâll be able to use the Swipe-Up link feature.
So, if you donât have 10,000 followers and youâre not verified, how do you link a website to an Instagram story? It doesnât matter what this link is, whether youâre driving traffic to your website, promoting a new product, or highlighting a new event, today weâre going to explore and detail the best ways to make that happen through your stories.
#1 The Swipe-Up Link
While you may not have the ability to use this feature, itâs still a genuine way to get a link into your Stories, and the hopes are youâll one day reach the criteria, and youâll be able to add a clickable link in Instagram story yourself. Letâs explain quickly how it works.
First, you check to see if you meet the criteria. If you do, make your Instagram Story, and in the creation tool where you can edit and add text etc., youâll find the link icon. Click this, paste in your link from your deviceâs clipboard, confirm this is the link you want to use, and then publish your Story!
Thatâs literally how easy the feature is to use!
#2 Send a DM
One of the best and most intimate ways you can get your link to people is by asking them to send you a DM requesting the link. This is great for smaller pages, but itâs worth remembering that even some massive social media gurus are still using this trick.
What youâll love about this approach is the fact itâs fast and easy, but it also gives you the ability to see who is requesting access to your content. You can then use this opportunity to get to know your audience and even if they have questions for you that they may not have otherwise voiced, youâll now have the opportunity to engage with them.
This can have infinite benefits and creating a solid and loyal audience around you that know youâre connected with them on a personal level is a fantastic opportunity for an Instagram business to have.
Can you put links in Instagram stories? When youâre creating your stories, all you need to do is take a picture from the page or content youâre trying to link too, just as an image or a screenshot of your new blog post or latest product, and accompany some text requesting that anybody interested can simply DM you.
Remember, the ability to DM is located directly at the bottom of your Story once itâs been published, so just point an arrow down there to make it super easy for anybody to get in touch. Another great trick, so people donât have waste time writing out a message is to instead ask them to send you an emoji of your choice, so you know this is what they are asking for.
Try to make it an obscure emoji, so youâre definitely sure theyâre asking for the link and itâs not just some kind of spam.
#3 Take Advantage of IGTV
Handâs down one of the best and most popular forms of sharing a link is via the IGTV network. IGTV has never been more popular than it is today, especially since video content is taking over the world, and if youâre trying to share your content, your ideas, and your links, then this is the way for you.
Just like in the Instagram Story feature, youâll have the ability to add a âlinkâ button, and have the swipe up link feature, although you donât need to be verified nor have 10,000 followers to use it. Just add the link into your caption and away you go; although the process is a little bit more long-winded than the others.
Since youâre putting your link in your IGTV caption, youâll need to create your IG TV content, then add the link into the caption. Now people can either access your link through your IGTV content, or you can then share a link in your Story to your IGTV content, and then theyâll be able to tap the link from here.
Remember to make your caption obviously clickable with the text you choose to have there, such as a sentence along the lines of âDownload your template spreadsheet todayâ or âCheck out our latest sale offers hereâ, so your audience knows  how to make a link clickable in the Instagram story and see what youâve got.
#4 Utilizing the Poll Feature
We all know about the Facebook Poll feature, and the chances are your business has used it already to promote something or to get information from your community and followers with, but have you yet used it to promote a link?
Using a simple bit of text, you can ask something like, âHandâs up if you want the link!â or whatever sentence along these lines you want to use that reflects your brand and page voice, and then use the Poll feature to say Yes or No. Then you can send the link to whoever says yes. Itâs that simple.
âDonât forget to use a nice image or promo on your Story to draw people in and make them want to see what youâve got to offer. This is a really nice and easy way to get your link out to people, and same as using the DM approach, you get to connect with your followers on a 1-on-1 basis, which helps to create an intimate communityâ reminds Sarah Meanie, an Instagram blogger at DraftBeyond and Researchpapersuk.
The only real downside to this approach is that after people have answered your poll, theyâll be able to see the percentage result. Letâs say one person says yes and 50 people say no, this is going to look a little poor on your behalf. However, in most cases, youâll find people who donât want the link wonât click no, theyâll just skip the Story.
You could amplify this by removing the no option altogether and instead of having something like âdo you want the link?â and then having answers like âYesâ and âHell yes!â This is a good approach because you only have positive answers, and anybody whoâs not interested can simply skip over the next Story.
#5 Add a Link in Bio
Perhaps the most common form of adding a link to your Instagram Stories comes in the way of adding a link into the bio of your profile. Since Instagram allows you to add a website link into your profile description, you can simply change this URL address to fit whatever you want and to link to anywhere.
Using this, add your Instagram Story content with whatever you like, whether youâre uploading a video, an image of something, or a preview of a blog post, and then add a bit of text or a sticker that says, âlink in bioâ. If you search âlink in bioâ in the sticker archive, youâll find a ton of fancy-looking animations that look much cleaner and might suit your style.
When you say link in bio, people generally know what you mean by this and will know where to look. You may also want to use a service like bit.ly to condense your links and make them look a lot cleaner and more professional. When you head over to a website thatâs got a long messy URL, it can make your profile look messy at the same time, which could be off-putting to new followers.
âWhile on this topic, you may want to make the most of your single link space in your bio by using a service like Linktree. Linking services like this used to be quite popular, and while theyâre not so much anymore, you can still use them if it suits you,â shares Barry Turner, a social media marketer at Writinity and Last Minute Writing.
âThe idea is that Linktree will give you a paged profile in which you can add as many links as you want for people to click on. You then link the Linktree page to your Instagram profile, effectively turning a single link into multiple links, usually around five or six.â
Within these links, you can have the link you wanted to direct to from your Story, plus access to your store, your Amazon page, your website, your email mailing list, and much more. Itâs nice to get creative here, but this does mean more tapping for your audience, which can put them off.â
#6 Caption Links
As you know, you canât put clickable links in your Instagram captions, but that doesnât mean you canât share short links. This method isnât really recommendable because the other clickable link approaches weâve mentioned here are far better and will get much more engagement, but in some circumstances, this may be the approach that works best for you.
What you need to do is take your long messy URL and chuck it into a link-shrinking platform like Bit.ly. Here, youâll be able to customise your link into something cleaner and more approachable. Letâs say you have a sale page you want to link too. You can use Bit.ly to shrink the URL down into something like âwww.bit.ly/WinterSale1â.
While youâll get far fewer people going out and typing this link into their web browser, simply due to the amount of effort itâll take (yes, weâre really here at this point in time), you will still get people do it if theyâre really interested, so make sure youâre making it worth their time.
Donât forget, if youâre advertising a product, in most cases you wonât even need to add a link since you can easily add shoppable stickers to your stories and then market your product through here. This means your audience can tap on the sticker, rather than having to follow through to your website.
#7 Sharing via the Chat Feature
One of the more recent additions to the Instagram Story sticker collection comes in the form of the Chat feature. The chat feature places a sticker wherever you want on your Story and then allows people to get a link via a private message. This is a super-handy feature compared with the other methods weâve spoken about already because you donât need to individually send the link to people.
Instead, everyone gets a single message with the link at the same time, although you are limited to 31 people per chat since this is the set Instagram limit. If you want to âbypassâ this limit, all you need to do is create multiple Stories that are aimed towards different people, and each has its own chat sticker.
This means more people are gaining access to your link in different ways, and therefore more chances for people to engage with whatever youâre offering. You can use a chat sticker or add URL to Instagram story using the usual sticker method.
Once youâve added the sticker, the group chat will be created as soon as your Story is posted. Now, as soon as the group chat has been created, open your DMs, open the group chat that should be at the top, and then turn off the âApproval Required to Joinâ option, so anyone can join when they click the sticker.
Now post the link in the chat and watch everyone come in and get it!
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