The ability to use links in your Instagram stories used to be reserved for either verified accounts or profiles who had over 10,000 followers. In the past few months, Instagram has made it available to all users! This feature is a great way to increase traffic to your shop and provide an easier shopping experience for your customers.
Why should I add a link to my story?
Instagram is all about the here and now. By adding a link to your story you can provide shoppers with immediate access to your shop or a specific listing that you're selling. One of your goals as an online seller should be to reduce friction for your customers and provide them with a quick and easy shopping experience. Friction is anything that prevents or dissuades customers from buying your products or services, and is something that would make shopping more difficult for them. For example, this can include products that are out of stock, a website that runs too slow, or having to sift through pages of listings to find that one item that they're looking for.
By posting an Instagram story with the photo of a product you're selling, and linking that exact product right there on the screen, it reduces all friction for your potential customers and will offer a smooth shopping experience that will keep them coming back for more!
How do I add a link to my story?
Adding a link to your story is really simple! Follow these steps:
Open Instagram and click the + sign on the top right of your profile
Click "story"
Either take a photo that you'd like to use in your story, or swipe up to add a photo from your camera roll.
Click the smiley face sticker icon on the top right, after the "Aa" button
Click "Link"
Add your link and what you'd like to button to read
Click "Done"
You can also create an Instagram story directly from a post that you've shared to your profile. To do so, follow these steps:
Go to your profile
Click a post that you want to make into a story
Click the paper airplane icon on the bottom left of the post
Click "Add post to your story"
Go back to step four above and continue on with adding your link
Get creative with it!
The default look of the link sticker is actually quite bland and can ruin an aesthetic. You can play around with stickers to make it match your style and entice potential shoppers to click your link. Here's how:
Follow the steps above to add a link to a story that you're going to post.
Click the smiley face sticker icon to the right of the "Aa" on the top right
Click "GIF"
You can use a variety of searches to match exactly how you want your sticker to look. For example, "Click me", "Click here", "Learn more", "Sign up", "Shop now", etc.!
Choose the Gif that you'd like to use, and place the photo appropriately over your link so that it looks neat and covers all of the text.
Now it will post the story with the link, but it will look a bit more unique and appealing! See below:
How do I drive more traffic to my Instagram stories?
There are a few different things that you should be doing with each story to maximize your reach.
Post a story every day. Stay consistent!
Post stories that are useful to the customer in some way. Share with your followers, don't just sell.
Always have a clear call-to-action when posting clickable links and make sure that your viewers know why they're clicking. For example, "Shop now", "Learn more", etc.
IMPORTANT: Be trustworthy. Don't post inappropriate links or try to trick your followers with false claims. One wrong move can cause you to lose the trust of a potential customer for life.
Use hashtags in your stories. You can only add 10 hashtags per story so be sure to choose the hashtags that you think will hit the right audience. You can change the text color of the hashtags to match the background of your story and make them super small so they're not distracting. The viewer won't even notice!
Add a location to your story. It doesn't have to be your current location, choose a popular location like Manhattan or California to reach a wider audience.
Why don't I have the option to add a link to my stories?
There are a few reasons that you may not have access to the link sticker option on Instagram. It's a relatively new feature for all users, so there's a chance that it may be rolling out slowly across all accounts. If you don't have access just yet, check again once a week and eventually you will see it added. Also be sure to check that the Instagram app on your phone is fully updates to the latest version!
This feature is also not available for newly created accounts for security reasons, so it may take some time if you're new to the app. Instagram hasn't stated how long an account needs be active before gaining access to the feature, but they do say that anyone who violates their community guidelines may be banned from adding links in stories.
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