How to get traffic from instagram
How to Drive Traffic with Instagram
May 26, 2014
As much fun as Instagram is for sharing photos and seeing other great images, it's also a very powerful tool for businesses. I was honored to be invited to recently host a webinar specifically on how to drive traffic with Instagram. The webinar was a big success and taught numerous business owners how to better utilize my favorite social media site to successfully drive traffic to their websites to grow their businesses.
My friend and fellow social media professional, Brooke Ballard, runs a wonderful company called B Squared Media. On top of all the amazing things she does every day, she also hosts some really awesome webinars to help business owners better find success using social media.
So when she asked me to present an Instagram webinar for her audience, I was excited to participate. We decided to focus on the challenge of driving traffic to your website using Instagram because we both know this is a challenge many people face.
I think we successfully showed the attendees that they can drive traffic with Instagram. It takes a little more work than it does on other sites, but the quality of traffic you get as a result is so worth it!
In the webinar, we covered the following information.
My personal Instagram story
I'm the first to admit I was a late adopter to Instagram. But as I used it more and learned more about its potential, I got hooked. And when I first started using Instagram I wasn't maximizing its potential for growing my business. But that's evolved over time and now I use it to regularly promote my business, my blog posts, and other information about my brand.
4 Reasons Instagram is so Important
If you've read any of my blog posts on Instagram, you already know why I believe it's so important. But I gave these four reasons in the webinar: Visual Marketing, Fastest Growing Social Media Platform (behind Google+), Your Audience IS on Instagram, and it Generates High Quality Leads
6 Factors to Create the Perfect Profile
We covered the 6 key factors that ensure your Instagram profile will successfully drive traffic to your site.
You can also read my previous post on this topic for more details.
The first two factors to consider are you name and username. These are the only elements of your bio that Instagram looks at in search queries so make sure your name and username are representative of your business or brand.
The next two factors are your bio description and profile photo. You want these to be appealing and demonstrate the personality behind your brand. This is your "first impression" to connect with people.
The next, very important factor, is to make sure you have your website in the URL link in the bio - this is the only place on Instagram where you can have an active hyperlink.
Finally, you want your profile set to Public, not Private.
7 Ways to Generate Traffic
And, now the real reason we're all here! Here are the 7 ways to drive traffic with Instagram.
- Use the link in your bio effectively. This link should be used to send Instagram followers to the most ideal location.
This can be a blog page, a home page, a product page, or a lead/landing page. To accurately track clicks, I also recommend you use a custom link (from bit.ly or other services). You need to direct people to this link in your bio in order to really drive traffic - use calls-to-action in your post captions inviting people to click on the link in your bio to get them where you want them to go. - Use appealing images. You want to connect with Instagram users so make sure your images are top quality. They should show your products in an "atmosphere" not just as stand alone items. Use filters and tools to enhance images to blend in well with Instagram. Use a variety of images (behind the scenes, tips and advice, promotions and discounts, celebrations, etc.) to showcase your business.
- Use creative videos. Show the real side of your business and your personality through videos. You can use how-to videos, answer frequently asked questions, offer greetings, show celebrations, or use blooper reels even.
Use these videos to connect with your audience and recommend they visit your website for more details or information. - Use hashtags. The best way to generate exposure and get more engagement is to use hashtags on Instagram. Find hashtags relevant to your business or industry. Don't use too many - I recommend 5-10 per post. And mix in a variety of popular hashtags as well as less popular hashtags.
- Exclusive content. You want to make sure that the images and offers you showcase on Instagram aren't the same things you always promote on other social media sites. Otherwise, there's no reason for people to follow you on Instagram. Share images and videos that followers can only see on Instagram. Offer Instagram exclusive promotions and discounts.
- Be active and engaging. If you really want to grow an audience and create brand advocates, Instagram is the place to do that. But you have to be as equally open, engaging, and active with your audience. You want to like and comment on a lot of other people's posts.
You want to share content regularly to show your commitment to your audience. When people respond to or comment on your posts, make sure you are engaging with and responding to them. Make sure to @mention them so they see your response. To increase engagement, ask questions and invite conversation through your image captions. And follow people! If you have hundreds or thousands of followers but only follow 10 people, you don't look very social. - Have a strategy! Just like every other social media site, if you don't have a strategy on Instagram, you won't successfully drive traffic, nor will you see much success. You need to know your analytics and what works for your audience. I've repeatedly recommended Iconosquare (formerly Statigram) as a dashboard and comprehensive analytics tool. Beyond that, you need to know who your audience is, why they're on Instagram, and why you're on Instagram. Then figure out what you want to post and when you're going to post.
For more details on all this information, you can review the slides from the webinar presentation here:
How To Generate Massive Traffic With Instagram from B Squared Media, LLC
So, yes, you can successfully drive traffic with Instagram.
It takes a little more work than other sites, but I promise it's worth it! I've seen my business grow and love using Instagram to create a truly engaged audience.
Did you find this helpful? Please share:
instagram, instagram bio, instagram for business, instagram marketing, instagram traffic, social media, social media marketing
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9 Expert Tips to Earn Traffic from Instagram
Instagram is notorious for not being link-friendly, but this facade is quick to fade.
Sure, you can’t link a standard Instagram post, but this doesn’t mean the platform can’t drive significant traffic to your site.
Let’s dive into the strategic ways to add clickable links and earn free website traffic from Instagram.
1. Do More With Your Bio Link
When you originally set up your Instagram profile, you likely added a link to your site (I’d guess a link to your homepage) – and it’s been there ever since.
But this little bio link can do so much more.
You can update this link as often as you like to point to any page of your site.
- A campaign page.
- A newly launched collection.
- A featured story.
- A lead capture page.
Then draw attention to the link by adding strategic call-to-actions in post captions that explain the value of the link. Things such as:
- “Click our link in bio to find out more about…”
- “Read the full story at the link in our bio.”
- “For more insights, check out the link in our bio.”
But there’s a gotcha with changing the link frequently.
How do you manage old posts?
What if someone goes to your bio to learn more and finds a different link or a post from six months ago?
This is where you need a “link in bio” tool, so one link can rule them all.
Different tools achieve this in different ways.
Many tools simply list links. This is unlikely to add significant value.
The better “link in bio” tools allow you to curate a page that looks similar to your Instagram feed but displays your posts as clickable images.
But don’t expect a “link in bio” strategy to deliver its full potential overnight.
You’ll need to commit and be consistent so your audience has time to learn to go and check the link in bio for the details.
To speed up the process, add a call-to-action to your Instagram bio itself.
A quick line of copy before your link in bio, such as: “Click to learn more about a post 👇” makes your link in bio more actionable.
This can have a significant impact when it comes to driving more traffic from Instagram.
2. Tag Products with Instagram Shopping
With Instagram Shopping, you can turn your feed into a storefront by tagging products to create shoppable posts:
- Up to 5 tags in standard posts or video posts.
- Up to 20 with carousel posts, which can act like a lookbook for your brand.
- One product sticker in your Instagram Stories.
You’ll also see a Shopping tab appear on your profile which shows off your tagged product range.
All of these features are opportunities for your audience to click-through to the product on your website.
This is the most organic way to promote shopping on Instagram.
But to use this feature, you must:
- Meet Instagram’s eligibility criteria.
- Connect to a Facebook catalog.
- Sign up in the app with your business profile.
3. Link IGTV Posts
IGTV posts can contain clickable links in their descriptions.
But to see the description, users have to tap on the post title.
To get the most traffic, encourage viewers to open your video descriptions by adding a call-to-action in the IGTV title or tell them about the link during the video itself.
4. Add Links to Your Instagram Stories
You can add a link to Instagram Stories that will send traffic to your site if a user swipes up or clicks the native “See More” text at the base of a linked story.
To encourage your followers to visit your website, be sure to keep the base of the frame free so the “See More” text is clearly visible.
You can also add “swipe up” call-to-action stickers.
The caveat?
You must unlock this linkable stories feature by having over 10,000 followers or be a verified account.
5. Curate Instagram Stories Highlights
To consistently drive traffic from linked Instagram Stories beyond 24 hours, use highlights.
This feature allows you to group stories and permanently feature them on your profile.
But not every story belongs in a highlight.
Strategically curate a library of evergreen stories you want to shine your spotlight on.
Or keep it simple and use a single story per highlight as navigation to the key categories of your website.
6. Send Links in Instagram Direct Messages
Encourage your Instagram followers to start up a conversion with you in DMs.
You can also start the conversation yourself, for example by welcoming new followers and asking a relevant question.
It’s not efficient to type out a unique message for every new joinee.
To scale, you can set up quick replies – previously formatted text you insert into a direct message to avoid having to type the same thing over and over to different people.
Be sure to monitor your inbox daily.
Not only will you get a deeper understanding of your audience, but you will be able to link them to relevant areas of your website.
If you have nowhere to send them to, you know the next piece of content you should create.
7. Enable Push Notifications
Amplify your reach of all these link methods by having your followers turn on Instagram push notifications for posts, IGTV, and stories.
This is a somewhat hidden feature.
Your audience must click on the follow button, then to notifications, and then opt-in.
Afterward, they will receive a notification on their phone every time you post new content of that type.
Getting that opt-in for even a small section of your audience will certainly spike you Instagram KPIs, including sessions.
So how do you get the opt-in?
You could run an elaborate incentive campaign.
Or you can just ask.
You’d be surprised how many people respond to a direct request to opt-in on social media.
But if you do get the opt-in, respect it.
If your posts are notification worthy, the opt-out will likely be swift and the relationship with that follower permanently damaged.
8. Partner with Instagram Influencers
What if:
- You don’t have a large Instagram presence?
- You get very few views on your post or IGTV?
- You can’t link stories?
While you work on it, partner with a brand ambassador who has the reach.
Not only can this amplify your brand message, but in parallel your sessions.
There are thousands of influencers on Instagram – but a high number of followers isn’t enough.
Consider how their audience aligns with yours and how the endorsement of your brand will be received.
As you’re working out the agreement, ensure you include guidance to the influencer to use effective calls to action to send their followers to your website.
9. Add Action Buttons to Your Instagram Profile
Sometimes it’s worth stopping and thinking about why you want to drive traffic.
Is it for people to contact you by phone, email, or text?
Maybe it is to book an appointment, reserve a table, or buy tickets for an event?
All these actions and more can be taken directly on Instagram with profile action buttons.
By cutting out the middle man of your website, you could drive more conversions.
Post & Track!
With the right tools and strategy, Instagram can grow traffic for your brand.
But don’t forget to use UTM tags on all links from Instagram to your site so you have actionable reporting on which tactics were the best session drivers.
More Resources:
- 22 Ways to Get More Instagram Followers Right Now
- 11 Tips to Increase Sales on Instagram
- How to Dominate Social Media Marketing: A Complete Strategy Guide
Image Credits
Featured Image: Created by author, October 2020
All screenshots taken by author, October 2020
Category Instagram
Driving traffic to the site from Instagram: proven methods
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Interested in driving traffic to the site? Have you used all the options available on Instagram for this?
In this article, I'll give you 4 strategies for posting links on Instagram, as well as tips for optimizing your links for clicks.
You will also learn the secret of how to link in bio for easy retargeting traffic on Instagram.
By the way, if you are interested in the topic of advertising and want to learn marketing on Facebook and Instagram, join the marathon here.
1. Add links to your IGTV video description
Let's start with IGTV. After all, any Instagram account can add a link to the description of their IGTV videos and make it clickable. If you have an audience engaged with IGTV videos, you can include a call to action (CTA) in your description to direct people to your site's landing page.
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Another feature that any brand or blogger with any type of Instagram account can use is Direkt posts. Yes, you can put a link in any conversation with a user and it will be clickable. This makes it easy to share links with people on Instagram.
3. Link in Stories Instagram
If you've ever used Instagram Stories, you're probably familiar with the swipe-up feature for posting links.
At the moment, only business accounts with more than 10,000 followers can use this option. Another condition is that the account must be verified. If these conditions are met, you can share links in Instagram stories.
Let's get back to the topic of messages in Direct. You can add a CTA to your story by sending your audience to Direct. For example, it might sound like this: “If you need a link, reply to this story and I will send it to you in Direct.” This move will help increase the engagement of the story, which is beneficial for your promotion as a whole. And as a result, you will create personal conversations with the audience.
Tip: Use a Direct sticker to make your post in the story easy for the user to read.
You can also place a CTA calling for a link in the bio section. To do this, include a CTA in the text or in the video by writing, for example, "click on the link in the bio." This way, your followers will know that they need to click on the link in the bio to see some content.
Tip: To make it even easier for your audience to find a link, create a mention of yourself in a story using a text box with a direct link to your profile. Then add a GIF or "Click here" text box on top of your username, hiding it behind a sticker but clearly stating "Click here." When someone clicks on this sticker, they will be taken directly to your profile, where they can follow the link in your bio.
4. Link to Instagram bio
The Instagram linking strategy started with feed posts. It used to be the only place where you could post a link. You can often see people adding a simple caption to their posts, such as "click on the link in the bio". This is the most common CTA and the most recognizable way to drive traffic on Instagram.
But, of course, the biography section is non-rubber. You can change it as often as you like, but it's tedious.
And if you post frequently with a “click on bio link” CTA, your audience may see an old post but click on a bio link that is no longer relevant. The new link in the bio will no longer refer to the old post people find in the feed.
In fact, a number of tools have been on the market for a long time to solve this problem. Third-party services allow you to create a landing page with multiple links. But even if such tools are handy, why would you send your hard-earned traffic to a third-party tool when you can keep all that traffic for yourself?
Getting traffic from Instagram: one secret
My advice for solving the problem of placing a link in the bio section is simple. Create a custom landing page on your own website. This page should be mobile responsive, have a simple, concise design without any pop-ups or sidebars.
Ideally, include only a few options in your list of links. This is more convenient for you and for your audience.
You can add one link for your blog page, one for your YouTube channel or Facebook page, one for a list of services or for product lines (not necessarily individual products, you can link to lines).
Once the page is set up, you don't need to change it often. Only make changes if you are adding or updating content promoted on Instagram.
What is the advantage of this strategy? This is driving traffic. You will be able to see which page attracts more people and which one less. Analysis of visit statistics will allow you to understand which pages are more visited from the landing page. You will also be able to study audience behavior and conversions.
You can add a Facebook pixel and retarget your Instagram or Facebook ads to the audience that came to you from Instagram.
And the best part is that it's free.
If you want to learn even more secrets of advertising in social networks, register for a free marketing marathon.
Conclusions
Don't be disappointed that Instagram has some restrictions on link sharing.
Of course, it's hard to manage traffic unless you have over 10,000 followers or keep changing links in your bio.
But take advantage of the methods indicated in this article. With them, you will be able to attract traffic from Instagram to your website.
Do you use driving traffic to your website from Instagram? If the article was useful, share it and your comments on the pages in social networks!
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How to get free traffic from Instagram?
Update: 2022-08-28.
Instagram audit
Correct hashtags for Instagram promotion.
See here: instagram training courses 2020.
If you haven't looked at the "Mobile devices" statistics on your site for a long time, then I'm afraid to upset you a lot, over the past couple of years, mobile traffic has doubled and on some projects its share has exceeded 50%!
Of course, not every user in the mobile traffic pool has their own instagram, but everyone who has an instagram can go to your site from a mobile device! If so, why haven't these users done it yet?
Most likely there are two reasons for this: 1) either you still don't have an instagram account; 2) either you don't know how to get traffic from Instagram.
It is worth mentioning right away that this whole story does not make any sense to bother if your site does not have an adaptive layout or mobile version.
The quality of traffic in such a situation will not please you or the search engines. Bounce rates will be over 40% and watch time will be less than 15 seconds. Let me clarify once again for clarity - traffic from instagram is 99% mobile traffic!
Of course there are exceptions, but this traffic is more like bonus traffic when a user opened your Instagram account on a desktop or found a link to your account through a search engine. Instagram has enough aggregators and there will be quite a few duplicates of your profile.
The range of devices through which users access your site is very wide and varied, if you start to analyze each device manufacturer in detail, you can drown in the model range.
But detailing by device will also allow you to find problem points on the site, when the specifics of the device do not allow you to satisfactorily display the content and failures begin to grow.
In my case, grouping the report with a filter by visits indicates that problematic traffic, bounces > 30% is the traffic generated by users with the default Android browser and partially by users with Chrome Mobile.
From the most problematic devices with problematic browsers, it makes sense to surf the site and look for problematic areas of content layout and navigation in order to minimize negative behavioral signals. The list of devices and browsers is visible in the table below.
Let’s hope that you won’t have such problems with layout as I have and failures from the mobile pool on the site will not exceed 8-15%, so it’s time to start thinking about creating an Instagram account or start setting up an existing Instagram account for receiving targeted traffic from it, but quite a convertible one!
Consider the example of a real store. First of all, you need to make a bright avatar so that it stands out from the background of others, it’s good if it is the Logo of your site. This is necessary so that users turn their attention to you in the list of recent actions and go to your profile.
Then you need to fill in the profile data and provide a link to the site.
We are SEOs, right? Do not forget about low-frequency requests in the description, and that there is a limit on the profile description. Although the limit is small, only 145 characters, it is enough to beat 3-4 key low-frequency queries and try to fill the entire TOP with them. I already mentioned above that a lot of aggregators have been developed for Instagram that parse the content of the service and broadcast your account on their own. This, with the correct composition of the title and description, will allow one of your accounts to take 2-3 positions in Yandex from the TOP-10 for low-frequency queries, and 5-8 positions in Google. Yes, and do not break the text into passages with dots, aggregators and Instagram itself in the html version display text without formatting, except for the title in Title and H2. This bonus does not apply to descriptions in the photo, only in the profile.
Specifying a specific location (Perovo) gives not only low frequency, but also a tangible bonus on Instagram itself.
When collecting a user base around the store within a radius of 5-10 km, indicating the Perovo location in the profile text increases the conversion by leads in the ratio - communication with the audience and feedback (transition to the site) up to 50%! Those. worked out the communication of the account for 1000 users and 4 users went to the site without specifying Perovo, and if they worked with the indication of Perovo, then 8-10 users switched. People react to such SMM tricks and become more loyal, if only out of pure curiosity :)
I won’t write about hashtags and photo promotion here, it’s described in detail on my blog: 5 Instagram promotion secrets. About the fact that the content should be interesting, they didn’t write, except that the doorway workers.
I can only advise you to use the tactics of publishing photos using the "instatriptych" method, on this topic a fresh study has been published on my website, the essence of which is simple.
The product is filmed from three different angles and is published so that the largest or brightest accent is in the center, not on the sides.
This allows you to evenly distribute attention along a line of three photos of one product and does not turn the ribbon into a colorful Christmas tree. An experiment with various combinations showed that a shift in emphasis to one of the sides complicates the process of perception and "blind zones" are formed in the tape.
The next instattriptych clearly shows how the first photo got more than 54% of likes, while on the top combination of the instattriptych the likes were distributed in descending order, which corresponds to the typical normalization of the distribution of users' attention when viewing product items in three columns. I observed this more than once in the web analytics of online stores in product catalogs.
And finally, a few words about automation. I am often asked about the software that is best to use in promoting an account, but once again I will not recommend any of the programs. Firstly, this is fraught with account blocking, secondly, the state at the legislative level will more and more regulate any spam technologies, and thirdly, if you use web services to promote your Instagram account, then you risk losing your account and the owners of the services you will constantly sign without your knowledge and consent to various commercial accounts that pay them money.
