As Instagram stories continue to rise in popularity, brands have made use of the swipe up feature included with stories to provide links to their audience. This was a great way to show a product or service to your audience and give them a quick way to reach whatever you are advertising.
August 2021 saw Instagram replace the swipe up feature with a new link sticker for stories.
What was Swipe Up?
Instagram is constantly updating and moving forward with the platform, so you can be forgiven for missing out on certain updates.
Since Instagram doesn’t allow for links to be added to posts, and the link in bio feature is best served for your landing page, the swipe up feature became extremely popular among brands trying to link their audience to specific pages and content that was timed.
When a swipe up link was added to a story, viewers could simply tap on the arrow at the bottom of their screen or swipe up on the story to access the link right in the app.
Link sticker in stories.
With the update to now add link stickers, the swipe up feature is no longer required and the link feature is open to all creators. The link sticker can be placed anywhere on the story and brings the feature to more creators than ever.
To use the link sticker feature, you simply click the sticker icon at the top of your story editor. Choose the link option and place it wherever you please on your story post.
Using story links effectively.
Now that you know how to access and add links to your stories, let’s talk about ways you can utilise them more effectively.
Cross promote your content
Have you recently added to your blog? Or maybe you’ve put together a new video on another platform. Your Instagram story is a great way to bring increased interaction and awareness to your content. Create a graphic that relates to the content outside of your Instagram and drop a link onto it, just remember to follow the Instagram story dimensions to prevent any issues for users on different mobile devices when they’re viewing your story.
Using similar fonts and colours on these posts are key when creating brand recognition, you don’t want to be confusing your audience with different styles and tones, this is especially important when users are scrolling through stories.
Promote your products
A great way to make story links work for you is to use them to promote your products. Since Instagram is a visual platform, you can share high quality photographs of your products on your stories with a link to purchase them for your audience.
Promote events
If you are hosting an event either in person or online, promote it with a story link. You can do this to increase the turnout rate for your attendees. Pop a link sticker onto a story post about the event that gives your audience a direct link to the registration landing page. Your promotional materials for the event will come in handy here.
Promote landing pages
It doesn’t matter if you are creating a sales page, a service page and an informational landing page, getting eyes on them is a must.
Landing pages are a transactional webpage, meaning they are built to draw in customers and lead them to your points of purchase. You can create landing page graphics built for Instagram stories and pop a link to the pages on the story.
Promote videos
This is where you get to link your audience to the longer form content that you create for your brand. Whether you’ve posted a new video to a social platform like YouTube and Facebook, or posted a video directly to your website, the views will increase by linking to them.
Create your story graphic with content that relates to your new video, link to it with the sticker feature and boom!
Promote lead magnets
Do you have an email newsletter or ebook that you send to subscribers? A great way to utilise the story link is to share something from your lead magnets and provide the sign up link to your audience. They might not know you offer this sort of thing, with a bit of promotion you’ll be able to grow your email list with a simple story link.
A final thought.
It’s important to remember that the key to using story links is being consistent with your posting, stories are a simple and effective way to increase traffic and engagement, but you need to be posting often enough for your audience to see.
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