Wondering how you can drive traffic from Instagram?
Instagram is truly the social media platform of this decade.
It has taken the world by storm since its birth in 2010, and in the last couple of years, the number of Instagram users has skyrocketed.
At the early stages of Instagram’s life, it was considered to be a platform for teenagers and kids, but that is something that has changed in the pace that more and more marketers and brands have understood the immense potential that lies in Instagram, and that they, as marketers, trade on one thing: attention, and that Instagram has no lack of it.
In fact, today, 93 percent of prestige brands are on Instagram, 90% of Interbrand companies have Instagram accounts, and 70.7 percent of businesses were expected to use Instagram in 2017.
And the fact of the matter is, if Instagram wouldn’t have any marketing benefits, brands wouldn’t use it.
Because one thing is for sure, they’re not using Instagram because they want to be entertained and because they think it’s fun.
The punchline is that Instagram has the one thing that marketers trade on, which is the attention of the people.
In turn, this means that if you leverage it correctly, you can drive tremendous marketing results with it. This includes increased sales, improved customer relationships, and many more marketing benefits.
Plus, did you also know that you can get traffic from Instagram?
Well, that maybe doesn’t come as a huge surprise considering that getting website traffic is often the foundation for driving many of the marketing results that marketers are looking for with their digital marketing efforts today, such as increase their newsletter subscribers, increase their website traffic, and ultimately, increase their sales.
Instagram has been quite controversial, if I may when it comes to its abilities to drive traffic. The reason is that the ability to share clickable links on the platform is highly limited in order to prevent spam.
As a result, a misconception is that Instagram is a social media platform that can’t be leveraged to increase your website traffic, but considering you’re here, and you’ve read the headline of this post, that is obviously not true. Even if you’ve maybe fallen for the misconception earlier.
The good news is that there are a number of ways to leverage the platform to get more traffic from Instagram, and that’s exactly what I’ll be sharing with you in this article.
How to get more traffic from Instagram
When you’re looking to get more traffic from Instagram, you are, in first hand, going to share clickable (and swipeable) links that direct people to your website.
As mentioned, though, the places where you can distribute these are highly limited on Instagram.
If you share a link in the comment section of a post, it won’t be clickable, and so if people are going to visit it, they need to open their browser and type in letter after letter into the search bar.
This is obviously a lengthy and boring task, a task that your most loyal fans don’t even want to do.
As a brand, you want to make the experience to visit your website as seamless as possible in order to maximize the number of people who visit. This means that in order to get traffic from Instagram, you want to leverage each and every way and place on Instagram where you can share clickable links.
Optimise your profile’s bio link
You’re probably no stranger to the fact that your profile is one of the few places where you’re allowed to include a clickable link. Normally, the link in your profile is the link that drives the most traffic from Instagram to your site.
This means that you want to take advantage of it and optimize it as much as you can.
First off, you want to set up your profile correctly so that it is appealing and get people’s attention.
If you have a non-completed and unappealing profile, chances are, people who come across your page will just continue scrolling. This is why you want to ensure that your profile grasps the attention and curiosity of each and every person who comes across your profile because this will help you drive the most amount of traffic from Instagram.
Begin by adding an appealing profile photo, include all the necessary contact information, and then most importantly, write your bio.
Normally, the first thing people look at when they come across an Instagram account is their bio, and this is where you are able to spark interest in your visitors and convince them to learn more about you. And the way they’re going to do that is convince them to click the link in your profile to get to your website. Success!
This is why you often see people who use a part of their bio to include a call-to-action to get people to click it.
On Instagram, you can only have one link in your profile, so you need to choose it carefully.
The good news, though, is that you can change it whenever you want. This is great for example if you’re running a particular campaign and want to drive interest in that particular campaign rather than driving people directly to your homepage, which most people do.
A method that Rolex is using is present a ”featured watch” weekly, and thus make all their post about a specific timepiece for a limited time.
Accordingly, they change the link in their profile to circulate around the featured watch they’re showcasing in their post and sparking interest in.
This ensures that people can quickly find what they are looking for when clicking on the link and not have to search like crazy, and eventually lose patience.
Since you have your bio so closely located to your website link, it is a tremendous place to include a CTA.
In fact, adding CTAs to your Facebook page can increase click-through rate by 285%, and the principle is awfully similar to Instagram.
Of course, there’ no general CTA that everyone should use, because it depends on your brand, what the value proposition is, and where the link takes people.
Some might increase their CTAs dramatically by just writing ”click here” in their bio, and for some, it might be a little more appropriate to write the reason to why people should click on your link, for example, ”click on the link to win $1K!”.
Include calls to actions in your posts
Okay, so you know that having a call to action in your profile bio is tremendously powerful since it is the first thing people will see and can have a greater conversion power, but another place you should leverage Calls to actions is in your post captions.
In fact, since you can’t share links in the captions of your posts on Instagram, this is the place where you’ll see most people include CTAs that tell people to click on the link in the profile.
Consider this, though…
As mentioned, changing the link in your profile is a good idea to make it more relevant to a particular campaign you’re running, or something you’re showcasing but that doesn’t mean that you want to change the link in your bio all the time. This is especially if you regularly include CTAs in the captions of your posts.
Why?
Because if you change the link for every post you share, and for every time you share a new post direct people to a new place, your most recent posts will continue to gain traction a while after they have been shared.
In other words, in your second latest post, you might say ”click in the bio to learn more about our new handbags”, and in your most recent post, you might say ”click the link in your profile to sign up to our newsletter”, and so if someone sees your second latest post and then click on the link in your profile, they’ll expect to find the handbags they want to purchase, but instead, they are directed to a page where they sign up to your newsletter.
Not only does this create a huge disconnect between you and your audience, it might also result in them not buying from you, since they’re confused, and don’t want to spend time actively looking for the product they were expecting to find.
Remember that the buyer journey needs to be as simple and effortless as possible, and if this scenario happens, it is far from seamless.
This is why you don’t want to change the profile link for each and every post, but instead, if you’re occasionally changing the link in your profile do it when a campaign clearly starts and ends, and not do it too often.
If you still want to change the link in your profile often and regularly, there’s a solution to the disconnect that can appear.
That solution is simply that you, after you’ve uploaded a new post, go back to the old posts and tap the three dots in the top right corner, then tap ”edit”.
After that, you just remove your call-to-action from that post. Voilá!
Partner with influencers to promote your page and help you get traffic from Instagram
You’re probably no stranger to influencer marketing and the immense powers that it has.
Influencer marketing has skyrocketed in popularity over the last couple of years, in the same pace that the usage of social media has increased.
It’s obvious that the foundation for getting traffic from Instagram is having people actually knowing about your existence on the platform, and are intrigued to learn more about you.
After all, that’s the whole reason why you’re using Instagram in the first place: the attention of your target audience is there, and you’re using Instagram as a relationship tool to let people know about your existence.
But the truth is that while Instagram has proven to be an amazing marketing tool that helps brands generate incredible results, gaining traction can be quite challenging on the platform, especially if you don’t know how and where you should start.
This is where influencers can come in handy.
Influencers are trusted individuals who are considered experts in their niche and industry, and they’ve built a strong and loyal followers base of individuals who are interested in what they are doing.
By partnering with influencers, you can piggyback off of their success, take advantage of their audience that they’ve built up, and amplify your own message.
Because the more people you reach, the more traffic from Instagram you’ll get. Plus, when you partner with influencers in your industry, you’ll not only have them promote you and your brand, but you’ll also get eyeballs from the right people – people from your target audience, which will further increase the chances of people becoming so interested that they click on your link.
The more people you reach, and even better, the more interested and relevant people you reach, the more traffic from Instagram you’ll be able to drive. Influencer marketing is one of many ways to reach more people. It’s obvious that Justin Bieber will be able to drive far more traffic to the site in his Instagram profile than I ever would, and that’s because he has the ability to reach a larger audience.
Since you’re, in this case, working with influencers to get traffic from Instagram, make sure they include a clear call to action of what people should do (which is visit your website).
If they can add your website to their profile, that is even better, as it allows for a more seamless experience, rather than people having to go to your profile, and then click on the link.
How to Get Traffic from Instagram Stories
Want to know the best part?
The link in your profile isn’t the only way you can drive traffic from Instagram.
In fact, a tremendous tool which can be leveraged to drive traffic to your site is Instagram Stories. The best part is that Instagram Stories offers much more creative freedom when it comes to convincing people to actually swipe and continue to your website than any other CTA or Instagram post can.
In case you’re unfamiliar with Instagram Stories, Stories are photos and videos that are uploaded to your profile and then vanish after 24 hours they’ve been uploaded. Stories is great as they allow for less ”polished to perfection” content, and more live, ”in the moment” content that comes off as more authentic and transparent.
Additionally, you don’t have to worry about the content cluttering your feed as your stories are accessed by tapping your profile picture.
Instagram Stories offers yet another way to get traffic from Instagram, but the catch is that the feature to incorporate website links to your stories is limited to accounts that have at least 10K followers and has converted into business accounts. It’s also worth mentioning that the links in Stories are available for all verified accounts.
Of course, this limit isn’t ideal for smaller accounts on Instagram that miss out on this amazing opportunity to drive more website traffic, but at the same time, at least you’ll have a goal to strive towards.
If you have the link in Stories feature, after having taken a photo or recorded a video inside the feature, you’ll see a chain icon at the top middle of your screen.
As you can imagine, when it comes to driving traffic from Instagram, Stories opens up tons of opportunities, and ways you can get creative.
What you often see accounts and businesses who are leveraging Stories to drive traffic do is include the simple call to action ”swipe up”.
Why, you can ask?
Because unlike the link in your profile, to get to a website that is linked to from Stories, you swipe up on the screen.
Here’s how it looks when a story is uploaded with a link:
Ask you can see, the stories with a link already have a call to action so that people are going to be able to see that there’s a link shared with the story. The pre-existing CTA is ”See more” and an arrow pointing up.
How can you use Instagram stories to drive traffic from Instagram to your website?
Well, the first and most obvious way is to simply start including links to the stories that you share.
If you aren’t yet using Instagram Stories, now is definitely the time, as it is one of the most powerful tools for driving traffic to your site with.
Read this Instagram Stories guide to get started.
Since the CTA that comes automatically by you adding a link isn’t that obvious, a simple way to increase your traffic, and the number of people who swipe through on your story is by drawing or adding an arrow which makes it more obvious that people should swipe. What’s more, you can also add a ”Larger” CTA which people won’t be able to miss.
Gary Vaynerchuk often makes most of his Stories in an editing program before uploading them to Instagram
Of course, a lot of the things you need can be added inside Stories, so using an editing program isn’t necessary for the most part.
An approach of adding a call to action to my stories that I absolutely love, and have found to be tremendously effective is by adding GIFs.
Since GIFs aren’t just fixed images but are more acting like videos, they not only make the story more fun and appealing, but they also draw the viewer’s attention and gets them to swipe.
How can you add CTA GIFs?
Begin by creating your Story. Now, tap the ”sticker icon” in the top right corner.
Now, tap the add-on which says ”GIF”, as seen below.
Here, you can choose from an endless amount of different GIFs, but since you’re looking for GIFs that convince people to swipe up, simply search ”swipe up” in the search bar.
Now, simply choose the GIF you’d like to use, and then place it where you want to have it.
Now, this goes without saying…. but the more people who watch your Instagram stories, the more traffic from Instagram you’ll be able to get. And, the fact of the matter is that this just doesn’t go for Stories but on Instagram as a whole. And while this post focuses a lot about how you can optimize your strategies and tactics on Instagram in order to increase the traffic by leveraging the eyeballs and audience you already have, you also want to focus on building your audience and driving more traffic to you.
When talking about Instagram Stories, a precondition for getting more people to watch them is to put out great content.
If your Stories put people to sleep, then you can’t expect that the traffic you drive through it won’t be that high
This is why, apart from optimizing the way you can drive traffic from your Stories, also want to think about improving the most fundamental part, not only for Stories but for social media success in general. your content.
Leverage the Direct Message feature of Instagram Stories
If there’s something I love, it is using tactics and approaches that not too many people are using.
The competition on social media is super high, and standing out from the crowd is a challenge, to say the least, and this means that you need unique and different approaches to reach your audience, and convince them to do what you want them to do.
In this case, visit your website.
Since virtually everyone who can is suing the ”swipe up” CTA to convince people to visit their website, you cannot only do what everyone else is doing – you also need some new, fresh, and unique approaches, and this is it.
To drive traffic from Instagram using this method, what you’re going to do is personalize the experience. Personalization has proven to be tremendously effective in marketing, and the reason is simple: all customers are different, and all have different needs and preferences.
In case you haven’t seen it before, there’s a ”send message” icon at the bottom of each snap you watch. By writing in this box, you send a Direct message to the account that has uploaded the Story, along with that particular Story.
Now, you might be thinking, ”but how can I use this to drive traffic from Instagram?”, but here’s where it gets interesting.
What you want to do is, instead of just including a link to your Story, and then a ”swipe up” CTA, you want to offer personalized help to your audience, which, then will allow you to direct them to your website.
Of course, there are lots of ways you can do this on, you just need to be creative.
Let’s take an example:
Let’s say you are a brand that sells clothes. Upload a Story where you ask your audience to ask questions they have about fashion etc.
If you have created and uploaded videos to your website where you answer those questions, that is great, and what you want to do then is share a link to the video on your site where they can get the answer to the question.
Moreover, if you sell makeup, you can upload a story where you tell your audience that you help them with finding the right makeup for a special occasion etc. and give them tips on what they need and how they should do their makeup.
The opportunities are endless really, but what you’re doing is creating a more personalized experience that makes people much more likely to visit the link as it is tailored for them, and thus more relevant.
Not only will doing this allow you to drive traffic from Instagram, but it will also give you an amazing opportunity to engage with them and build your relationship with them in order to make them more loyal.
Leverage video content
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last couple of years, you know that video content is skyrocketing in popularity, and the demand for it is increasing in popularity.
As a result of this, those brands and people who focus on creating kick-ass video content that brings their audience value, see tremendous success.
But what’s interesting is that it’s not only the fact that people enjoy video content that makes it so great. It’s also that video content can impact people on a much deeper level, and convey the message you want to mediate in a better way.
Why?
Well, if I say that a picture says more than a thousand words, what do you think a video recorded in 60 fps says?
To actually back up my claims, because I know you don’t trust a stranger on an unfamiliar website, let’s look at some delicious data:
- 51% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI.
- Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users.
- 64 percent of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social videos. (In order to purchase, they need to visit your website).
Safe to say, video content does work in marketing, and if you aren’t leveraging it, you’re missing out. Through video, you can captivate your audience’s attention, and through storytelling impact them on a deeper level, and most importantly, actually get them to perform an action.
In your case, this is to visit your website.
Videos help you connect with your audience in a better way, which allows them to establish trust in you.
The best part about this is that when you’ve built a stronger relationship with them, you’ve increased their loyalty to you, and thus made them more likely to do what you ask them to do.
By creating videos that are fun, short, and engaging, you can encourage your audience to learn more, and thus click through to your website.
Add call-to-actions on your Instagram posts
I know, I know… I’ve been going on and on about CTAs a lot now, but that’s because they work!
They’re the difference between a passive follower and someone who actively takes action.
In fact, for KISSmetrics, a CTA within a video gets 380% more clicks than their normal sidebar CTAs.
The good news is that a similar principle can be applied to Instagram.
So, rather than having only CTAs in your captions (similar to Kissmetrics having them in their sidebar), you include them in your posts or videos.
There are several ways to go about doing this.
Firstly, you can add your website URL directly to posts that you upload. Together with this, you can include a simple CTA to encourage people to visit it. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than ”visit our website”.
This can be done with a number of tools, but I always find Canva to be the best and most user-friendly.
As mentioned, the problem with Instagram posts is that they don’t allow clickable links.
This is why, with your video or photo which you add a CTA to, you want to invite your audience to go to your profile and click the link in your bio. As such, a good idea is to add something such as “To see more click our profile link”, but remember that when doing this, you should only share this type of content on Instagram, as it can otherwise create a disconnect or confuse your audience, for example, if you upload it to Facebook where users can click the link in your post directly.
While having CTAs in your Instagram captions, unless no-one actually reads it, it won’t do much good. And the fact of the matter is that since Instagram is a visually driven platform, a lot of the times, people will just look at the visual, whether it be a video or a photo, and then continue scrolling.
But since you recognize this, you outsmart them by adding your website and a call to action to it on the image, making sure that they don’t miss it.
It’s easy to edit your content and add text-overlays which gets your audience’s attention.
Take a look at the visual Mixisport used for their Instagram contest, where they sparked interest in their audience, and then told their audience to visit their website to get more information.
Generally, Instagram posts with large text overlays don’t see as much engagement, partly because it makes the beautiful image behind (if such is used) less beautiful, but also because people who are on Instagram mainly want to consume visual content.
This is why it is important that you keep it short, clear, and concise.
What’s more, people don’t want to have a bunch of promotional content shoved in their face, and visual content that consists of only visual text overlays is normally just that. That’s why you want to share posts with large texts overlay sparely. Or, if you can, place the text in a place and in a way that makes it less intrusive and comes off as less promotional.
For example, instead of adding a text overlay that covers the whole image, focus on creating an appealing piece of visual content which brings your audience value, but at the bottom, ad your website and a CTA to it.
Drive more traffic from Instagram using Ads
Ads on Instagram has proven to be tremendously powerful due to their effective targeting features. With Instagram ads, you can target people using demographics, Interests, and much more, using detailed information to reach only the people who are the absolutely most relevant to your brand.
That way, you can run Instagram ads that generate a tremendous ROI.
The best way is that Instagram ads are one of the most, if not the most effective way to drive traffic from Instagram.
The main reason is that in-feed ads are clickable, and drives you back to the advertiser’s website.
What’s more, with Instagram ads, you can drive a tremendous amount of traffic from Instagram, even if you don’t have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers.
Instead, you can set up and run Instagram ads, and pay for exposure and traffic.
There are several types of Instagram ads, but if you’re looking to drive traffic from Instagram, in-feed ads tend to be the most effective since they stay in your feed, as opposed to a Story, which only plays for 15 seconds.
This means, at least in theory, that people will have more time to consider and think about what it is you are selling.
In-feed ads on Instagram look just like any other regular post on Instagram, the only differences is that it has a ”sponsored” badge in the top-right corner, as well as a call-to-action button at the bottom.
What’s more, you can click right on the post and get redirected to the advertiser’s website.
This makes visiting your website much more seamless, as opposed to seeing a post, click through to their profile, and then the link in the bio.
Now, if you’re using Instagram, you shouldn’t solely focus on ads, and completely neglect all other aspects of Instagram. After all, you can drive incredible results from Instagram, and drive lots of traffic from Instagram by just focusing on organic exposure, but with ads, you can put your existing Instagram strategy on steroids, and skyrocket your results.
Because the fact of the matter is that if you’re going to focus on driving amazing results only through organic, it will take lots of time and effort.
With ads, however, you instead let the money work for you.
On the flip side, that means you have to pay and invest money into it.
Now that you actually can share links on Instagram, through ads, there’s tremendous opportunity to be creative, think outside of the box, and ultimately drive people to your website who convert.
Lastly, the ad format you choose depends on what you want to achieve and mediate.
Do you wish to tell a story, captivate your audience’s attention for a longer time, give your audience context, or do you wish to do something completely different?
If you wish to grab your audience’s attention, you have video, which you by now know, is incredibly powerful.
If you wish to add more context to your Instagram ads, you have carousel ads where you can include up to four photos which users can swipe.
Share amazing images
Okay, this might be given, but the fact is that far too many brands fail on executing a successful Instagram strategy because they only think of the end goal and what they want to achieve, rather than focusing on the practices that will take them there.
For example, if you hopped on Instagram and wanted to drive traffic from Instagram, what should you do?
You should promote your website, of course, and ask your audience to visit it.
Only that, at least when it comes to organic marketing, you promote yourself more by not being overly promotive.
People aren’t on Instagram because they want to have a bunch of promotion shoved down their throat, and if you give them just that, the ”unfollow” button is just a tap away.
People follow accounts on Instagram which brings them value in one way or another, and it is crucial that you understand this because otherwise, you might just find yourself posting more and more promotional content, and wonder why you’re still not driving any traffic from Instagram.
The way you drive results using organic reach isn’t by asking how you can promote your brand as much as possible, but instead, it is asking how you can bring more value to your audience.
That way, you’ll have an attractive value proposition which drives people to you, holds their attention, and makes them reciprocal and more likely to want to learn about you once you’ve provided them with all of this value.
Start by asking: ”how can I provide value to my audience with my content?”.
You also want to try to figure out what type of content that your audience wants to see, not only what the content should do.
For example, you might find that a lot of your audience want to learn more about things in your industry, and if so, it is probably best to create videos where you educate your audience about that.
If you find that your audience just wants to consume inspiration content, then you should obviously be focusing on that.
No matter what your content should do, and no matter what type of content you’re going to share, it is crucial that it is high-quality and visually appealing.
Remember that Instagram is a visually-driven social media platform which means that the quality of your visual content will play a huge role in your success on the platform.
Today, more content than ever is being shared on social media.
This also means that the competition is tougher than ever.
In other words, if you’re going to cut through the noise, you can’t afford to compromise on quality, because there’s just so much more other content which people can consume instead of yours.
This is also a reason why you need to focus on creating and sharing unique content which stands out from the crowd.
If you can establish yourself as an industry leader, and a go-to source for the absolute best content, what will happen is that you’ll be able to build a larger audience and reach more people, but most importantly, you’ll be able to drive traffic from Instagram by showcasing Your content on Instagram and asking your audience to visit your website to learn more.
There are many ingredients that go into a successful Instagram post, but you should consider these points:
- Develop a content strategy to help you create content that aligns with each other and resonates with your audience and your brand.
- Add geotags to your posts to increase exposure. Geotags have been found to increase engagement with 79%.
Leverage hashtags
This is an Instagram tactic which is focused on increasing your reach, in order to reach more people who ultimately visit your website, rather than focusing on optimizing your traffic funnel in order to convince a higher rate of people to visit your site.
Which types of tactics to drive traffic from Instagram should you use?
Both, of course!
Instagram hashtags are extremely effective, in fact, Instagram is the platform where hashtags are the most effective.
So obviously, you want to leverage them.
In fact, posts with at least one relative Instagram hashtag average 12.6% more engagement than posts without a hashtag.
So imagine what 30, the maximum number of hashtags you can use in a post will do.
By including hashtags, you increase the visibility of your post and make it possible for people to find it.
But you shouldn’t just use any hashtags, though.
It’s easy to believe that the ”top 30” hashtags are also the most effective, but that’s not the case.
They might be the most effective in helping you improve the vanity metrics of your posts, but that’s not what you’re after, is it? You’re looking to get more traffic from Instagram, right?
Well, while using the ”top” and most used hashtags on Instagram drives lots of likes and comments, most of the time, those likes and comments come from bots who are spamming on every post they can come across.
And do you think those bots will be curious about your page and then go to your website to learn more?
Of course not!
Therefore, you want to be strategic in your choice of hashtags. Only use keywords that are relevant to your target audience and you’ll attract people who truly matter to you.
Some studies say that the ideal number of hashtags is 10, others 14, others 30, but for me personally, I’ve found the most success from using all 30 hashtags.
Think about it.
The more hashtags you use, the more place you’ll have your content showcased at, thus increasing its visibility.
If you have no idea what hashtags you should use, don’t worry.
Instagram has suggestive hashtags, which means it will present you with suggestions for similar hashtags.
To come up with hashtags to use, go to the search bar on the explore page, tap hashtags. Now, search for a hashtag related to your industry – but don’t tap search.
Here, you’ll have a long list of hashtags that are similar to the one that you search for, and that you might be able to use for your post.
Another way to get suggested hashtags is to actually search for a hashtag, and then swipe left on the ”Related” list that shows up:
Now, just create various sets of hashtags and put them in your notes so you can copy and paste based on the type of posts you share.
Engage with your audience
I cannot emphasize just how important this part is.
It’s called social media for a reason. This means that you’re meant to be social.
What’s more, when you’re trying to get more traffic from Instagram, and when trying to convince people to visit your site, one might say that you’re trying to sell your website to them.
RIght?
And the fact of the matter is that, similar to how you should focus on providing value with your content rather than selling, as mentioned earlier, you promote more by promoting less.
Engage with your audience regularly and often in order to build and strengthen your customer relationships.
The stronger relationships you have with your audience, the more they’ll trust you, and the more loyal they’ll be.
In other words, focus on using Instagram as a relationship tool in first hand, and then, every now and then, when you’ve provided your audience with tons of value, remind them about your site, promote a new piece of content that you’ve
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.
Create a shoppable feed using a third-party app
What is a shoppable feed?
Well, a stoppable feed is a replication of your feed, and for each post that contains a product which you sell, there are tags which people can tap on to see what the product is, how it works, and ultimately buy it.
This method obviously works best if you sell physical products, especially products that are more common.
If you’ve ever looked through the comment section of a post from a large brand which sells common products (and even uncommon products), you’ve probably seen that many of the comments are related to the product.
Some might ask ”what is the price?”, some which colors do you have”, and others ”how do I order?”.
All of that is probably quite familiar to you as well if you have a brand which sells physical products and is using Instagram.
Unfortunately, many of these questions go unanswered, which, not only makes brands miss out on tremendous opportunities, but most importantly, it’s not an effective and seamless experience, as people cannot quickly identify what products are in the photo they just seen on Instagram, and instead have to try to look through the website to find what they are looking for.
By using a shoppable feed, though, such as Have2Have.it, you can drive people directly to a replication of your Instagram feed where they can click on your images to find out what products from you that are visible in the post.
Using this type of tool tends to be quite effective since the way people are influencers on Instagram is often hat they see a post of something, get inspired by it, and not want it themselves.
But the catch is that before they can get it, they need to find it first.
And that search process is often quite tricky, which results in a lot of people dropping off and giving up.
Use the real Instagram shoppable feeds
For a fortunate few Instagrammers, a similar feature as talked about earlier is available as a building-in feature inside of the Instagram app.
What this shoppable feed feature allows retailers do is add tags on products that are visible in the image which people can then tap on, and get redirected to the website, more specifically, the product page where the product can be ordered.
This is a tremendous feature that is perfect to use in order to get more traffic from Instagram. It offers a more seamless experience and makes it easier for people to find what they are looking for.
Unfortunately, as of now, only a few select retailers have access to the feature, and there is currently nothing you can do to get the feature, except wait and hope that they’ll roll out the feature more broadly in the future.
Promote blog posts to drive traffic from Instagram
If you have a new blog post, Instagram is a great place to promote it.
But remember that Instagram is a visually driven platform, so if you’re going to promote it, you need to have an appealing image that is related to the blog post which you can use.
If your audience is interested in the same thing which your blog post is about, you will probably be able to drive some traffic from Instagram, as long as you have an appealing image.
It is, however, best if you don’t use the same header that you’ve used for your post on your website, because normally, while visually appealing, they don’t provide very much value.
Instead, extract some key information, a quote, or some juicy stats from your blog post and turn that into a piece of visual content.
If you can spark your audience’s attention and interest with your visual piece of content, many of them will probably be enticed to learn more and click through to read your blog post.
Build a community
As a brand, building a community is always the answer.
No, but really, having a community is incredibly valuable, and Instagram is no different.
Having a community of engaged people who are interested in your brand, niche, and what you do means having loyal advocates that go around promoting and talking good about your brand.
What’s so good about that is that nothing is as trustworthy and powerful as the recommendations of a customer.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that when brands say that their products are amazing, they do so because they want to sell more, but when a loyal customer says it, or even better, a large group of loyal customers says it, it comes off as far more trustworthy since people don’t expect them to have an agenda.
And normally, they don’t.
They’re just loyal customers who love your brand.
Not only does building a community on Instagram mean that you’ll have loyal customers who will be visiting your site regularly, it also means that they’ll go around promoting your site. to others, sharing it on their social med channels, and beyond.
How to track and measure your traffic from Instagram
Now you know how to drive more traffic from Instagram, but how do you know if you’ve driven any traffic?
How do you know where that traffic came from, and what efforts performed best on Instagram, which you might want to focus on doing more of?
To know the results of your efforts to increase your Instagram traffic, there are a number of ways you can go about measuring.
Instagram insights
Firstly, we have Instagram Insights. This is Instagram’s very own analytics and insights program which, for being a free, built-in feature, is quite helpful and detailed.
To access Instagram Insights, you need to have converted your Instagram account into a business account.
When you convert your account, you’ll automatically get access to Insights.
To access Insights, go to your profile and tap the chart icon in the upper right corner.
There, on the first page, you’ll be able to see ”website clicks”.
Stories
If you have posted a Story and added a link, you can see how many people have visited your website as a result of your story, by tapping on your story and tapping the analytics section of that story.
Use a link-shortening tool
A way you can measure traffic from Instagram is by using a link-shortening tool.
Through a link-shortener, you take an already existing link, and then the tool creates a new, customized link which you can track.
You can use a service like bit.ly (there are plenty out there), create your custom link, and then get statistics and insights into o see how many people are clicking your link.
Conclusion
Many marketers insist that it isn’t possible to drive website traffic from Instagram, but considering all of the different methods and approaches listed in this article, that is just not true.
While Instagram is known for being a little more challenging when it comes to driving website traffic due to the fact that Instagram has limited the number of places where you can distribute clickable links, however, that is not to say that it isn’t possible to drive traffic. You just need to find new approaches.
