News & Insights

Instagram Updates Marketers Should Know

In the world of social media marketing, the only thing more constant than change is politicos posting something that sets the internet ablaze with fury. But for us marketers, we’re used to planning for a shift in tactics with the updates to social platforms always imminent.

The newest player in question is Instagram, with 1.07 billion users worldwide with 71% of them being businesses using sponsored content as part of their marketing strategy and campaigns. Utilizing Instagram’s platform for advertising has dramatically increased in the past few years even though Insta has been a mainstay for some time after being acquired by Facebook in 2012.

The big change that occurred August 31 was removing the ability to add a “swipe up” link in Instagram stories for accounts with less than 10,000 followers. A clickable link sticker has replaced the feature. This comes as a blow to newer accounts trying to use different social tactics to point to campaign landing pages. As a digital marketer, I know this impacts my work, and I’m here to share some workarounds.

Use IGTV

Swipe up links can be added to any IGTV video. With video being the holy grail of mediums across social platforms, why not shift resources to produce more? There are many apps that make it easy for marketers to create content on their smartphones that is ready to upload in an external facing capacity.

Add souped-up bio links

“See link in bio” is the influencer calling card, but it can be a marketer’s workaround as well. Graphics can be posted with supplemental text urging users to find more information via a bio link that acts as a portal to a website housing relevant content. Depending on your goal, which could be more product-based vs. service-oriented, linkin.bio is your best friend to drive traffic to specific products on your site.

Vanity URLs are your friend

Want an even lower lift for link promotion? Make sure your URLs are short, memorable and made up of keywords only, or a vanity of the longer URL. This way, you can add the link right in a graphic or last slide in a carousel slide post for a user to memorize and directly add to a browser. For example, if your landing page is www.coolwebsite.com/about/science-things/meteor-showers, you may want to shorten it for marketing purposes by creating a vanity such as coolwebsite.com/meteors.