Suppose you have a business account on Instagram set up. In that case, you probably are already aware that the social media platform is forever adding new and exciting features to enable its users to have a better marketing experience. However, with more than a billion active users on the platform, getting your Instagram page noticed above its competitors requires some severe digital marketing planning and strategies. It also calls for being up to date with the latest trends on Instagram. A fantastic new feature that can help you direct more traffic and engagement to your account is Instagram Story Swipe Up. Getting your Instagram Story noticed it has already proven to bring higher visibility and searchability on Instagram. If you can get your viewers to see an embedded link in your Story and further click on it, you can capitalize on the benefits of using Instagram Stories even further. Several social media tools sites like InstaGrowing are now offering services that focus on the Swipe Up feature of Instagram Stories to allow you to experience this same advantage and boost engagement in your Instagram account.
Image by Kirill Averianov from Pixabay
What Is the Instagram Story Swipe Up?
You are probably already aware that Instagram Story is a type of disappearing post that allows you to publish content that stays on the platform for only 24 hours (unless you choose to mark it as a Highlight). Despite its temporariness, or perhaps due to it, the Stories attract a lot of audience traction. Instagram’s Stories even appear in a separate horizontal feed on the top of a user’s feed. They have a colored circle border around the user’s profile photo, indicating that they have uploaded a new Story/Story segment. Instagram’s Stories have a different algorithm explicitly programmed to make them visible to followers in the chronological order of the uploads created.
In comparison, the regular posts are ranked on a user feed depending on their engagement rate. Hence, one’s Insta Stories have a higher chance of being visible to followers than regular posts on the home feed. Typically, you can upload photos, short videos, graphs, polls, and several other types of content on your Story. The Swipe Up feature is a new update that lets you add a clickable link on your Instagram Story in addition to all of these. It gives you the possibility of leading your followers to pages outside Instagram.
Why Is Instagram Story Swipe Up a Great Means to Attract Audience Traffic to Your Business?
Although it is one of the most popular social marketing sites out there today, Instagram does not allow its users too many options to put up working links.
Before Swipe Up was introduced, the only place one could put a working link was the bio section of one’s Instagram profile. You still cannot create posts with embedded or clickable links, although you can always use a call-to-action text directing attention to the URL you add to your bio.
The only other clickable posts you can create on Instagram now are Shoppable tags. This feature allows you to convert your post into a shopping page if you have your Facebook catalog page connected to your Instagram account and if the feature is available in your country. However, as a business, you do not always want to create posts for shopping. The limited nature of these linking options often puts companies at a disadvantage when they want to direct consumers to specific pages or websites to suit their marketing needs.
With the Instagram Swipe Up feature, this issue gets rectified to an extent. As the name suggests, visitors only need to “swipe up” or tap on the link to arrive at the connected landing page.
Is Instagram’s Swipe Up Feature Available to All Profiles?
As with most of Instagram’s new features, there are certain restrictions on who can use Instagram’s Swipe Up feature. This feature is available only to:
- Business account holders who have 10,000 or more followers.
- Businesses that may not have 10,000 followers but have been given a verification badge by Instagram.
- Business accounts that have their IGTV channels.
How Do You Know If Instagram’s Swipe Up Feature Is Available to You? How Do You Use It?
When you create a Story, check to see if you have a link icon on the top. If you see it, it means you can add a URL to your Story. All you have to do is:
- Tap the link icon.
- Type in the landing page’s URL you wish to direct your followers to.
- Add a call-to-action text that encourages the viewer to click the link.
- Additionally, you can also tag your business partners under the “more options” section and also permit your business partners to promote the Story with the embedded web link.
How Can You Use Instagram Swipe Up to Generate More Traffic and Engagement to Your Business?
Now that you know how to create a Swipe up link in your Story use it strategically to improve your audience engagement and lead generation. Here is what can help you achieve this:
Make your settings public: You can choose your audience on Instagram. Hence to ensure your Stories have the maximum audience reach, turn your settings to public. You can check your Instagram Insights to keep track of how many accounts have viewed your Story. This will allow you to understand better how much traffic generation and engagement you can get from the Story Swipe up feature.
Post Instagram Stories frequently: Since Instagram Stories have a separate feed, most often to be among the first few profiles on the Story feed. The more you post the higher your chances of being visible to most of your followers. The more you post, the higher your chances of being visible to most of your followers. The more ahead you are on the feed, the greater are the chances of your followers viewing your Story and acting on any call-to-action link you may have placed on it.
Market pages you want your consumer attention directed towards: Plan and create links to landing sites that are likely to bring the most benefits to your business. Some of the most valuable links to add to this feature are:
- Shoppable Sites: If creating Shoppable posts does not suit your needs or is unavailable in your country, you can link an e-site in your Story for your followers to buy your merchandise from. If you are an influencer or affiliate marketer, use this space to direct your followers to the URL they can purchase the product you are endorsing from.
- Product Reviews: Is there a website that has been giving your products rave reviews? You can link their page here to provide them with the audience traction they need. In turn, you can gain the goodwill required for your business from their endorsement of your goods. You can also link to interviews or mentions of your business. Conversely, if you have a great review to share of a fellow Instagram account’s services, this is where you add the link to your endorsement page.
- IGTV channel: When you upload long video content on your IGTV channel, use the swipe-up feature of Instagram Story for self-promotion.
- Other Social Media links: You can use your Stories to direct your audience to your updates on other social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to name just a few.
- Consumer Relations: Direct your followers to advertisements, survey pages, mailing lists, consumer information pages, or any other relevant landing pages that will help you reach your marketing goals. The URLs you update on your Stories can be a great source of brand building, customer communication, and humanizing your business.
- Blogs/Vlogs: Instagram Stories are a great place to direct your followers to your latest blog/blog updates. You will be building your Instagram engagement rate and increasing traffic to any person or affiliate website you are using for your business by using this space productively.
Enhance your Swipe up Story visually: InstagramStoriesallows you to add several filters and effects that can make your content fun, engaging and eye-catching. Not only can you add stickers, gifs, hashtags, graphs, and polls, but you can also add music and voiceovers. Moreover, you can use effects like boomerang and superzoom to get more audience engagement. All of these enhancements can be creatively used to provide information as well as general consumer interest. Consider using some of these visually engaging enhancements to your Story to get your audience’s attention to the embedded link. This is likely to create more traffic conversions to the Swipe uplink. Also, keep in mind here that although “swipe up” is the typical call-to-action phrase used to direct visitors to the embedded link, you can use any similar word to lead to audience engagement.
Create call to action posts directing visitors to your Story: The Stories that appear on top of an individual’s feed also consider who the individual interacts more with. This leads to the possibility that your Story might not be a top feature on your followers’ accounts despite frequent updates if they have not been interacting too much with your account. To ensure that your followers aren’t missing out on your link updates in your Stories, use the other posting formats of the platform to direct attention to your Stories. Create short reels that call your Story to your followers’ attention. Make a keyword enriched post that ends with a call-to-action requesting your viewers to check your Story out for further information. This way, even if your Story does not appear on the top of your followers’ feeds, they are likely to see a post that can lead them to click on your profile and checking out your Story.
Collaborate with other brands: Whether you are an influencer or a company account, collaborations with others in your niche or allied industries can bring remarkable success to your marketing strategy when it comes to building a presence on Instagram. Use Instagram Stories to provide links to your latest collaboration projects and teasers for upcoming ones. As the Stories feature allows you to share the Story with business partners, keep in mind that when you use this space as a shared site for promoting links, you may have limited editing abilities for the Story. On the other hand, your Story will be viewable by not just your followers but also those of your collaborators. This will likely bring in more engagement with your Story and more traffic conversions to your embedded link.
To Sum Up
Experiment and explore your Instagram Stories to create maximum possible traffic to desired landing pages using the Swipe Up feature. If the feature is not available to you yet, it is worth your while to boost your follower count up or get your account Instagram-verified. Make the most of the features to bring your business the best audience engagements. You are sure to make it a regular part of your Instagram marketing strategy.