#Instagram. It’s is a social media channel you don’t want to underestimate! And it’s a powerful way to get your message to the masses.
Check out the final portion of my interview with Nils Smith on a recent episode of The Dunham Podcast:
Trent: What’s the most effective way to drive people beyond Instagram to your website or event page?
Nils: There are basically three ways that people drive traffic outside of Instagram.
First, when you reach over 10,000 followers on a business account, you can use the swipe up functionality within Instagram stories. Now, what I’ve found is that most people never actually swipe up. Some will obsess over getting to 10,000 for the swipe up, just to find out that less than 1% of people actually swipe up in those features.
Secondly, you include your website link in your bio. It’s the one place where people can link and then go to your website or wherever you want to take them. Lately, features like taplink or linktree have become popular, as you can put a series of links into your bio.
So in your post, you would likely say “link in bio”, meaning that if they click on your bio, they can get to the link.
And lastly, we have advertising within Instagram. We can re-target our own followers if we have something specific outside of Instagram that we want to engage them with. The easiest way to do that is to ‘boost’ posts on Instagram through advertising. And that allows you to have a link within a post as well. So when you have a specific post that you want to link, if you will put some advertising dollars behind it, you can have a link within your advertising dollar.
And you can do this by just spending around $5 or $10 per post. Just know that it’s not the best ROI of all the advertising. In fact, ‘swipe up ads’ within Instagram stories or Facebook ads are a much better ROI. But if you really think there’s a post that you need to link, and you’re convinced it’s the right place to do it, you can spend a minimal amount on these ads.
Trent: What other types of advice do you have for people who are currently developing content?
Nils: It’s interesting - 70% of all content consumed on Facebook is now video, and we’re seeing that shift to Instagram as well. It started as this cool app that allows you to put filters on top of your pictures but it’s so much more now. It’s moved from pictures to videos to stories to IGTV.
And it’s doable!
My 10-year-old has her own YouTube channel, and she has recently learned ‘WeVideo’, an online video editing app. If my 10-year-old can edit videos, you can too!
It really just entails taking what would normally be a graphic meme and animating it through some of these new apps. It’s really powerful and it catches people’s attention. You don’t need expensive video editing software to do this, just some of these basic templates and plugging your branding and your messaging into it.
Trent: Nils, thanks for helping us consider our strategy as we approach a platform like this and showing us how to grow and engage that audience. Can you offer any final thoughts or tips?
Nils: Yes! Connect with us on Instagram. You can find us @trentmdunham, @nilssmith and @dunhamandcompany.
See you there!
For practical strategies and tips on reaching more people through Instagram, check out The Dunham Podcast Episode, All About Instagram.
More Insights from Dunham+Company: “Executing Your Vision, Part Two“