Five Things You Can Do Today To get Website Visitors to Check Out Your Instagram Channel (Podcast Post)

What you’ll learn today in this [Marketing Minute]… is how to get people to your Instagram channel from your website. This actually came into me as a question. Somebody asked, “What is an effective way to get company website viewers to check out your Instagram?” And so I have compiled my answer to that question into five different points.

*NOTE: For all these methods… Instagram has to be a major, major part of your marketing plan. You don’t want to be sending people off of your website to go check out Instagram if it’s not a major part of your marketing plan. With that in mind, here are FIVE ways that you can get website visitors to check out your Instagram channel.

Some of these five things might be a little bit advanced if you’re not actively in the back end of your website and know how to work with some of the plugins and stuff. You might want your website developer to listen to this and help you out with it. But hey, they’re really not that hard. All of this stuff you can do, and I want to make it as easy as possible.

If you do all five of these you should have a pretty rock-star website as far as your Instagram connection goes. All right?

So, here we go. Here are 5 Things You Can Do To Get Someone To Check Out Your Instagram Channel From Your Website.

#1. Put Instagram and Other Social Icons On Your Blog Posts

So the first thing I would recommend that you do is put social media icons on your blog post. If you’re blogging, especially with WordPress it’s very easy to do this. You can put social media icons, so let’s say that you have a Facebook account, an Instagram account and maybe a YouTube but let’s just say Instagram for now. You can put a little row of icons at the top of your blog post. Also at the bottom or only at the top or only at the bottom. However you choose to set it up doesn’t really matter. The point is every single blog post has links to your social media. It’s pretty easy to do this with plugins. You can Google, what I recommend that you do is Google this phrase, “best social media plugins for WordPress.”

There’s an article that I found that says the 10 best social media plugins for WordPress 2017. They created a great starter list:

• Monarch, which is part of the Elegant Themes membership.
• Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress which is $14,
• Simple Share Buttons Adder, which is free.
• Social Sharing by Danny which is free.
• Add This which is free.
• Shareaholic, which is free. We used Shareaholic for years as our plugin of choice.
• Another one is Share This. It’s free and that one works really well.
• And Floating Social Bar, which is free.
• Jet Pack is free and
• Mashare is free.

Anyway, check out that post. The easiest way to find it is just Google best social media plugins for WordPress and there’s lots of articles online.

Another thing that you could do with this, with these plugins is the ones that have floating bars is let’s say somebody’s scrolling down through your blog post reading it. The social icon bar can be sliding along with you. It can be clear on the left hand side of the page and just sort of tracking along as you read down through and subtlety saying check out my social media. That’s point number one. Relatively easy to do is add social media icons to your blog posts.

#2. Add Social Icons Including Instagram To Your Website Header

On your website, up there where your menu bar is, add your little social media icons there as well. It’s very, very common. It’s very typical. Our eyes travel up there and it’s easy to show people hey, I’m on social media. I’m on Instagram. Here’s a button.

If someone lands on your website and they are an Instagram user and they see that, they’ll click on it and say you know what, I want to go see what this person’s Instagram is like.

I have a tip or some advice I guess for you on this. Make sure that on the mobile version of your website that it looks right. So it’s pretty easy when you’re working on your desktop computer and you have your website all spread out there and you’re adding those social media icons above your menu bar, up there in the header, it all looks great. But you forget to check the mobile version. Always pull up your website on your mobile version and make sure that those social icons look right. You might want to tweak it and move it around on your mobile version so that it looks right, you know what I mean?

It’s like you’re working with two websites. You have your desktop version and your mobile version but it’s all one website so make sure when you’re adding these social media icons that it looks right on both.

#3. Put Instagram Image Link In Your Footer and Sidebar

Create a large graphical link and put it in your footer or it could even be in your side bar. So if you have a blog post and you have a side bar with some different links, you can create an image that links to your Instagram.

Now there’s actually a really slick way of doing this. You could use a plugin like SnapWidget.com to generate this. The way Snap Widget works, it’s an easy way to stream your photos and your videos to your website. “Snap Widget is the best Instagram, Twitter and Facebook widget for automatically displaying your content.” According to the sales copy on their website.

What you do is you set up your account in Snap Widget and you link your Instagram to it and everything. Then you embed that code in your website like footer down at the bottom or in your sidebar. It’s usually a square image with nine Instagram pictures in that square image. It updates so if somebody comes back a month later your Instagram feed should be updated to your most recent pictures.

It’s a nice, big square image and it’s saying, basically it’s saying look, I’m on Instagram, come check me out. People while they’re on your website might see that and say hmm, I want to go see what this person has on their channel and they click on it and go check out your Instagram channel.

Another way is you could actually create your own graphical image. Design it or have your designer design it, this beautiful square image and it says check out my Instagram or whatever. Put it in your sidebar or down at your footer and make sure that image is clickable and when they click it links out to your Instagram channel and takes them there. That’s just another way that you could do that.

#4. Place Instagram Image Button At Bottom Of Website Pages

All right, point number four is to create a large graphic link at the bottom of each web page. So what you would do here is design a custom graphic that’s large and attractive and calls people to click on it and check out your Instagram.

Let’s say you have an “about page” that is internal. Someone goes inside your website and they’re reading your about page.

Create a custom graphic. Usually web pages are around 600 pixels wide, or whatever, so I would create an image about 600 pixels wide, maybe 200 or 300 tall. It can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. I’m picturing some text on it that says “Check Out Our Instagram Pictures,” and then in parenthesis, “Updated Daily,” and then a button or something on that image that says, “Click Here To See More.”

When you click on it, it links out to your Instagram channel and takes them there. That’s another way to drive people to your Instagram channel from your website. You could place that image on all of your internal pages or it could be on just certain pages that you choose.

If you had a web page that’s featuring your social media you could put that image there and they could click on it and go see your Instagram.

#5. Have A Dedicated Instagram Portfolio Page

All right, here’s our last one. Have a dedicated Instagram portfolio page. You all have your portfolio page, you have your gallery. If you don’t have the time, or you don’t have a person updating, maintaining your website for you, your gallery page will quickly get out of date. You’ll have old pictures there soon. Either you need to have someone updating those pictures or here’s a way that you could use Instagram to create your portfolio page for you. There’s a really nice WordPress plugin called Instagram portfolio. In their words it’s a beautiful, modern and responsive Instagram portfolio WordPress plugin.

There’s some really cool things I like about this plugin. You can size it to whatever you want so inside your web page. Let’s say you have a gallery page or a portfolio page and you embed this code in your, in that page. It pulls from Instagram and loads all of your pictures right there for you and it keeps it up to date. Another cool thing I like is down at the bottom, I mean you can activate this within the plugin but it will put a load more button. It will display like nine pictures or whatever automatically but then if your website visitor wants to see more they can click load more and it doesn’t make them leave your website and go to Instagram. It just loads more Instagram pictures right there in your website for them. That’s really good.

Another thing that I really like about this is it has a Light Box feature. That means it will open the photos in Light Box or it will pop open a box right there in your website so they can see that picture or the video or whatever it is that you have on your Instagram.

Finally it’s responsive. It looks great on your desktop version of your website or the mobile version of your website.

That is a very effective way to create a portfolio using your Instagram channel but it’s within your website and stays there. Of course if they’re like you know what, I want to see this on Instagram then they can click on it and go check out your Instagram, and all of your description is there too. It’s not just your picture but everything you said about that picture is included in that embedded Instagram feed.

My Quick & Painless Recap

All right, quick recap here.

• Number one, put social icons on blog posts so you can put them at the top and bottom of your blog posts.
• Number two, you can put social icons in your header and in the header of your mobile version.
• Number three, create or use a plugin like Snap Widget to create a nice graphical image of your Instagram and put it in your side bar and down in your footer.
• Number four, create a large, beautiful graphic that is a link and you can put that at the bottom of each of your web pages or any web page you want.
• Finally number five, have a dedicated Instagram portfolio page.

If You Want More Help Getting It Done – Let Me Know

That’s it. There you have it. Those are my five things you can do today to get website visitors to check out your Instagram channel. You guys, this is kind of an overview of how this all works. If you’re scratching your head saying I don’t have any idea how to do this and you want me to help you or you want me to create a tutorial or something like that, reach out to me and let me know. I don’t want to create something like that and everybody’s like we don’t really need that. It’s a waste of my time, but if you guys want help with it or you want to know how to do it or you want to hire us to do it, I mean I’m open to all of that but just let me know. Otherwise we’ll just keep plugging away.

Be A Protractor – Make A Difference!

That’s The Marketing Minute for today. Hope that’s helpful for you and your business and how to get website visitors to check out your Instagram channel. Hope you’re all doing well and remember, you’re a #Protractor so go out there and make a difference. The next time you go on the job, smile at your client, tell them how happy you are that you get to work for them. Let them know that you’re there to serve them. You are here to make a difference in your communities and you’re doing that so keep it up. I’m behind you all the way. This protractor community is behind you and with that, I’ll see you in the next post.

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Thank you for joining me today. If you have any further questions or comments, please join the conversation in the comments below.

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