For so many people, Instagram has become so much more than just a fun app to share pictures of your lunch on. The social media platform has become a giant when it comes to promoting a business, with everyone from influencers to entrepreneurs relying on Instagram success to expand their client base. However, even though Instagram is such a powerful promotional tool, it has one big drawback that can seriously impede the success of a business and that’s the issue of the “Link in Bio”.
What is Link In Bio?
You’ve probably seen those three words at the end of every Insta post featuring any kind of product or service. In order to get more of your followers connected with your actual website or shop landing page, you need some way to redirect them smoothly from your posts to your other social media outlets. The problem that anyone doing social media marketing faces, however, is that Instagram only lets you have just the one link in your bio section that connects your page to the rest of your online presence.
More links, more opportunities
When it comes to online promotion, connectivity is key and if you’re trying to expand your brand or boost sales, this connectivity needs to be swift and relevant – that’s not easy to achieve if you’ve only got one link to play with. Moreover, Instagram is constantly updating its algorithms and that often means that older posts wind up leading followers to outdated URLs – unless you’re planning on manually updating them every time, which of course, is very inefficient.
For a growing business to succeed you also need to crunch a lot of data about your shoppers behavioural trends and, as yet, the Instagram in-app shopping features offer very limited means by which you can actually analyse what your buyers are doing and why, which is crucial info for any successful marketing strategy.
Link in Bio Tools
Luckily, there’s a new slate of tools that can fix these problems and they’re colloquially referred to as Link in Bios or Link in Bio Tools. These tools are basically specialised URLs that redirect Instagram followers to an easy-to-navigate webpage that can include as many links as you need to all the rest of your online resources, from websites to portfolios to online shops to other social media pages, making them the ideal portal to give your followers full access to anything they might be interested in when it comes to your business.
Enter Direct.Me
Quite a few of these tools have popped up recently, so we’re going to take a look at a particular favourite – Direct Me – and take you through what these URLs can offer and how they can benefit your brand.
The setup itself is incredibly easy. It might take you a bit of time if you have a lot of online platforms that you want to include, but the Direct Me website offers a very user friendly and systematic approach to uploading all of your required information. Simply start by creating a login and you’ll immediately have a basic template to setup to start customising your links.
Cute little guides appear at every step to walk you through the setup process. You can include as many or as few items as you want.
It’s up to you how much of your online presence you want to include. When it comes to your more personal information, such as contact details, Direct Me does give you options to limit that data visibility if you prefer.
The idea of a profile like this is to make the link browsing experience as ergonomic and simple as possible, so Direct Me offers a bunch of different icons to add to your items, which not only gives it a more professional look but can also enhance the experience for visitors who don’t speak your language or have reading difficulties.
Pick whatever images you like, et voila!
When it comes to customising things like your images and colour schemes, it’s a good idea to try and match the style of your main webpage or Instagram profile, so as to maintain a more cohesive overall aesthetic, but you can easily make changes to any element of your profile whenever you need.
A Link in Bio is most effective when all of your connected links are ready for use, so it’s best not to add links to works-in-progress or incomplete pages – wait til your new social media profile or website is ready to go and then add it as an item to your Link in Bio.
Direct Me doesn’t limit the level of customisation and there are no hidden fees so once you sign up, you have access to all the platform’s features right away, as well as some very useful additional tools for data analytics and donation setup.
Whatever new product launches or special events that might require changes and updates to your website or other resources, a Link in Bio means that you won’t need to constantly update your Instagram feed and ensure that your followers are immediately redirected to the most up-to-date webpages without you having to constantly go back and manually amend your profile.
Different Link in Bio tools can be more suited to your particular needs, depending on what you’re hoping to achieve with your social media content or the size and scope of your business. Direct Me is among the most versatile platforms out there that can easily be adapted to your particular needs and is the perfect tool to streamline your followers’ browsing experience and maximise the impact of your marketing campaigns.
