An Instagram Hack for Evergreen Content
Custom short links to drive traffic from Instagram
Creativity means more than creating content or crafting tweets. It means figuring out how to make different services work together to work for you.
People like to post photos on Instagram to help share their newest blog post, and that is an awesome way to get cross-platform interaction on your social channels. What happens when you write another blog post or choose to support a different cause with your profile link?
When that #linkinbio link changes after your next blog post, but people still look through your old instagram photos, give them a way to access that old post you were referencing!
Bitly custom short domains is your answer.
I rarely see any bitly type shortlinks in instagram text, but I believe it could help instagram users without having to pay for sponsored posts that give you the ability to have someone click a link.
For Example
Anyone who sees this Instagram post from now until the end of the internet can go to fdag.co/twitinsta and learn how to set up IFTTT.
I send people to my post about GMOs with lela.im/WILDGMO and lela.im/smedd links to a post about social media engagement.
Very simple and easy to remember!
These links are case-sensitive though so every letter counts! I usually make my links in all lower-case letters so that typing them in is the easiest it can be. You can use letters, numbers, and even dashes in Bitly links. There can never be two bitly custom links with the exact same /ending, so sometimes you will run into this. It’s very similar to a username already being taken. It’s often not hard to find an even better custom short /ending for your link. As much fun as it would be to have the only bitly link with /food, unless someone knows the short domain that goes with it, it’s not likely to get typed in anyway. However, even if people don’t remember your short link, bit.ly/ your custom ending will still get them there! See http://bit.ly/food, it’s a random photo file from someone’s website but when needed it can be very useful!
I love the easy sharing opportunity that bitly provides, and it can be a bridge from Instagram to your site for those dedicated photo-philes you connect with there. Rumors are swirling that instagram may add clickable links, so why not be prepared!
