Instagram has been a pretty-self enclosed social network from the beginning. This platform is nowhere near like Facebook or Pinterest where you can freely share links – the more the merrier.

With Insta, you have only one chance to send people off the platform with the only organic live link in your bio. So, how do you leverage this chance (not counting advertising, of course) to send the traffic somewhere else and maximize your results?

How to ensure they click in the first place

First of all, let’s talk about why would anyone casually scrolling through their Instagram feed choose to get off the network to go somewhere else?

The only way these people will click on the link is due to a combination of these three things:

• They absolutely love your feed and want to see more of your brand;
• Your bio is so intriguing, they have to know more;
• You have an incredible offer for them waiting at a click of a link.

Once these three criteria are met, you should start seeing a healthy amount of traffic coming to your website from Instagram.

It always helps to have an enticing offer that would interest people. It may be a sale or discount code, but it’s best if you could give them something for free, even if it’s a simple checklist or a guide.

If you strongly decided to include multiple links in your Instagram bio, all of those inks have to be valuable and intriguing.

Multiple links on Instagram – the easiest way

The easiest, most popular way to get multiple live links in your Instagram bio is to use Linktree. They have both free and paid levels and it’s super easy to sign up and start using it right away.

Once you’re signed up, choose a few links you want to send your traffic to. Paste those URLs in and organize them with an easy drag-and-drop tool. You can always go in and reorganize your links or add and delete them.

What Linktree does is it acts as a middlemen between Instagram and your website. It houses all of your links and gives an insight into how many people clicked on each link. If you choose to upgrade to a paid subscription, it will break down those click by day.

Multiple links on Instagram – the easy way

I think Linktree came up with a great idea and addressed a need that was there for as long as Instagram itself.

However, you can recreate something similar to Linktree, yet

• Have more control over how the landing page looks,
• How many link choices you have at any given time,
• Have better insight into what happens to this traffic after they click the link.

Yes, it’s cool to have multiple live links in your Instagram bio and have an idea of the number of people clicking it, but if you truly want to get business insight into the quality of your Instagram traffic, you need much more information than daily clicks.

You need to know what these people do after they are redirected to your website:

• What do they do on the landing page?
• Do they click any links from there?
• How long are they staying on the page?
• Does 90 percent of them bounce off the page as quickly as they got there?
• Do these people convert, sign up for your email list, purchase, etc.?

You can know all of that — and more, such as their demographics — if you take just a few extra steps that won’t take more than 30 minutes of your time.

Landing page for Instagram

Let’s create a special landing page that is exclusive to Instagram. First of all, it makes tracking traffic on that page super easy – you’ll know that it all comes from Instagram.

Now, you can make this page as elaborate as you’d like or keep it as simple as Linktree interface itself – just a few links or buttons. One thing to keep in mind either way is that Instagram traffic is mobile, so your landing page has to be extremely mobile-friendly (you don’t want to ruin that first impression).

• Keep the page clean and visually-pleasing;
• Simplify, simplify, simplify until it hurts — the page will load much faster;
• Resize any graphics or videos only to the dimensions they’ll be used in – you shouldn’t insert huge images that will be displayed at only the fraction of the resolution.

I would also highly advise to only use a few links that truly count for your business and its bottom line. Do not try to send them in every direction possible or to every single piece of content you’ve got on your blog. I say keep it at three.

You might want to include a link to your products, your latest blog post or a video you feel especially proud of, a signup page for an upcoming webinar, and your contact page. The reason I recommend keeping their options limited is because, as humans, we get overwhelmed with too many choices.

When we see a wall of links (even if they’re very enticing), we are not sure where to start and might just close the browser window to avoid overwhelm. So, to improve your chances of the next click (and the next step in your funnel), keep it minimal and strategic.

Notice, however, I haven’t mentioned sending this traffic to the homepage. The reason is pretty similar. Most likely, your homepage paints a very broad picture of your brand. While it may be a good starting point for people who randomly stumbled across your site, it is not ideal for people who are already on your site and had some sort of previous interaction with your company (even if it’s on Instagram). Now that they’re on your website already, you want them to take the next step, whatever it may be for your business: whether it’s scheduling a call, signing up for a webinar, or placing an order. Homepages tend to have a lot of information and links crammed onto them. Again, this results in informational overload and choice fatigue to a point where they feel lost. Take them through a clear path of the obvious next steps.

Track it with shorteners

Now, to truly get all the data we are after, we will be using URL shorteners. I prefer to use Google URL Builder, but you can use ow.ly or bit.ly if you prefer.

I usually input information about source and medium into the URL itself; you can also input information about the content, if you want to.

Now that we have a monster of a link, click “Shorten URL” button. Copy the URL you’ve got into your Instagram bio and voilà!

Now, every time someone clicks on the link in your Instagram bio, you will have all the information you need about them. Analytical tools often report Instagram traffic as “Direct,” because all referrer information gets stripped away when switching between apps. You will know that they came from Instagram.

With Google URL Builder you now not only know that they indeed came from Instagram, but now you can also track them throughout the website. This referrer information will travel with them everywhere they go on your website, so you can slice it and dice it however you want.

Want to know which links they clicked from your landing page? There you have it.

Want to see how much time they spent on a given page? You have that information too.

Want to see how many people with Instagram as a referrer purchased something on your site (and even know how much they’ve spent)? You got it.

Want to see the breakdown of their age and gender? You can access that too!

Analyze the findings

At this point, you are all set! Click through all of the links, including the very first one, in your Instagram bio, to ensure everything is working smoothly and there are no dead links to be found.

You now have multiple live links in your Instagram bio and, what’s more important, insight into what people click on the most and what they do on your website.

Use this information to rearrange links with the most popular or the most highly-converting being up top. Improve landing pages, if Instagram traffic is not hanging out on your website for as long as you’d like.

Yet, most importantly, focus on creating engaging content that will leave people craving more of you and your brand.

Where do you send your Instagram traffic? Share in the comment section below or head over to Instagram @lesyaliu to continue the conversation.