 Welcome to The Journey. Today we're going to talk about how to use Instagram to drive website traffic. The time where content strategy is key. It's not enough to have an engaged Instagram following who only like and comment with heart-eye emojis on your post. You need to start using Instagram to drive traffic from the social platform to your website if you want to move your audience from interested followers to paying customers. And then we're going to show you the value of having an Instagram account for your business and give you some steps you can take to best use it to your advantage. But before we do, let's talk about why Instagram is important for your marketing strategy. Nowadays, if you're a small business, you not only need to have a website, but also a presence on relevant social media platforms. Instagram in particular has become the social platform of choice for millennials and some older Gen Zers. In addition to using Instagram to upload pics of their daily activities, people also use Instagram as a new form of search engine. Because so many people are on Instagram, 1 billion monthly active users to be precise. Having an account just for your business is a solid way to acquire customers and attract attention. Again, just gaining followers shouldn't be the end goal. Driving audiences from your Instagram account over to your website so you can convert followers into leads and customers is the real achievement. So yeah, let's talk about the tips for driving traffic from Instagram. Link your site in your bio is our first tip here and it's kind of a no brainer. If you're only going to do one thing, do this. There's that one thing that makes it difficult to use Instagram to drive traffic to your website and that is that there isn't an option to include clickable links within your post captions or comments. However, you can add one primary clickable link in your bio. So make sure to make this a call to action as something like click below to grab my free ebook or whatever is relevant to your reason to send them to that link. So if you have a lengthy URL, avoid long ugly links by shortening your URL with Billy. Plus, if you sign up for an account, there's a free option. Don't worry. You'll be able to track how many clicks that link has received, which is super helpful knowledge to have. And if you have multiple links to promote, awesome. You can use a tool like link tree or link that bio or if you're savvy enough, create your own mobile links landing page on your website. And one thing you want to avoid is linking two pages that have poor mobile experiences. So Instagram is primarily a mobile first platform. And while you can view it on a desktop, most users access Instagram via their phone, the mobile app. So keep that in mind when you link out to content. Yeah, and direct users to your bio link in your captions and in your comments. So don't expect audiences to visit your bio links all on their own. Once you have a link system set up in your bio, start driving audiences to that link in your content and sell them on taking action by sharing what value or benefit they will get by going over to click your link. And for those lucky few that are super popular on Instagram, you can add links to your Instagram stories that swipe up feature. So while you can't link in post content, you can link in your story content if you have over 10,000 followers. And if you don't, it's kind of a good goal to have to kind of reach to while you're posting along. But now if you have that large following, this is a great way to seed links in your content and use Instagram to drive traffic to your website. However, if you don't have enough followers to include a link in your story, you can tell users to message you for the link and it's easy for users to direct message DM you from a story. So ask them to DM you and send back the link for an easy sharing system. Our next way is to link to products using Instagram shopping. And this is a newish feature similar to tagging your friend in a photo, but you're tagging your products instead. If you haven't heard about this and you're selling stuff with your store, your website, or even Instagram itself, start using this. But Instagram shopping turns your post and page into a storefront where users can click on your post, see prizes and be directed to your website to make a purchase. This is a smart way to do things. Drive traffic and initiate sales and to use Instagram shopping. First off, make sure that you have a business account. That's a key and that you are in one of the supported markets and then create a business manager account and a Facebook catalog. And then you can link to products in your posts. Let audiences know that they can shop on your post by mentioning it in your caption and including a CTA to click to shop. You can also include product stickers in your Instagram stories that lead users to your products. And you can also sell directly to users on Instagram. Decide what is the best for your business selling directly on Instagram or driving traffic to your website to sell there. Both options are definitely viable. Just which one's better for your business. Yeah. And consider running Instagram ads and working with influencers from boosting posts to setting up campaigns to promote stories or posts. Test a few paid ads to grow your following and see what engages your audience and working with other accounts who already have a lot of followers and or a similar target on ads. It will add more of a human element to your marketing efforts. And you can find ways to work with them from free partnerships, yes free, where you share each other's content to paid promotions, where the influencer promotes your content or brand. I actually, one of my favorite local surf brands, they do a great job of this of reaching out to the surfers that are tagging their brand, their boards in their Instagram posts and then reach out. Hey, you know, next time you're out catching waves, we'd love it if you would tag our brand degree 33 surfboards and then we'll repost you. I bet they send them some swag too. Yeah. And now you can see why it's so important for your brand to be on Instagram. Not only does it help build brand awareness and engage your community, it can also help you drive valuable website traffic. So leverage these tips to use Instagram to drive traffic to your website. That's a wrap. You just learned how to use Instagram to drive website traffic. Be sure to comment below and subscribe to our channel. Make sure you ring that bell. So these episodes first, this is the journey. We'll see you next time.