How to cross-promote using Instagram

In this new InfoBunny article, we show you can cross-promote using Instagram to great effect on auto-pilot with IFTTT…

Are you using Instagram to cross-promote your content?

The absence of clickable links on Instagram can be a problem for your Instagram marketing strategy if you are trying to get clickthroughs from Instagram to your site.

Instagram has gone some way to helping us with a help themselves approach by allowing links on Instagram stories. However, you need to qualify for links to stories by either being a verified member or by having a business account with more than 10000 followers associated with the account.

Clickable links on Instagrams posts remains a problem for anyone looking to build an Instagram marketing strategy. I did address this problem and go some way to fixing this with my article called How to get clickable links on Instagram.

The absence of links on posts has spawned a number of 3rd party sites that provide you with the missing link functionality. The downside to these sites is that your images with clickable links are on a different site to Instagram and the problem of no links on Instagram remains.

All they really offer is a  cross-promotion copy of your Instagram profile that you link to from your bio link on Instagram. You then still have the problem of getting someone to click your bio link.

In this article, I am going to give you a free alternative to the 3rd party sites using Instagram enabling you to cross-promote effectively offering basically the same as what the 3rd party sites do.

These 3rd party sites that offer your images with clickable links are great they offer you the missing Instagram functionality. The big problem is that the clickable images are not on Instagram, they are on a completely different site.

This is not a good idea for 2 main reasons

1/ Its hard enough to get people to your profile page as it is before you even try to get them to leave to go to another site

2/ Its an extra step to then get someone to your end destination. You need to go from Instagram to the 3rd party site then onto your site. If you use the Instagram bio link for your site link and then use my clickable links on Instagram trick you stay on Instagram and focus on getting views to your profile where your site link is. So with my hack, it is one less step.

If you do still like the 3rd party site idea and it works for you then you have to be prepared to pay for the service. But again as mentioned in the intro I have another solution that is an alternative to this that will really help your views and follows and it is 100% free.

So rather than signing up to a 3rd party site what I propose is to use Pinterest via IFTTT instead.

How to cross-promote using Instagram

Instagram to Pinterest sharing trick using IFTTT

IFTTT is a site that allows you to automate functionality between sites and apps. And what we are going to set up an Applet for Instagram sharing to a Pinterest board so that every time we add a new image to Insta the same image plus the description and tags goes to Pinterest to a board that we choose.

Now there are some pluses and minuses to adopting this strategy, so you have to judge if this works for you or not.

Here is how it is done

1/ If you are not already a Pinterest member then go make a Pinterest account and create a board for Instagram and give it a name.

2/ At this point, I highly recommend that you set your account and board up for SEO. This will maximise your views, bring you more shares and gain you more Pinterest followers and ultimately more traffic.

Don’t switch off at the thought of SEO because this is dead simple. Have a read of my article called Pinterest Traffic Generation Guide – How To Leverage Your Content

3/ Go to IFTTT  (If this then that) and create an account.

4/ Login to your IFTTT account and click the search box and type in “Instagram”. The click Instagram to go to all the Insta Applet automations or as they are known on IFTTT recipes

5/ Scroll down the page until you find “Sync your new Instagrams to a Pinterest board” and then click the recipe.

6/ Turn on the “Sync your new Instagrams to Pinterest” recipe

7/ Turn on the notifications so that you know when the Applet runs

8/ Add a pinboard to sync to (pin to)

9/ Click Save and you are done

Pluses to sharing from Instagram to Pinterest

1/ You are cross-promoting from one social site to another. Both Instagram and Pinterest are visual sites so it just makes good sense to combine the two.

2/ Your descriptions and any tags carry over from Instagram to Pinterest. So your Instagram post will look the same on Pinterest.

3/ Pinterest is a whole new audience for your Instagram posts

4/ Followers will grow on Pinterest as a result of the Applet running and sharing from Instagram

5/ Repins and clickthroughs from Pinterest to your site and pages

6/ Pins on Pinterest appear natural even though they are automated

The downside to sharing from Instagram to Pinterest

1/ Links won’t carry over to your Pinterest shares. If you add a text link on the Insta post it will be exactly that just text and not clickable but then it is not clickable on Instagram

2/ You need to think about how you structure your posts on Instagram, particularly towards mentions as they will only work if the person you mention has a Pinterest account under the same name on Pinterest.

So as you can see there are far more positives to adopting this sharing trick than negatives. Its something that I do, but it still doesn’t fix the Clickable links issue we have on Instagram. And if you are setting it up like one of these 3rd party site options with the board link as your bio link then your still asking people to leave Instagram.

But then perhaps that’s not a bad thing as Pinterest is way better an option than Instagram (my opinion) with regards to all the functionality and it is just way easier to get masses of shares.

So there you go that is how you cross-promote using Instagram to build your Instagram marketing strategy 😉

How to cross-promote using Instagram – Takeaways

The reason for this article was really to show you how to duplicate what these 3rd party sites offer you. They are a kind of fix to give you clickable links on Instagram but you gotta get visitors from Insta to the 3rd party site and the functionality they provide costs money.

As you can see you can pretty much do the same with IFTTT for free. With IFTTT you cab cross-promote using Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or just about any social site. The big negative is that links don’t carry across, but all tags and descriptions do when you share to Pinterest. And a big, big plus you have a whole new audience who will click through and at the same time grow your followers on Pinterest.

So you need to decide what is important. If you want clickable links then my clickable links trick is by far the best method. You could, of course, use an applet recipe on IFTT to cross-promote using Instagram to share on Twitter or Facebook and the links would carry over then. But that is a whole nother article to show you how to do that.

That’s all for now.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Make sure you subscribe to the comments so that you are notified when I reply.

Regards

Dexter

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Summary

Article Name

How to cross-promote using Instagram

Description

Instagram is definitely a social for the mobile generation because it is just so limiting to what you can do. You can't do anything spectacular with a mobile and some text. You have no clickable links, no option to easily post from the laptop. However, with IFTTT you can cross-promote using Instagram to great effect.

Author

Dexter Roona

Publisher Name

Infobunny

Publisher Logo