How to Add Clickable Links on Instagram

Everyone’s favorite “look at me” platform Instagram is also a great place for bloggers looking to grow their online footprint. However, Instagram is unlike many other platforms when it comes to links. In this discussion I’m looking at how to add clickable links on Instagram, which is a problem many people can’t see their way through.

I’ve often written posts about links for SEO, but that’s not what we’re interested in here. We’re only interested in links that can drive a click visit from the Instagram platform to your blog… or to anywhere else for that matter.

At first sight, the options to add clickable links anywhere on Instagram seem limited. However there are several specific places you can add links to promote your latest blog post, offer or juicy tidbit you’ve found.

Some of these options may not be what you ultimately desire. This is becasue Instagram would need to enable clickable links across the board for that to happen. Instead we must cut our suits according to the cloth we have, adapt and work within the constraints.

What follows then are some of the ways you can adds links on Instagram that your followers can actually click.

How to Add a Clickable Link to Your Instagram Bio

The first and most obvious area on Instagram to add a link on is in your bio. The bio area permits all account holders to add a link to wherever they’d like it to point.

I’m going to show you two approaches:

• A standard link.
• A bio link tool.

Standard Bio Link

A standard links in an Instagram bio is something you might point your blog’s homepage. However you might also use it to deep link to some other location on your blog, for example a promotional landing page to encourage email signups.

On my Instagram page you’ll find my bio link here:

You add a clickable link to your bio clicking the “Edit Profile” button. This take you to the profile setting page where you’ll see the following options:

Simply add the link you want to display in the “Website” field and click the “Submit” button. This add a clickable link into your Instagram bio.

Bio Link Tools

What about if you’d like to show several links in your bio? As you can from the “Edit Profile” settings, there is only provision to add one link in the “Website” field.

Many people find the fact you can only add one link to your Instagram bio quite restrictive. There’s simply no mechanism for you can add more than one link into your Instagram bio. The way around this is to provide a link to a landing page to which you can add as many links as you’d like.

Bio link tools are designed to overcome the single link limitation on platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. They enable you to display more options than a single link to your homepage.

You have to create an account with a specific bio link tool provider to enable them. When you’ve signed up, you can use the tool to create a landing page with links you’d like to display. The tool then provides you with a URL to use as your bio link.

This URL takes you to the bio link tool domain and displays a page of the links you’ve specified. It acts like an intermediary page between the social media account and your blog.

Linktree Clickable Bio Links Example for Instagram

You can customize your link bio with styling options to make it fit the look and feel of your blog: see the example of my Linktree bio links above. Although the options are limited, you can at least tweak them to provide a more seamless transition between Instagram and your blog.

There are many bio link tools you use and most are free, with pro versions for more fancy functions:

An alternative would be to create a your own version of a link bio landing page on your own domain. In this way you can add the links you’d like to present styled in exactly the way you’d like.

For me this might be the preferred option because social media platforms are known not to like link bio tools. Some of them have banned bio tool use or marked them as spam in the past. However, if you really want more than one clickable link in your Instagram bio, this is the only option.

How to Add a Clickable Link on an Instagram Post

In brief…. you can’t add clickable URL links within Instagram posts to pages outside of the platform. You can add URLs into your posts, but they will only display as text and not as hypertext.

You can add a clickable link to your Instagram profile page by adding a callout to yourself (@your_username) but clicking this keeps you within the Instagram system.

If you want to promote a specific URL on your blog, the best thing to do is to add it within your post as text with a call to action to visit it to find out more. This makes it easier at least for people to copy and paste the URL into a browser address bar.

It’s not quite the same, but it’s better than nothing and the call to action might give people a gentle nudge.

Clickable Links on Instagram TV (IGTV)

IGTV is Instagram’s standalone app enabling users to share video up to 15 minutes length on mobile devices and up to an hour on desktops.

Aside from permitting you to upload more detailed video clips, IGTV also allows clickable links in the video description. However, users won’t see your description unless they click on the video title. Hence a call to action might encourage them to do so.

Clickable Links on Paid Instagram Promotions

Like many platforms, premium users get more bang for their buck. If you have an Instagram business account, you’ll be eligible to set up paid advertising campaigns.

Instagram advertising enables you to add clickable links into posts or stories you want to promote. Of course paid campaigns are not free, so you’ll need to stump up some cash if you’d like to use this function.

Paid promotion on Instagram charges on a pay per click (PPC) basis. Your promotions will be pushed out to the user demographic you target. Anyone seeing them and clicking your link results in a charge to your business account.

You can add such links into:

• Stories.
• Photos.
• Videos.
• Carousels.
• Collections

The exact price you’ll pay for each click will very enormously depending upon a range of different factors. In general, you could be looking at anything from $0.20 upwards for each click.

If you’re selling products or have some other way to monetize these clicks, this may work for you. For most others wanting a way to simply add links that followers can click, this might not make financial sense.

Clickable Links in Instagram Direct Messages

One final place to mention… you can add clickable links into Instagram DMs. Of course this isn’t going to satisfy the majority of users who want to add clickable links into their posts. As discussed though, there’s no way around that particular limitation other than using paid promotion.

Assuming you have good cause to reach out to your followers and and you aren’t spamming them, direct messages do permit you to add links the recipient can click.

Of course this may not be appropriate in all circumstances, but depending on context this might be a reasonable thing to do.

Summary

Ultimately most people want to be able to add clickable links with their post descriptions on Instagram. This isn’t really possible unless you want to:

• Add a link to your profile or someone else’s via calling out an @username.
• Pay for the privilege through a business account and advertising options.

However, you can add links to your IGTV video uploads and within direct messages to your followers.

That’s all for now.

Paul

Anything you’d like to add to this discussion? Drop me a comment below!