“Link in bio” - Is this the best we can do?

We’ve all been there.. You’re scrolling through your Instagram trying to come up with of fun and exciting recipe ideas for the upcoming week. You’re browsing through picture after picture when finally, a dish catches your eye.  Intrigued, you expand the description to try and find the recipe when you’re met with <link in bio>.

Since Instagram doesn’t allow clickable links in captions, comments, or stories unless you are verified or have over 10,000 followers, most pages end up using that phrase all too much.  Having your link in bio is generally a great thing to lead users to their intended destination, but what happens when a user finds a post from 3 months ago with the phrase “link in bio”? That link is probably long gone.  For most of us, it’s just too much of a hassle and we end up closing out of the page or app.

As a general rule of thumb, you never want to send a user to a place they are not expecting when they click a link. They want to know the destination they are clicking on. If they expect to open a homemade lasagna recipe but to their surprise the link takes them to a blueberry pie, they’re going to be confused.  This can be difficult when you only have one link in your bio, but dozens of pictures with that in their caption. You never want to make your customer or user feel like they are going on a scavenger hunt to find what they’re looking for.

Thankfully, there’s an easy way to avoid this.  You can create a landing page or portion of your website specifically dedicated to all of your “link in bio” content.  It can be a tiled set-up - much like a standard Instagram feed - displaying clickable images of everything on your Instagram that has the infamous phrase.

So, when the user clicks the link in your bio, it takes them to every possible option they could be looking for. From there, they will be looking for the image that brought them to the site and from there, they can go straight to the content they’re looking for. A well-designed landing page will help the user recognize the image right away and your content will get the views it deserves.

As a content creator, you want to make sure that your content can be found relatively easy with few hoops to jump through. The best solution for this common problem would be for Instagram to allow clickable links in posts, comments, or stories. But it doesn’t seem like that will change anytime soon.  This simple work-around will help drive engagement to your site, as well as keep content that has already been posted alive and well.