Want more action from social? You’re not alone. While connecting with your audience on social media can make you feel good, it doesn’t necessarily tie to revenue. So, what can you do?
When it comes to driving results from organic social—or posts that are not paid to appear—you need to think about social media linking. Links may appear in captions and bios, but a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. As with most things social, there are nuances.
Want to make the most with clickable links on social? Read on.
Make your captions count
Use your post captions to your advantage by including links to related content where you can. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn let you include links directly in your feed. The key here is to make sure links are directly relevant to what you’re posting.
Here are some tips to driving action from your captions:
Place links in captions after you provide the reader something valuable in the first sentence or two
Use link shortening and/or branding to make your links appear tidy (see below)
Link to web content that directly relates to your post
Avoid a sales-only approach with linking to establish trust with your audience
While you can link from captions in many social media channels, Instagram is a clear exception. And unless you have a business profile and ten thousand followers, the swipe up feature is not available in Stories. This is one social channel where your bio link is particularly important. Within your caption text on Instagram, you can write “See link in bio” to direct your audience to your profile. Check out our next tip for ways to optimize your bio.
Use your bio
Your social media bio is a primary way your audience learns what your business offers, where they can find you—online or in real life—to learn more. For most social channels, the bio provides an essential jumping off point to a website or online store.
The social bio for your business is limited to a single link for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. If you run an ecommerce business or one that has changing content, it can be difficult to stay on top of updating your bio link. But fear not—enter the category of bio link tools.
Bio link tools provide an intermediary screen between the single bio link and one or more URLs or other content about your business. In recent years, several tools have emerged to help Instagram users in particular get more traction from their bio links.
Consider these free bio link tools to direct your audience to various web pages from your Instagram and other social channel bios:
Linktree - lets you link to a wide variety of content types from anywhere your audience discovers your bio
Linkin.bio - this tool can help you drive traffic and boost sales from your bio in Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Pinterest, LinkedIn
Lnk.bio - simple and streamlined, with an option to upgrade for a personal link URL
Shorten and brand those links
Social media capitalizes on short-form content, and your links should follow suit. When your URLs are shortened, they give a clean and tidy look—making them more enticing to click or tap and easier to share.
When you shorten URLs and add your brand name to the link, you will get the added benefit of brand awareness.
To quickly and easily shorten and/or brand your URLs, try these free resources:
Bring them home
Once you figure out where and how you’re going to place links in your social channels, it’s key to drive traffic to a place that makes sense. If your audience is disoriented when they land at your destination, you likely won’t see results.
The destination for your links might be your website, a signup page for an email list, a storefront, and more. Consider what message a visitor sees when they arrive, and make sure it pays off the link they just clicked. If your link destination doesn’t look or read cohesively with where they’re from, tune up your web pages so they do.
Want to learn more about optimizing your links on social? Try adding an Instagram Shop or learn more about creating an effective social media bio.
