How to Leverage LikeShop to Bring Your Audience More Value
That elusive link in bio, place of innumerable monetization attempts and source of performance anxiety for many companies on Instagram. How to truly maximize that one and only spot where the active link lives?
Your solution: Dash Hudson’s LikeShop.
Below we’ll be demonstrating how to leverage LikeShop — the link in bio tool — with a solid content mix that will bring your Audience even more value.
No Problems, Only Solutions
Instagram recently announced the impending release of a new shoppable functionality, solidifying the fact that m-commerce has become an essential sales channel. With the holiday season right around the corner and an increasing amount of smartphone users shopping on their mobile devices, now is probably the right time to set up a monetizing and traffic-driving solution for your account, if you haven’t already.
That said, while transactions are important, social media marketing continues to be the conduit for deep consumer-brand connections. Robust, informative and multi-layered strategies are what enable companies to attract and retain followers in this era where folks are incessantly hungry for more. Instagram conveniently offers marketers a way to keep feeding the beast, drawing in users with eye-pleasing content and converting them into customers through the active link spot in their account’s profile (hashtaglinkinbio). Keeping up with demand is made easy by assigning content to a link that is constantly being refreshed to help drive interest, engagement, traffic, and hopefully, sales.
While commerce may be your number one objective as a retailer, and Instagram is about to offer a direct way to monetize, it’s not fundamentally what the app is about, in case you hadn’t heard. Breaking news: Instagram is about community-building and displaying relevant and valuable content for your audience. Welcome to 2016! ICYMI millennials don’t like advertisements.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Instagram is all about authenticity, or the appearance thereof. That organic feeling builds trust and can make your product posts feel less salesy and more natural. A well-rounded content plan is the key to Insta success. Using the link in bio as an extension of that strategy to redirect your followers elsewhere while on your brand journey can make for a marketing master stroke. This begs the question: besides leading your followers to transacting, what else should you link to? Behold, the pertinent pages abound. All you need is to put a little thought into it.
Pass Go and Collect
Let’s examine five different ways to maximize your link in bio as it relates to monetizing, community-building, increasing traffic and garnering engagement 👍.
1. Product Pages
It has to be said. The majority of links assigned to content in the bio spot is an effort on brands’ parts to monetize and move merch. This is an important piece of the marketing puzzle for the e-commercers of the world, but it should be known that it’s not the only thing you should be linking to. Creating a proper balance with variety lets your audience know that you’re not just after their cash money (even if you secretly are).
Example: @pacsun
This post is prime for product tags. Dash Hudson’s LikeShop link in bio solution lets you attribute multiple product tags to images (up to 7, heyyo!), giving your followers the opportunity to investigate all of the things on display in your shot.
2. Articles
Being able to link to articles and stories is key for publishers and bloggers, but it’s also important for brands to bear in mind. It’s a great way to add a layer of depth and information to your content mix. Providing your audience with something of value for free is another means to keep its attention and forge loyalty. This my friends, is how you build an engaged community.
Example: @dashhudson
Give it a click and check out the link in bio for the full read 📖..
3. Recipes
News flash: not just for food accounts! (Although if you are one, you definitely should be linking out to your recipes). Any account that features food on their feed can maximize this feature by linking out directly to recipe pages. Give your followers a taste. Literally.
Example: @hypebeast
Non food accounts that still feature grub shots from time to time can assign recipe (or restaurant) links to that content. This shot from Hypebeast is prime for linking 🍴.
4. Influencer Content
We all know that consumers look up to influential Instagrammers for style and overall life direction, and brands should take advantage of associated influencer content. Conveniently, a lot of them also work as bloggers and/or vloggers. Without any heavy lifting on the brand’s part, they have the ability to add some seriously juicy value to their Insta content mix.
Example: @urbanoutfitters
This is a post of a blogger published by Urban Outfitters. Linking it to her blog post would provide their audience extra value, and would also be a way to incentivize their fans to post about them in the hopes of being featured 🍎.
5. Other Social Channels
In the multi-dimensional world of social media, having a cross-over strategy is key for building a strong audience spanning all platforms. Although each channel provides different benefits and serves various purposes, they’re all important to consider when building a strong community. Extending your Instagram content to link to your other platforms makes for a truly optimized social strategy.
Example: @everlane
If you’re pushing an event on Insta, you can provide your followers with a little BTS by linking that post to one of your other social channels that serves that purpose. For instance, directing users to Snapchat works really well in posts like this 👇.
It’s important to bear in mind that one size does not fit all when it comes to Instagram marketing strategies. While a link in bio offers immense opportunity to bring even more value to your audience while driving sales or traffic to your own pages, your overall game plan should depend on your brand’s goals and what resonates with your followers.
Regardless of anything, one things holds true in all capacities: the feeling of authenticity and content with an organic nature is what always performs best. A well-proportioned visual gallery can ensure that your link in bio can connect your audience to all kinds of rich, valuable related destinations that benefit both you and its members.
Dash Hudson’s LikeShop tool provides brands with a seamless, clean way to add in up to 7 links to any piece of Instagram content, both retroactively and in advance. It’s the perfect way to deliver added value to your followers while simultaneously turning your Instagram into a sales and traffic driver. The kicker? It takes all of 5 seconds to set it all up. Booyah.
Interested in getting this set up now? Give us a shout. We’ll be happy to hook you up.
