Ep. 8: 7 Link in bio apps for driving traffic

When you’re setting up your IG profile, you’ll notice a place for a link in bio. You can use this link for several options – your website, your podcast, your newsletter, etc. But, there’s only space for one link, so what do I do then? That’s what we’re covering today as my son & podcast […]

The post Ep. 8: 7 Link in bio apps for driving traffic appeared first on Authentic Online Marketing.

When you’re setting up your IG profile, you’ll notice a place for a link in bio. You can use this link for several options – your website, your podcast, your newsletter, etc. But, there’s only space for one link, so what do I do then? That’s what we’re covering today as my son & podcast audio engineer and daughter who is my personal virtual assistant join me. We’ve put our heads together and compiled what we feel is the best and most cost conscious options for you to drive traffic from Instagram.

Basically, you want to drive traffic to more than one channel if you have different offerings. One of those offerings needs to be a way for followers to get on your newsletter! All this month in September we’re talking about email list building, and all of the options we’re covering today can be used for this.  

*This episode contains either affiliate links or links to my products. Should you choose to purchase, the show will go on! Woo hoo!

Click below for show notes!

Ep. 8: 7 Link in bio apps for driving traffic

Choosing Your Link in Bio Software

We have seven options here for a link in bio. So, if you only need to drive traffic to one specific place, you may not be interested in the following options.

However, keep an open mind, because I think you’re going to see reasons why you might need more than one link. Let’s get this conversation started! We have seven options for you. And the first option is… 

Hayley: Linking directly to your website. 

Nolan: That’s what I do with my business, Indigo Sound. I basically just have the website on my profile, as simple as that sounds. I use the name of my website in my bio.

1. Linking directly to a website

But I’ve actually thought about switching to a link in bio, which is more of what we’ll talk about in this episode. 

Really, all I have is my website. That’s kind of my first question of the day is what would you suggest for a link in bio, if at all. 

H: Well, I have a suggestion. Even if you just have one website, I’m guessing you have multiple pages on that website, right?

For some people that might look like an about section, a pricing section, sort of a portfolio section or different other things and something that you can do with certain Link in bio softwares is link directly to those pages. So, instead of someone clicking straight to your website and seeing the whole thing, what you could have is a link in bio that has different buttons for just each of your sections. So as soon as they click your link in bio, on Instagram, they see all those sections, the about section, pricing section, the portfolio or whatever. 

N: Another question I had too was, do people ever link their other social media platforms into their LinkedIn bio on Instagram? 

Ruthie: I think sometimes they link Facebook or a Facebook group that they want linked there. YouTube, Twitter, whatever else they’re trying to drive their traffic to.

A lot of people have a newsletter, so they want to drive traffic there, which is kind of our emphasis on the podcast is getting people off Instagram and onto your newsletter, but there are other reasons to have them click off. 

R: A lot of times if people land on your website, there is a lot of information there then they kind of freeze up and leave because they don’t really know where to go first and it’s just a lot of overwhelm.

I do want to give another suggestion. If you want to use your own website, your blog or wherever your podcast is hosted. Like mine on my blog, I have a designated page from my blog that said “Instagram links.”

I put that link in my bio. Every time I posted an image, I would put that image on that page with the corresponding link to the information. Wherever that was supposed to go, people could just click on that link and then find that information to click on it! So, that’s a nice way to drive traffic to your website.

Also, if you are interested in getting your page views up through Google analytics and things like that, that really helps.

That’s number one. Now, number two is focused more on software you can put in your link in bio.

2. Link in bio app, Linktree

H: Number two is Linktree. With Linktree if you are doing the free version, you get, you get five free links, and the shape of buttons you get. You also get built-in themes and you can track how many total clicks you get over its lifetime.

The free version is a basic layout that has several buttons over one other. Those link directly to different websites. There’s also an option to put logo buttons at the bottom for your TikTok, an email list, or even an Amazon affiliate link.

That’s all with the free version. The paid version is $6 a month, you get deeper analytics. You can actually track, for example, which countries are drawing the most engagement for your link. You can also customize the page to be a little bit more branded to you by choosing your own photo background and brilliant colors, exact brand colors. 

So, there’s the pro plan. Linktree is what I use for my music page.

We just have the simple version. We don’t have the paid version. I like it because you can go on your laptop, or you can go from mobile very easily and edit those links, reorder them. You can like mute links for a little while if you don’t want to completely get rid of the link but you don’t want it to be on the main page for now.

It’s also really easy to have a temporary link on there for example if you were to have a fundraiser or something time sensitive. You could have that as your top link. It’s really easy to order links however you want them.

R: Linktree is great when people are first starting out. 

Click the image to visit Linktree’s website!

3. Tap.bio

H: The third link in bio site is Tap.bio. It’s a tool that transforms a basic Instagram link in your bio into an interactive Instagram story. If you’re an account like most of us who has less than 10,000 followers, you can’t put a swipe up link in your stories, right? 

But with this, it’s the link in your bio which will take you to various story format pages called cards and you can edit them to be customizable.

When people click on your bio, it works the same as stories being that every page is timed, or you can tap through to the next page. Each page could have a different link or activity. So the first page could be sign up for my email list.

If they tap through to the next one, it could encourage them to visit your YouTube channel and various other things. It’s really easy and keeps people entertained. They’re already used to that because they use Instagram stories.

There are several plans. If you do the yearly plan, it’s $96 for the gold plan, which is unlimited pages.

The free version, you get just one page. If you do the silver version, which is like the middle version, it’s $5 a month and you can get up to three pages. You also get analytical insight. 

Click image to visit Tap.Bio’s website!

4. Later.com’s link in bio app: Linkin.bio

Number four is Later.com and I have talked about Later.com a lot. I have used that software pretty steadily for the last three years. I’ve used it with my clients and it was just very seamless and easy for me because it’s one link in the bio I think you can have up to five links there. With a paid version, you can link to every single post, a different link. It doesn’t matter how many links. You get analytics with that.

You’re told the times that are more optimal to get stats as far as click-throughs and the percentage rate of that versus just going to your profile and actually clicking through which is helpful. It also keeps track of your hashtags– which ones are more popular.

So, Later.com is a great option that has free and paid versions. 

N: That’s really cool. I didn’t know that later had a link in bio option. I mean, I use them to schedule out my posts, but I never ventured that far into the link in bio park. 

R: That’s kinda what I like about Later is you can use it as a scheduling software, but you don’t have to use their link in bio.

Click image to visit Later.com’s Linkin.bio website!

5. Tailwind’s link in bio: Smart Bio

R: Number five is Tailwind.

Tailwind is also called Smart bio and it’s a nice visual platform. This is a clean, neat look. If you’re already using Tailwind for Pinterest, you may want to check out this option. Hayley, tell us a little bit more about it. 

H: With Smart bio, you have clickable links and several with photos.

One of the things that you can do with Smart bio is you can put your Instagram photos as clickable links in your bio. So it is visual in that way, but also has buttons at the top. You kind of get both options. If you were to sell a product, I think this is a really good option.

Clothing, skincare or something like that. You post a picture of that to your Instagram. You can also put it as a shoppable link in your bio. When they click that link in bio they’ll see whatever Instagram posts that are shoppable of yours, and they can just click on that.

Smart bio is a Pinterest and Facebook marketing partner, so it’s very integrated there as well, but obviously it’s really good for Instagram. From what I see on their website, you can get all those features that I just mentioned for free.

You can also customize the buttons to your brand color. You can actually type in from what I read, you can actually type in color code for your brand colors and you’ll get your exact brand colors in your book. 

It is a very nice visual app to use.

R: If you’re needing something to drive traffic to your products somewhere else, that sounds like a really good option. 

So number six is one that I am not familiar with. Why don’t you tell us about that, Hayley? 

Click the image to visit Smart Bio!

6. Link in bio app: Lnk.bio

H: Number six. A website called lnk.bio.

Basically you can fill it with as many links as you need. You can track the links with statistics. You get unlimited links, cross links, social media profiles, and link tracking. It’s similar to Linktree, however, I think it is like slightly more customizable because there is a custom URL option. With the free version you get a random URL, and with the free version you still get unlimited links.

However, there are no stats with the free version but you can purchase a premium plan, which is just 99 cents a month. You get a custom URL so your link in your bio could be totally custom, which is kind of cool. It looks better that way.

There’s also a lifetime plan, which gets you more features as far as visuals. I think you can do more custom branding. The Lifetime plan is $24.99 as a one time payment. 

R: As you can see we have the gamut here as far as prices go. We’ve tried to stay on the low end and be cost effective.

Tap to visit the lnk.bio website!

7. Milkshake app

I’m gonna, I’m gonna tell you about number seven and then Nolan is going to give a little bit of information on how he gains clients after that. First let’s go to number seven, which is the Milkshake app for link in bio. This lets you build a sort of instant website on your device.

You download the app and your link in bio becomes a website where followers can connect with all of your offers and you have five free links. The colors are customizable too, and you can put photos in there. It’s very user-friendly and easy to set up. 

Like I said, I have it in my link in bio right now, and Nolan and Hayley are going to take a look and see what they see on their end. What do you think guys? 

N: This is very well-branded. It looks like it’s taking me to a professional website almost.

H: This is almost like a mini website, a little preview. 

N: I can see that there’s three dots at the top for each of the pages that you have on here. So it’s cool that you can swipe up and down and swipe right to go to a different page. 

R: So the first page just has a picture of me and it’s a branded picture. Then, it tells about me. Then at the bottom, the link I have there is my free Instagram caption blueprint. So if you click on that, it takes you right to that.

H: It’s branded to your brand colors, but also is kind of a more mobile friendly version of that. 

N: It’s really cool. Everything is really well spaced out and clean, like you said, but also, it’s all really well aligned and everything like that.

R: You really get five free links. I really like it and think I’ll keep it there for a while and see what happens. I’m going to keep it there actually up through the time that we run this podcast. 

H: There’s no hidden costs. Probably probably the reason why they can make it free is that there is a little bit of advertising for Milkshake. You see a little bit of their branding throughout the cards that you use and the templates for your bio, but it still looks really good and clean. I think that that would be worth it. 

H: How user-friendly is it?

R: It’s really easy. I put my first one together in I think 10 minutes, one day. 

Nolan has had his own just his website in his link in bio and he has a sound business. Tell us how you are getting clients. 

Click to visit the Milkshake website!

Gaining clientele through DMs

Nolan: The majority of the clients that I’ve gotten so far, pretty astronomically have just been through the Instagram DM. Although, like I said, I do have my website on my link in bio, but I’ve seen some traffic from that, but way more from my actual Instagram itself. 

So as long as I’m staying active on there, that’s the most beneficial thing for me. I think that a good link in bio would probably even up the traffic game to the website. 

R: They are coming to you because you are posting regularly and you’re geo-tagging and using targeted hashtags. So just know y’all that if you are trying to market on Instagram, sometimes it’s just that simple.

Getting active consistently using those targeted hashtags. Geo-tagging your location, especially if you are location specific, if you have a storefront or you work out of your home in that location and can just be consistent, it really can work for you. 

Like when I’m consistent, I really notice it because not every single post is going to bring in new connections, but if you do it consistently, it adds up over time.

So the biggest thing for me has just been consistently posting a photo and tagging Knoxville, Tennessee, where I’m at and like that. 

Connecting through geotags & hashtags

H: I geo tag every pretty much every picture that we post, I’ll make sure to at least put Denver, Colorado.

I’ll use hashtags that also incorporate our location and kind of try to gear the hashtags towards the audience that we’re trying to gain here, you know, so I’ve even searched before different hashtags based on the music scene here in Denver and just like adopted those hashtags and added them.

N: That seems to connect you to a lot of other like-minded professionals as well. Not just people that are going to be an audience member for you or a customer, but also other people who are trying to do the same thing, they find you through that same avenue.

The more you get connected to those other types of people, they’re going to help support you on the platform and ultimately help get your name to more people and maybe even be a client with something you never know, or collaboration or whatever it is.

R: I always tell my followers that there are two types of community, and community grows opportunity by the way. The two types are 1. the followers, the follower community that you’re trying to build with your culture, but the other is, 2.  relational and it is the people that are in similar industries as you that are complimentary to yours.

You always want to make sure that you’re always open to those relationships because you never know where that will take you. 

Prioritizing your email list

 But one thing you definitely want to point your followers to is your email list!  You can’t always depend on social media to show others your content, or even be dependable to not randomly crash.  If you can talk to your readers OFF social media, into their inbox, you aren’t at the mercy of it anymore!

So, one of your links NEEDS to be your newsletter! Social media is great but we don’t own it, and sometimes IG and FB and Pinterest and Clubhouse and Twitter break down. But, if you have an email list, you can talk to your readers any time!  What’s more, if they’re reading, they’re invested. Why?

Because they invested the day they signed up. They’ve taken that first step. You offered something valuable, and they decided to try it out.  Then, if they’re staying and reading, they’re making a choice!  They like you – they REALLY like you!

Here’s the thing with email marketing – once they like you, they eventually want to invest in your product.  This is where the magic happens.  But notice, it doesn’t happen all at once!  That’s why, for the rest of the month of September, we’re focusing on how to get folks on your newsletter. 

Next week, we’ll cover Effective Newsletter Opt-ins with my guest, Sarah Geringer.  Other topics this month are how to write newsletters they actually want to read, and email provider options. We’re so excited to bring you this series, so subscribe or follow the podcast so you don’t miss out on an episode!  Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next week!

The post Ep. 8: 7 Link in bio apps for driving traffic appeared first on Authentic Online Marketing.