How To Use Affiliate Links On Instagram – Best Practices
Using affiliate links to generate leads on Instagram has been around for quite some time. However, you'd be taken by storm if someone told you that people are still pointless on how to set up affiliate links on Instagram. If you want to leverage on Instagram audiences, then you need to know how to use affiliate links on Instagram. For most others, what are affiliate links altogether and how to put them to our advantage in marketing or making extra bucks? It doesn't hurt to make a couple more.
Affiliate links may sound like a buzzword to many at first. Still, it's what the intelligent marketing guys, you'll soon be added to that tally at the end of this article, call the link handed out to influencers that marketers have appointed to promote their brand or product. Most marketers like to tailor their influencer selection to those having a particular affinity or attribute that characterizes the product. A straightforward analogy is from using a model or a lady with smooth skin to advertise a skincare brand. So that sort of thing.
Using affiliate links is a crucial part of the digital affiliate program. So influencers hand-picked by marketers make their money through commissions that could be on a per-click or lead generation basis determined by their contractual agreements. So in more explicit terms, influencers get paid for each click on their affiliate link or the number of leads their affiliate link generated for their marketer.
Methods of adding an affiliate link to Instagram
Now that we already have a clear going on affiliate links on Instagram and how we can make some bucks out of it. It's important to know that there are a couple of ways to put our affiliate links on Instagram to generate leads and clicks, making us money.
I'll carefully outline below the various ways we can benefit from this, after which we will then go into details.
- Using your bio
- Post
- Stories
- Instagram ads
Now let's see each of these, one after the other.
1. Using Your Bio
The way to go as a starter in using Instagram affiliate links for an affiliate program is to use your bio. It gives you a considerable head start. Your bio is the point of entry to people who view your profile, and you sure want to use this opportunity to make a stellar first impression. It has to convey some affinity and attractive copy about yourself and passion that would catch the eyes of your visitors.
Having an eye-catching bio would potentially have your viewers and visitors eating from the palms of your hands, and who knows, they may also like to share links to your bio with loved ones and friends.
You place affiliate links immediately after a catching bio is the icing on the cake. Like licking your fingers after a good meal, the affiliate links after your bio is your visitor's way of licking their fingers after the meal. The trick is the excellent first impression keeps the visitor seeking more nice stuff, and bam, they hit your link, and guess what, you just got your first paycheck. Wait, not so fast. Yeah, that would be it if it were on a per-click agreement.
2. Making use of Posts
One other golden opportunity worth taking regarding affiliate links on Instagram is the use of posts. It would help if you were very careful here, as the bar's mood plays a huge role in what products you are trying to promote here. It slightly emphasizes the need to be picky in enrolling on affiliate programs. You'd save yourself a couple of sleepless nights if you did so.
To keep it simple, enrol in programs that closely connect with your lifestyle. Have you ever stopped to consider how easy it would be to promote gym wear as someone whose lifestyle and hobby is working out? I mean, it just comes without lifting a pin. It all becomes so easy.
Considering the preceding, you can add links to your posts relating to the product in captions. However, a little caveat here is that these affiliate links are primarily long. They are not appealing and might send a red flag to users that take security seriously, so you might want to use some plugins that help you shorten your links. These plugins help you achieve short links that are better appealing and redirection to the affiliate link itself.
So do well to utilize the plugins.
3. In Your Stories
Instagram story is also a helpful place to get our affiliate links making the bucks for us. But I apologize to tell you that this feature is for Instagram users who meet some conditions. The first condition would be to have a Facebook business account. You can do this by heading down to Facebook and creating a page for your business that you would then need to interface to your Instagram account.
It gives you access to some premium features like link-out and Instagram analytics that help you measure the performance and business logic. You also need to be aware that the link-out part is accessible to only users with 10k followers. It is just another shout-out buttressing that the numbers matter. It is also a pat on your back to keep up your follower base through solid and attractive content.
To append your affiliate link to your Story, you should find the chain link icon above your Story. Click on the icon, and then you'd be alerted to put in the link of your choice. You should then enter the affiliate link and click on ‘Done' to finish.
4. Instagram ads
Yeah! another feature for the big guys in the game. To use the Instagram ads for converting sales with affiliate links, you also need a Facebook business account interfaced with your Instagram page with about 10k followers. After meeting the requirements, the Facebook director will permit you to access the feature after letting go of a few bucks.
How to use affiliate links on Instagram properly
Instagram has allowed us to leverage a level playing field for all subscribers, which is also very accurate in the affiliate marketing space on Instagram. While the preceding is very real, every influencer is not on par with others. So, I'll be delving into some hacks and tips to help new influencers use their affiliate links to close the inequality gaps between them and their counterparts in the space. These tips would also be of colossal benefit to veteran affiliates in the area looking to get ahead of their game.
First, let's open with some need to know best practices.
Build up an audience first before a program
One thing that is holding back a lot of affiliates on Instagram is their followership. Prequel to enrolling in an affiliate program, although I'm pretty aware of how itchy it is to chase the bag, you should invest more in driving your followership base and engaging content to get you the numbers. Doing this would get you the clicks and the leads you'd be looking to generate for the affiliate program.
Upgrade link in bio
Understandably, the creative job of setting up an eye-catching bio is tedious for most non-creatives. But try to consider how uncomfortable you feel entering a building with a haphazard outer appearance. You don't want prospective followers hopping out of your profile just as they got in. You need to put in the work, even if it means outsourcing to someone that can help you with a good bio. You would only burn out some cash, but it pays its dividend in the long run.
You want to have an interesting bio that would now lay the foundations of putting your affiliate link underneath. We have already said much earlier how visitors who enjoyed your biography and content would most likely follow your affiliate link, perhaps wanting to use your products.
Make sure your posts are discoverable with related hashtags.
When you post out content, you would want to leapfrog the power of hashtags. They cover a broad jurisdiction beyond your followers and other individuals interested in a particular tag. This pays you a dividend from two sides; it adds to your affiliate base, and it's also an avenue to funnel in new followers interested in your kind of content.
Having worked on the best practices, you should then look into the following extra tips to improve the craft.
Create Product comparison content
One way to benefit from our affiliate links is to create content that tries to compare the product you market with other competitors in the industry. You'd be convincing your audience why the product you sell is a better substitute for the competition. You'd do an excellent job if you researched and knew your product. This would be a little easier if you've also used the product or service firsthand. The main work here is getting the values and extra utility that your marketing brand provides, which is absent in the competitors.
Reviews
Reviewing posts on your affiliate product is another way to drive sales and get more earnings from your affiliate links. Personal reviews of the products come in very handy to visitors, especially when they're honest ones, as they help them decide whether the product suits their needs. This helps increase their trust in you as an influencer and the products promoted if they are found so. So once you find a pro on the product, you should do well to disclose; showing some cons too would help them feel confident that you're not only helping the brand but that you're trying to help them out too.
Get More Creative with Gift guides.
You can get more creative by creating content on gift guides where you share ideas on gifts they can give their loved ones. This is a clear avenue where you can promote your affiliate product by adding it to the list of gifts while explaining why it is a good addition. You shouldn't limit the guides to festivities like Christmas. You can create gift guide content on occasions like valentine's, fathers day, mothers day, and many more.
Use descriptive captions
When you make promotional posts, descriptive captions that are relatable go a long way. You should also not forget to add a call to action that allows visitors to interact with the post.
Very relatable captions help your post go viral with interactions while the call to action finishes.
Explore link panels on Instagram for multiple links
Adding multiple links to our content seems a lot more difficult because of the length of the links and the fact that we want to avoid our posts sending out sentiments of distrust to viewers.
Some apps are available that help you create link panels that you can use to add multiple links. One perfect app you can use for link panels is “url.bio” by Kicksta, and it's effortless to use. You can click the link to get started on that.
Yeah, are you Already done with that?
You are good to go. You can now add more affiliate links on your Instagram as you would like. Do this by inputting them in the URL. “url.bio” also provides an analytics feature on each link to help you see how your links are performing.
In Conclusion
Congrats, you got to the end of this. You've now been officially added to the tally of the intelligent marketing guys (do you recollect?). You've understood what affiliate links are and how to set them up as cash cows for passive income earnings. You also got to understand things you need to get set up and some additional tips to get ahead of the competition in the Instagram affiliate space.
I'd be looking to get responses from you on how this helped you. I'm interested in your feedback, and don't get deterred from sending one; rest assured that I read every one of your responses and comments. I'd also like to hear other tips that helped you in your Instagram affiliate game; you could drop this in the comment section to benefit the community and us.
God speed!
