You might have seen ‘Swipe up stories‘ on Instagram that lead you to a different webpage. You’ve also wondered how do they add a link to Instagram story. If you want to learn the same, this post is specially written to help you. The swipe up stories with links are very useful.
Here, we’ll explain how to add a link to an Instagram Story. Once you learn that, you’ll be able to post a swipe up story and re-direct your audience to wherever you wish through it.
What is a Swipe up Story on Instagram?
A Swipe up Story on Instagram means an Instagram story that has a link to an external website or page. You can visit the attached URL by simply swiping up on the screen when the story is playing. After the recent Instagram update, they have replaced the ‘swipe up’ text present on the bottom with ‘See more.’
So, whenever you see an Instagram story with ‘See more’ written at the bottom, you can conclude that it is a swipe up story. These stories have now become very common especially from the Influencers, brands, and other celebrities.
What are these used for?
Swipe-up stories are very useful on Instagram. Since their introduction on Instagram, they have influenced the community a lot. These stories allow users to add links in their story and redirect people to wherever they wish. Influencers and brands use them to redirect their audience to their affiliate links.
These stories are generally used to drive traffic and sales. Sometimes, these stories are used to gather attention to a very important event or news. Content creators often use them to redirect their audience on Instagram to their other social media profiles. There are a lot of advantages of these stories.
How to Add a Link to Instagram Story?
Knowing how to add a link to the Instagram story is very helpful. You can easily add any link to your story and make people visit it when they see it. Instagram doesn’t allow anyone and everyone the ability to add a link to their Instagram story. You must meet certain conditions to do that. Following are the conditions that you need to meet:
- You must have a business account.
- You must have at least 10,000 followers on your account OR you must have a verified account (account with a blue tick).
If you meet these, you can easily add a link to the Instagram story
Steps to Add a Link to Instagram Story
If you have over 10K followers on Instagram or have a verified account, then you can easily add a link to your Instagram story. If you want to know how to do that, follow these simple steps.
Step-1: Open the Instagram app on your smartphone. Make sure you are using the latest version. If not, kindly update it before proceeding.
Step-2: Now click on the ‘Your Story’ icon present on the top right corner of the screen. Take a photo. upload one or create your story.
Step-3: Do the editing that you want to do with the story. Then, tap on the ‘Link’ icon that is present at the top of the screen. It will appear like a chain.
Step-5: Next, type or paste the URL/link that you want to add into the empty box present below the URL heading. You can also remove and add a different one if you change your mind and you can also watch a ‘preview.’
Once you are done with that, tap on Done.
Step-6: After ensuring that everything is okay, tap on the ‘+ Story‘ button present at the bottom right of the screen to publish your story.
That’s it. Your story will be published then in the next few seconds. When you’ll play it, you’ll see ‘See More’ present at the bottom and when you’ll swipe up, you’ll be redirected to the attached web page.
Why is this feature not available for everyone?
Instagram doesn’t provide this feature to every user because it doesn’t want more and more people exiting their platform. When someone swipes up on the link added in a story, he is redirected to a different web page and leaves Instagram. And, they don’t want that. So, they only provide the feature to their trusted users whom they hope to not misuse it.
This restriction helps Instagram to manage their engagement level at higher values. Also, the brands, businesses, and Influencers stay unharmed as they have a business account and generally have more than 10K followers.
Other Methods to Share Links on Instagram
If you are an Instagram user who wants to add a link to their story but have less than 10,000 followers and doesn’t have a verified account, then you should other methods to share links on the platform. I’m sharing some methods that you can use to share the links you want on Instagram.
- You can add the link to your bio and put up a story asking your followers to visit the link in your bio.
- Links can be shared via DM on Instagram. So, you can simply send them to your followers. You can use some Instagram management tool for mass sending.
- You can add the link in the caption of your post but with clear directions to visit it.
- Comment your link under popular posts. It’ll appear as plain text but also add instructions to paste it into the browser so people can visit it.
- You can use link services like LinkTree to add multiple links using a single link in the bio.
That’s it. These are some of the methods other than a swipe up story that you can use to share links on Instagram.
Final Words
Swipe up stories allow you to add any link to your Instagram story. This can help you to drive traffic or sales by redirecting your audience to web pages you want. This is how you can add a link to an Instagram story. Remember that you’ll need at least 10K followers or a verified account, and a business account for that. If you don’t have that, you can use other methods to share links on Instagram.
That’s all for this post. I hope you find it helpful. Feel free to ask questions or give suggestions in the comment section.
