Jan 16, 2017 / General Advice & Pro Tips

Extend Your Blog’s Reach with Instagram

Instagram has hundreds of millions of users — here are ways they can find and follow your blog.

Are you using Instagram to grow your following and drive traffic to your blog? As of late 2017, Instagram had 500 million daily active users, which makes it a great place to find new readers and connect with like-minded bloggers and fellow social sharers. We’ve shared some tips before to get you started, so once you’ve got the basics down, here are ideas for how to use Instagram to extend the reach of your blog:

Make your Instagram feed reflect your life.

Here are some WordPress.com bloggers I follow who share their content on Instagram too:

Sharing the real you is a great way to cultivate a following of interested, engaged readers. Personally, I love sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes looks, so Instagram feeds that show real life are my favorites.

sarahblackstock-instagram-bulletjournalI love bullet journaling, and I share little glimpses of this process on my Instagram feed (see: #BulletJournal). Once I’ve got enough content to say more about it, I’ll turn it into a full blog post (or maybe a series of them) on sarah.blog.

Share the snapshots that make up your day, like that DIY project you’re in the middle of (and aren’t quite ready to blog about yet), or a look at the mess you just made in the kitchen with the cookies that went horribly wrong (#KitchenFail). Once you finish that project or get the recipe right, blog it and share the triumphant photo on your Instagram feed with a link to the post with all the details.

Rather than filling your whole feed with blog promo or perfectly styled shots, be sure to include you, too.

Extend your blog content’s reach.

Beyond filling your Instagram account with glimpses of your daily life, share photos adapted from individual posts.

  • Did you blog your recent vacation? Grab one of your best images from the trip and Instagram it along with a caption promoting your full blog post for viewers who click over to your site.

Curious about Canva? See their tutorials to get started. We’ve shared some helpful tips here, too.

  • If your post is more wordy, why not grab a quote and make a graphic? I use Canva.com to create the WordPress.com Instagram quote images and also like the Word Swag app for quotes on my personal feed.
  • Are you featuring an image-heavy post that is light on words? Make a collage with PicMonkey.com or Instagram’s Layout app.
  • Do you review books or share makeup tips? Share a nicely styled image related to your blog post and use it (along with some relevant hashtags) to get more eyes on your post.

Unsure how to use hashtags? We’ve shared tips on choosing hashtags here.

wordpressdotcom-instagram-bookhashtags

No matter what you blog about, there’s a way to convert your content into something Instagram-worthy to help extend its reach.

Keep the link in your profile current.

When you’re sharing blog content on your Instagram account, it’s important to make it easy for people to get to the post. Since Instagram doesn’t allow clickable links in the caption or comments, update the link in your profile to take viewers straight to the blog post you’ve featured most recently.

Or go a step further, and create an Instagram landing page. Publish a new page called Instagram, so the URL is YourSiteAddress.com/Instagram. One perk of this fully customized page is that you can decide exactly how you welcome people to your site. Consider including a quick hello, link to your top posts or the content you’re most proud of, and display your most recent posts so they can find what may have brought them over from your Instagram profile in the first place.

Looking for more tips? Lorena Salinas at Cravings Journal uses Link in Profile, which helps drive traffic from Instagram.

The key to either method of linking in your Instagram profile is to to keep it current and make it as easy as possible for people to follow your content from your feed to your blog.

Remember to be yourself.

No matter how you choose to adapt your content and share your life on Instagram, the best way to connect with potential readers and new social media friends is by being yourself. Share the images you would want to see on someone else’s feed, and be sure not to promote your content so often you’d want to unfollow yourself.

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  2. Great post, thanks for sharing. I am waiting on Instagram to allow links in posts, would quite beneficial to drive traffic to websites/content.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. This was a very interesting article and I absolutely use the crap out of my IG way more than I use any other website, so this information will be really helpful. Thank you. I am new to wordpress and look forward to reading more of your blog articles.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I’d like to connect with Facebook, twitter, Instagram but I got attacked by online bullies and stalkers there… so now I am here on WordPress. Yet thank you for your advices and wish you the best.

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  9. Thanks for the share! Recently i have been feeding my Instagram timeline with shots of my blog pg and link in my bio – as yet I cannot separate visitors from IG to WordPress, I will continue the momentum

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  11. Thanks! I recently started an Instagram account, but mainly promote my blog. I like the idea of incorporating more of my daily happenings or something interesting during the week into my feed. I haven’t started a Facebook account yet either – will have to think about that one too!

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  12. I don’t think I ever considered Instagram as a way to expand my audience, but after reading this post I think I may definitely make another account to promote my blog. Thank you for the advice! 🙂

    Besides Instagram, what other social media websites would you recommend as great places to expand your audience?

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Love these tips! Hadn’t quite thought about it like you’ve suggested, so will try these out, for sure! I’ve been trying to figure out how to use Insta for my blog and I think these will (hopefully!) work well. Thanks for sharing!

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  17. The first thing I did after making it was linking it with twitter and Instagram. Thank you. I may need some help with the ‘blavatar’ though, like how do we change that?

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  18. I’ve got an Instagram page, I’m a new starter to photography so my blog is based on my journey! I really liked this. 🙂 Thank you for writing this up.

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  20. Great post! thanks for sharing this. I have a food blog and I’ve tried with a Facebook page and Instagram too, I still need to find a way to get new followers or more traffic. I like the idea of posting simple things first on Instagram, actually the posts I made on Instagram about very simple things like a cup of coffee in a coffee shop (not even a recipe of my own) got a lot more likes. It seems to be the best way. Thanks again and happy blogging for everyone!

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  27. Yeah, this was really helpful. thanks for the tips, still struggling on setting up this ‘blogging’ thingy. but this article helped a lot

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