MISSING LINK: SHOULD YOU INCLUDE A LINK IN YOUR SOCIAL POST?
When I first started a book podcast, my cohosts and I weren’t sure how to promote it. Social media strategy was foreign to us. We all loved Instagram, so we went there first and began posting images with links to our podcast in the description. It didn’t take long for us to realize those links weren’t clickable. We then put the link in our bio but had to swap it out every week when we uploaded a new episode. We also never pointed anyone to that link in our posts.
It only made sense that while our Instagram grew massively, our podcast impressions remained stagnant.
What was the missing link? I would argue it was the links themselves.
LINK OR NO LINK?
There are debates across the internet trying to answer the same question, “Does it hurt your social media post if you include a link in it?”
While I have seen some recent LinkedIn posts arguing in favor of links in posts, most research would suggest the opposite.
When you include a link in your post, engagement goes down.
According to the “Science of Social Media” podcast, their research suggests that Tweets with links in them achieved 28% less engagement.
When we consider the reason why this could be, then this logic extends to every social media platform, not just Twitter.
WHY LINKS DON’T WORK
Let’s look at this from the social media site’s point of view. If we were the CEO of Instagram, our number one priority would be keeping people on the site for as long as possible. This means, if a post contains a link, then the user will likely click it and leave our platform. How can we stop this?
It’s all about the algorithm.
Posts with links get less engagement because the social media site is actively serving that content less. Thus, people will be less likely to leave that site and visit a different one.
Now, as someone with a podcast, how can I get others to listen to my podcast if the links won’t actually be served to them?
HOW TO USE LINKS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
While engagement goes down with a direct link in the post, it’s been shown that engagement is much higher if the post points to the link in the bio. That’s why we see the phrase “link in bio” across most social media.
For our podcast, we have finally discovered the best way to include links on Instagram. When we post, we instruct the audience to click the link in our bio. We use a site called Link Tree which creates a link that directs users to all our platforms in one singular space.
If you’re trying to launch a new business, podcast, product, or anything you’d use social media to promote, avoid putting links directly in your posts and instead opt for the bio.