How to Add a Link to Your Instagram Story? 2023

Instagram with a base of more than 1000 million users gives a platform to send messages, photos, and videos over the platform to its users. Instagram also gives one of the powerful in-app services of sharing Stories.

Stories are used to inspire, form new connections, build a brand, promote, sell, drive site visits. An additional option of Links converts these Stories into a traffic-driving application which will help your followers to understand and know more about you, your brand, or your business.

Though Link options in the stories are not available to everyone there are some ways a normal user can also use links in their Instagram Profile to drive their Instagram traffic to their own personal blogs, websites, business profiles.

But before you jump right into learning how you can add up a link in your Instagram Story. You need to understand that it is quite not easy to get this swipe up link to Instagram Story.

You have to fulfill either of the below two conditions and add the links to your stories.

Your account must be verified by Instagram, which is definitely not as easy as verifying your account on other social platforms. Or;
Your account must be a Business Account and must have over 10000 followers.

We believe that you are fulfilling either of the above or both conditions. Just follow the below steps and voila you will be able to use links in your stories.

Table of Contents

Add a link to Instagram story

Step 1 Go to the top right corner of the home page and click on the + icon and select story from the bottom menu slider. You can also swipe left from your home page screen and for direct access to Story.

Step 2 Add your image, text, sticker, or filter to your story.

Step 3 Add a link by clicking the link icon at the top of the screen.

That’s it. Yup, that is so simple. Your link will be visible upon swiping or clicking the “See More” option appearing at the bottom of the screen.

Though your link has been added often visitors do not expect a link on Instagram Stories. So it is recommended to have an embedded clear and visible call-to-action (CTA) into your Story directing users to See more or swipe up.

Some of the CTA you can choose are:

Swipe up right now
Swipe above to know more
Read more!
for more info, swipe up!
Swipe up for a free gift!

All seems so simple, right. It remains as simple as it is only and only if your account has complied with either of the above two conditions.

Let us talk about the conditions.

Verification of Account by Instagram:

Before you jump right away to know the process to verify the Instagram account you must meet the criteria in addition to Instagram’s Terms of Use and Community Guidelines.

Only an authentic real person, registered Business, or entity account can be verified.
Only one account per person, business, or entity is allowed with certain exceptions.
The account must be public with a bio, profile photo, and at least one post.
Your account must represent a well-known profile with high search volume in the public domain.

It is to be noted that Instagram only reviews those accounts which are featured on multiple news sources. Paid and promotional content sources are ignored.

As you have reached this point it is assumed you do not have a verified account. And it seems that without verification you cannot use the powerful link strategy to promote you or your business to a wide community of Instagram.

But, don’t be upset, you can still build up links without even having verified accounts or business with 10000 over followers. Thinking How? Just Keep reading

Links in Bio

This is one way you can have your business or blog or brand link visible for Instagram users. You can use URL shortening tools for customizing the URL. Or you can also put a link to your landing page from where you can direct users to your other brand or business or links.

Direct Messaging (DM)

In Stories let the user know that they can directly reach you through DM for exploring more about you and your business. This way you can directly send across the links to the users who reach to you. And by this, you can have more direct and potential users with you.

Instagram’s Poll feature

Share polls in your stories asking people about their intentions to be connected and get the links directly to their Instagram apps. Instagram’s Poll gives you an option to sort and select the positive results and direct messages to the agreed users.

You get a window of a 24-hour timeline to direct message the users who have responded to your polls.

Instagrams Sticker

There are a lot of stickers you can use from like you can use Join Chat to invite users to join you over your group chats.

Link to IGTV

If you are creating videos you can also add up the link.

Create a nice video, add an attractive title to the post and add your link in the description box and post the videos.

Final Conclusion

Instagram Stories are one of the best options you have to build your brand identity over the Instagram platform. It not only helps you inspire people and will also help build new connections, drive your Instagram traffic to your personal or business websites.

In the above article, you have learned how a link can be added to your stories. What type of CTA’s to be used and how a CTA is helpful to bring the notice of the visitor to your links.

Also in the above article, we have covered which users are eligible for the use of link options in stories. What are the conditions to be fulfilled to become a verified user?

Further, we have covered the topic of how a normal user can use the power of traffic driving links without having a verified account or having followers even below 10000.

We hope this article will help you by adding links to your stories or Instagram profiles and driving traffic to your websites. All the very best!