Instagram feed posts are an essential part of social media marketing for most retailers, but for some reason the platform restricts the use of hyperlinks to the bio (or about) page. This is not true in Instagram stories, or on Facebook – which is also owned by Meta – so there may be a change on the horizon. But in the meantime, you often see the comment “link in bio” as businesses use something call link trees to work around this problem.

Link trees provide an efficient way for users to add multiple links in one place so that followers can access important resources and content. You can do this by using an app called (you guessed it) Linktree. Other options include Hopp, a link-in-bio solution powered by the web platform Wix, and platforms such as Taplink that offer a free version for businesses.

A link tree is only necessary when you want to direct customers to “land” somewhere other than your website’s home page.  Some retailers list their basic web address in their bio except for when they want to take followers to a special promotion, or share details about an event. Others always provide a URL that is linktr.ee plus their instagram handle, which goes to a page showing a list of buttons hyper-linked to specific pages on their business’s website. Each button can be given a name and an icon to help with navigation. You can customize the themes and fonts, using the Canva app for design if you have an account there. This is a great place to include a link to a page about job openings, and a hyperlink to your Facebook or TikTok accounts. 

Using Linktree for a personal account is free, but the pro version for businesses is about $7.50 a month after a 30 day trial. If you don’t think this cost is justified, another option is to periodically change the web page listed in your bio to reflect the latest topic of your Instagram post. 

One caveat – if your Instagram posts are set up to automatically also appear on your Facebook page, be sure to remove “link in bio” and add an actual hyperlink. If you don’t do this, someone just seeing your post on Facebook would have no way of finding the link, since there are no bio pages on Facebook. And please take the hashtags at the end of your IG post off too. Including them in a Facebook post just shows that you didn’t take the time to create unique content for each platform.

Happy Retailing,
Carol “Orange” Schroeder