A New Self-Hosted Instagram “Link in bio” Solution for WordPress

Unlike other social media platforms, Instagram only lets users add one precious URL in their profile bio. This has given rise to a number of online SASS solutions aimed at maximizing the potential of your link-in-bio URL.

While most available services limit users to using product-branded URLs, there is one WordPress plugin that lets you create self-hosted link-in-bio solutions for your website.

Spotlight is an Instagram feed plugin that not only comes with a wide variety of customization options, but the premium version now lets you create links between your Instagram posts and your articles, pages, products, or any other custom URL.

Before I get to the tutorial part of this article, let’s take a quick look at why link-in-bio pages are essential to your marketing strategy.

Take Your Audience From Your Instagram Feed to Your Website in One Click

A link-in-bio website, or Insta website as it is sometimes referred to, is generally a page showing your Instagram feed. Each post takes users to particular blog posts or product pages once they are clicked.

Since Instagram doesn’t allow everyone to add links to individual posts, this is the best alternative out there.

Take the example below. Vogue uses a paid (and quite expensive) service with a different domain to their own just to have their Instagram feed reproduced on a page. Each photo links to its corresponding blog post on the Vogue website – that’s it.

This setup comes with a number of benefits. Firstly, it helps you drive more traffic to your website and potentially increase revenue by taking your followers directly to content and products on your website.

Secondly, it eliminates the need to constantly update the URL in your Instagram profile bio to reflect your latest Instagram post.

Ultimately, the goal of these websites or pages is to capitalize on your Instagram traffic and enhance your customer’s journey.

Link-in-bio pages make it easier for your audience to get to your product or latest piece of content in a more accessible way.

Link Your Instagram Feed Using Spotlight PRO

Spotlight comes in both a free and premium version. While the free version lets you display your feed anywhere on your WordPress website, upgrading to the PRO version unlocks a number of great features.

Spotlight PRO helps your marketing strategy with the use of the following key features:

Displaying Tagged or Hashtag posts – Ideal for hashtag campaigns.
Filtering – Filter out irrelevant content based on hashtags or keywords in their captions.
Moderation – Hand-pick the posts you want to display on your site.
Promotion – Link Instagram posts to articles, products, pages, or custom URLs.

In this tutorial, I’ll focus mostly on the Promote aspect of Spotlight.

For a more in-depth tutorial of how to set up and design your link-in-bio page, check out our recent blog post on how to turn your Instagram feed into a landing page.

How To Set Up Your Promotional Posts

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how you can link Instagram posts to WooCommerce product pages. The same technique applies when linking to posts, custom post types, pages, and custom URLs.

Add Instagram feeds to your WordPress website

Embed your Instagram feed on your site and link posts to articles, pages and more!

Get the Plugin

I’ve gone ahead and installed Spotlight PRO, designed my feed, and filtered out the posts I want to hide. My feed is looking pretty good but I now want to start linking posts to specific products from WooCommerce.

PRO tip: Make sure to use Spotlight’s responsive design options to design your feed for mobile and tablet. Simply select the respective icon under Preview device and make adjustments to your feed.

Head over to the Promote tab and start by selecting the post you want to add a link to. Once you’ve selected your post, the promotion type default will be set to Link.

Link Instagram posts to posts, pages and products

The team behind Spotlight is currently working on adding different promotional features, so keep an eye out on this section in future updates!

Next, select the type of link you want to add. You can choose between:

Custom URL – Perfect for adding URL campaigns in order to track conversions.
Post – Any blog post on your site.
Page – Any page on your site.
Product – Great for linking to WooCommerce product pages.
Any other custom post type – Testimonials, case studies, etc.

In this case, I’ve selected Product, which is listed there because I have WooCommerce installed on my website.

All you need to do now is start to type in your product name. In this case, my product name is Garden Buttercream cake.

Spotlight will search through all your products and find the matching item.

Finally, you can opt to include a popup box link text. This will show up in the bottom right of your popup lightbox.

When you’re done, click on Promote next post. Your links are automatically stored when switching between posts and you can save at any time from the top right. You can then continue to add links to some or all of your posts. A link icon will appear on those posts which are linked.

Note: The link icon will not appear on the Instagram feed displayed on your website.

The great thing about Spotlight PRO is that you can mix and match different link types. For example, you can link certain Instagram posts to products and others to blog posts – the choice is yours. You can also always go back at any time to change links, remove them, or add new ones.

When you’re ready, save your feed. Click on the Embed tab and there you can view a live interactive preview of your feed.

The final step is to embed your feed on your website. You can do so using three methods:

Shortcode – For use anywhere on your website. Copy the generated shortcode from the Embed tab.
WordPress Block – For use in the block editor. Choose your feed from the drop-down menu.
WordPress Widget – For use in your footer or sidebar. Select your feed from the drop-down menu.

Once you embed your feed on your page, visitors will be able to click on a post and be automatically transported to the relevant product, page, or post.

If you’ve opted to have your posts open up in a popup lightbox, the link text we set earlier will show up in the bottom right corner as seen below:

And that’s it! All you need to do now is copy and paste your page URL into Instagram’s bio section.

Conclusion

With Spotlight PRO, you can now start driving conversions in just a couple of minutes. It all starts by connecting your account and designing your feed using the plugin’s vast range of customization options.

Adapt your feed to mobile and tablet devices and optionally filter and moderate it to pick and choose the posts you want your readers to see.

Finally, help your followers find what they are looking for in one easy click by linking posts to specific articles, pages, products, and more.

Using Spotlight, you can use your existing site and avoid relying on external sources or hosting platforms. Help customers find what they are looking for in one swift click!

Free

Pro

Demo

About Gabriella Galea

Gabriella is the Content Manager at WP Mayor. Architect by profession, designer by nature, she is dedicated to helping readers navigate the online world of WordPress. You can find her on Twitter @GabriellaGalea.