Instagram stickers let you include hyperlinks in Stories in the form of stickers. Instagram started testing link stickers in June, with the plan to phase out the previous “swipe up” function by August 30th.
Until now the ability to link was only available to channels with over 10,000 followers, and only by a “swipe up” which was less obvious to the user. This made it a lot more difficult to link to marketable content.
Stories, short digestible content, both made of video and interactive pictures have seen a massive increase in engagement with the pandemic. With the rise of Tiktok also people are creating and consuming this type of content at a dramatic rate.
Whilst people are engaging with stories it makes it a valuable marketable source. Providing a link offers easier access to more information about say; a product, or service, or an online store to buy.
Now with stickers for stories, links are more clear, but the real win for small businesses is that Instagram is now rolling out this functionality to all accounts regardless of follower amount.
This is something that will help businesses, content creators & influencers but also has value to the everyday user.
To add a link, head into the sticker tool from the top navigation bar after uploading content to your story, tap the “Link” sticker and enter the desired URL. It then functions like any other sticker on a Stories post.
When it announced the link stickers feature in June, Instagram stressed that they’re only meant for Stories posts and said it had no plans to bring them to the main Instagram feed or other parts of the app. This remains true today.
The link stickers feature has now entirely replaced “swipe up,” which was how Instagram users previously linked out to external webpages from their Stories, and which was discontinued in August. But with today’s news, link stickers are now more widely available than swipe up ever was, since the old feature was only available to verified accounts or accounts with more than 10,000 followers.