How to add a link to Instagram Stories
Stories is one of the few places where Instagram allows a clickable link, so knowing how to add a link to Instagram Stories is a business essential for building your email list and sales. Here’s how to add a link to an IG Story and style it to match your branding.
How to add a link to Instagram Stories in three easy steps
Once you have created your Instagram Story and are ready to add a link:
- Click on the Stickers button in the top navigation of four circles
2. Choose the link sticker and type in or paste your link. You can share the link as it is or customise the sticker text. Click ‘Done’ when you’re finished.
3. Customise the link’s styling by tapping the link – there are three options to suit various backgrounds.
Custom styling the Instagram Story sticker link
Instagram gives you three native link styles: bright blue, black with a pink and orange rainbow and white text on a transparent background. You can use any of these quickly and easily.
But with a few simple hacks, you can style the white text to work with your branding, so it’s visible against the background and appears in your brand colours. The first custom styling option is to use the Draw tool with one of your brand colours to swipe a fat line or two that is a bit longer that your link sticker. You can move the link sticker to sit on top of the coloured line.
The second custom styling option uses the text tool with a background. Hit the period / full stop and then as many spaces as you need to create a coloured block to run behind the white link. change the colour to one of your brand colours and put behind the white link. You may need to juggle the text slightly to hide it behind the link text.
The third custom styling option uses a block of colour from a sticker or a custom graphic of your own. You can search Instagram’s own stickers for colour blocks with text such as ‘orange rectangle’ – or whatever your brand colour might be. If you need to delete any unwanted stickers, drag them towards the bottom of the screen and a trash can in a circle will appear. Drag the sticker into the trash to delete. To add your own colour blocks, you’ll want shapes saved as PNGs with a transparent background.
Please note that for the PNG’s transparent background to stay hidden, you’ll need to cut and paste the sticker from your camera roll rather than adding it as a sticker or photo through Instagram’s sticker menu. You can do this by going into your camera roll, selecting the png file and clicking on ‘Copy photo’ in the menu at the bottom of the screen. Return to the Instagram app, click on the screen and hit ‘Paste’.
Can everyone post links on Instagram Stories?
Yes, every account can post links in Instagram Stories. Instagram introduced this in 2021, after the link only previously been available to accounts with more than 10,000 followers. Although Instagram does warn that new accounts and accounts that repeatedly share content that violates its Community Guidelines will not have access to the link sticker.
Why your business should be adding links to Instagram Stories
As much as you might love Instagram, your account can disappear at any time. You could be hacked or Instagram / parent company Meta could choose to remove your account. Therefore, you want to move as many followers as you can onto your own mailing list and links are an essential part of doing that.
Instagram offers links in your profile – up to five of them – and on Stories. It doesn’t offer them on regular grid posts, Carousels or Reels and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has said (in 2023) that it’s extremely unlikely to add links to the feed.
In order to move followers from your Instagram account to your own mailing list, you want to be adding links to Instagram Stories regularly, that take viewers to a sign-up form to collect details such as a name and email address. You can entice them to do this with what’s known as a lead magnet or freebie, which they receive in return for their personal details. This might be something like an ebook, a template or checklist.
Whenever you are sharing a Story that relates to your lead magnet, share your lead magnet opt-in page so that anyone who is interested in that topic has the option of joining your mailing list and downloading your lead magnet.
Using Instagram Story link stickers also helps with engagement on your Stories: clicking those links is engagement and Instagram does love engagement!