Let's Talk Linktr.ee
If you've been on Instagram in the last couple of months, you've likely seen the flurry of activity around Linktr.ee. As a marketing-minded person, I've spent a bit of time diving into the viability of the "product" and wanted to share my thoughts with all of you! As always, all comments here are my own but are backed by testing that I've conducted.
First: What is Linktr.ee?
The platform defines the product as "a free tool for optimising your Instagram traffic, whether you’re a blogger, an artist or run a content platform. You’ll get one bio link to house all the content you’re driving followers to. Let your content live longer than the feed."
pros & cons
Benefits
- See exactly how much traffic each potential call to action (CTA) is driving, then restructure Instagram CTA strategy based on what actually converts.
- Pre-schedule links to appear and disappear (if using Linktr.ee pro).
- Facebook Pixel integration (if using Linktr.ee pro).
Problems
- Linktr.ee branding on the landing page (even with the pro version!).
- No option for subheaders.
- Too MANY choices. Lets us think we can drive to whatever we think is good. Even if that's 47 different things.
- Before we had our web analytics telling us who was coming direct from social, now we have a break in that and Linktr.ee shows up as a "referrer" and our stats might be messed up / confusing.
- You're surrendering page views to Linktr.ee this way. (a) You bet your booty they'll be advertising soon on the free version but also (b) when people go from Insta > your site, that's a page view. When people go from Insta > Linktr.ee > Outbound link you added, you've lost that potential page view. (Not sure why the page view matters on an outbound link? You still want them to know you were the one that gave them the information.)
the verdict
Does Linktr.ee provide a specific increase in traffic after you start using? Hard to say.
Is Linktr.ee an easy way to add and remove links to your Instagram bio in a batched manner? Yes.
Is Linktr.ee great for someone who wants a simple solution? Yes.
what am I using instead?
I was using Linktr.ee as my profile link for about a month (and upgraded to Linktr.ee Pro for about two weeks), but now I use a "DIY" version whereby I'm able to track (a) direct Instagram traffic but also (b) what is popular (by using heatmap.me). So when folks land on that DIY version, I know that traffic was from Instagram (quick and easy) and then with heatmap.me I'm tracking where they go once they land on my DIY page. PLUS I still capture all of the page views that I'm the conduit to the outbound link for.
I'm not the only one to go this route. Other examples? (Obviously view on mobile to see these pages as they were intended.)
There are also folks out there not using a Linktr.ee style model at all! These folks link to a direct website URL that is not a Linktr.ee lookalike. (All these links are as of time of publication.)
What do you think? Are you a Linktr.ee fan? Are you using something else? Let me know in the comments.