Maximize your online outreach by integrating Instagram feeds into your website by using WordPress plugins
Do you know you can maximize your online outreach by integrating Instagram feeds into your website by using WordPress plugins? There came a time when it became necessary to highlight the online identity of businesses across websites and social media platforms. Since websites are the primary online identity for companies and individuals, web designers started incorporating social media buttons in the web design, the red, green, yellow, and blue buttons conveniently located on the website to draw all attention. Each button is linked to a specific social media platform as the name appears below the button. It gave website visitors the option of visiting any social media accounts appearing on the website by clicking on the chosen button. On the other hand, visitors to the social media accounts could transit to the website by clicking on the website link within the social media platform’s content. However, both types of transition entailed leaving one platform to step into another platform.
Gaining high visibility of content is easier on Instagram. It is possible to arrange for easy likes for Instagram content by buying some likes with real people behind them. But to understand your popularity on Instagram or view any good content, your followers must either click on your Instagram account or arrive at it via your website. To overcome the inconvenience of leaving the website to reach Instagram or vice versa, it is now possible to integrate your Instagram feeds into your website using some WordPress plugins. It allows your website viewers to enjoy your Instagram feeds right from your website, which seems like an added website feature. Visitors to your website can now interact with you on both platforms without leaving the website.
It opens up new avenues for creating brand awareness and increasing engagement and conversions that boost sales. By allowing cross-promotion, the reach of your brand multiplies many more times and strengthens your marketing efforts. Once you integrate your Instagram feeds into your website, you need not worry about creating exclusive new content for your website as speedily as you had been doing earlier because now you have dynamic content on your website. Moreover, there are other benefits too.
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How the integration helps
Adding your Instagram feed to your website gives you more opportunities to gain mileage in marketing and interact with the audience in a much closer way by displaying your Instagram content on your website. You can display the product reviews that appear on Instagram but are visible on your website which helps to increase sales. You can use some of your Instagram feed hashtags to encourage visitors to spend longer time on your website and increase engagement. You can showcase your Instagram video content on your website which improves traffic flow and, in the process, strengthens your SEO.
For integrating Instagram feeds into your website, you can use the following WordPress plugins available for free.
Spotlight – Social Photo feeds
The plugin allows you to integrate your Instagram account into your website, and in seconds, you can have a beautiful feed ready to impress your audience. The plugin has a feature of live preview customization that helps you see the process of creating a feed that does not require coding. The plugin allows connecting multiple Instagram accounts and sets up multiple feeds. You can customize the layout, pick and choose colors, and include ‘Load More’ and ‘Follow’ buttons. For additional features like displaying posts that have your account tagged to it or displaying all Instagram posts linked to a specific hashtag, you must use the pro version of Spotlight.
Instagram Feed
The Instagram Feed plugin is one of the most popular plugins, with more than 80,000 websites using it currently. Connect your Instagram account to your website in a click and then start creating your Instagram feed for any account or several accounts. The feed displays in a basic grid format, and you can select the number of columns and grids. To encourage visitors to view more photos, you can include the ‘Load More’ button. To grow your following organically, you can add a ‘Follow’ button, and better yet.
To expand your scope of using Instagram feeds on your website, you would need some additional features like displaying feeds from hashtags and not only from the Instagram account. You must use the pro version of the Instagram Feed plugin. It will also allow you to modify posts and apply filters; give more layout options and other options to highlight images, and use carousels and masonry.
Instagram Slider Widget
Once you have the option of displaying Instagram feeds on your website, you would like to experiment with various options to identify the most attractive display. One option could be to display feeds in a slider form instead of the grid format, and the Instagram Slider Widget is the plugin for that purpose. This plugin, too, does not have any dedicated setting area. All configurations happen in the widget itself, and you can choose between using images based on hashtags or importing them from your Instagram account. The photos are automatically saved in the WordPress Media Library. You have control over the number of images to display and how often you want to show them by selecting the template of thumbnails or sliders.
While configuring the widget, the plugin automatically generates its shortcode, which you can use to add your Instagram feed to the areas not covered by the widget.
Instagram feed Gallery
The plugin provides a simple way of displaying a feed either from hashtags or Instagram users. The display is available either as a carousel slider or grid gallery and you have the choice to decide the number of columns and images that you want to use. You can display the views and comments received by each image by using the feature of hover overlay, and there is the option of opening photos in a lightbox pop-up. The features offered are pretty attractive as it is available for free.
As you do not need any technical knowledge to use the WordPress plugins increases its attraction.