Swipe up links for Instagram users with over 10,000 followers are officially a thing of the past. At the end of summer 2021, the social media app introduced new ways of sharing links and re-sharing posts in Instagram Stories in the form of two new stickers.
When you create an Instagram story and swipe up to select stickers to add to your content, you’ll notice a “link” sticker and another sticker called “re-share.”
Instagram Link Sticker
Unlike the previous way of sharing and viewing a link, Instagram’s new link stickers are a lot more visible and no “swipe up” graphics are needed to relay the message. Once a link is added using the Instagram link sticker, viewers will see an actual line of text that displays the first part of the linked URL. Users have the ability to change its colors, resize the link and of course, add additional text or stickers that prompt a click-through call to action.
For now, you can’t add more than one link sticker to your story, but IGTV video links have proven to be an effective workaround as links in IGTV videos are clickable.
If you’re looking to encourage multiple link clicks at a time, consider adding multiple links to your IGTV video caption, re-sharing your IGTV video to your story, and relay your message in that setting.
Instagram Re-Share Sticker
Re-sharing stories through the click of one button as we know it has shifted into a multistep process that may seem a little tedious but comes with a few perks.
Before, users could re-share a post by clicking the floating arrow below the post at hand. Now, that button just serves as an option to send the post in a Direct Message (DM).
The newly introduced re-share sticker allows users to re-share feed content that they’ve recently viewed. That includes your own page posts and your saved posts as well. This option kind of forces users to be creative with their re-share, as you have to upload content to create a story before adding the re-share sticker (you could also totally upload or snap a photo of randomness and use the pen tool to paint your background). Again, tedious. But the saved posts display makes up for it.
Vishal Shah, Instagram’s vice president of product, took to Twitter to describe the rollout like this:
“People tell us that they prefer original Stories content over [re-shared] posts, so we’re testing a new way to [re-share] w/ stickers. Our hope is that people will be more intentional when they share, which will create a better Stories experience for everyone.”
Will that serve to be true? Let us know how Instagram’s new sticker features have impacted the way you create!
NOTE: Instagram is still testing the new link and re-share stickers; not all users have access to the update.