I get so frustrated every time I stumble across an Instagram post that asks you to visit a link they’ve pasted in the caption. You know the ones I’m talking about – they have the URL spelled out in front of you, but it doesn’t actually take you anywhere. It’s not even really a link at all, just some text you have to copy and paste into a separate web browser if you have the patience to do so.

It’s frustrating because it seems like an easily fixable design flaw. In reality, it’s a ploy by these platforms to keep you scrolling.

Link limitations

Social networks don’t want you to leave their platform. Their power comes from getting you to spend endless time online, interacting with their software.

Links are a disruption to this. You don’t have the option to put an active link in your Instagram caption because this would take people away from the platform.

Social media companies even go as far as to demote posts that include links in them. Phill Agnew, host of The Science of Social Media podcast, conducted research to help solve his own suspicions about this topic by analyzing over 174 million tweets that either contained a link or did not. He found that tweets with links achieved 7.2% fewer retweets and 28% less reach than those without. Alternatively, he found that tweets referring to a “link in bio” generate 8.98% more retweets, 21.24% more impressions, and 40% more reach than those that include a link directly in the post.

While Agnew’s study focused primarily on Twitter (or X) we can assume that most other social media algorithms act in a similar way. Instagram and TikTok are particularly discouraging of link use. On TikTok, you can’t even put a link in your bio if your follower count is under a certain number.

We now know that posts containing links seem to perform worse than those without, but links are an essential aspect of information sharing. You want to be able to drive people to your content, so how do we get around this?

Link in bio

To achieve maximum visibility, you probably want to avoid using links in the posts themselves. Instead, opt for posts that refer to links in your bio. Craft a caption that directs users to your profile page and make sure that the link you have set up fits your brand and is able to properly store your content.

As Mike Belobradic puts it in his LinkedIn article about external linking on socials, “the key is to ensure that you are doing what is best for your social media strategy and that any external links are very targeted and have a direct purpose to support your overall objectives” (checkout the rest of his insights and tips for effectively using links here).

This way, you can sidestep the limitations that platforms impose and garner as much reach as possible. Happy linking!

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Works Cited

Agnew, Phill. “‎The Science of Social Media: Why You Shouldn’t Add Links to Your Social Posts on Apple Podcasts.” Apple Podcasts, 14 Mar. 2023, podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-science-of-social-media/id1153119945?i=1000604148628. Accessed 23 June 2024.

Belobradic, Mike. “Is It Bad to Post External Links on Social Media?” LinkedIn, 28 Sept. 2021, http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bad-post-external-links-social-media-mike-belobradic/. Accessed 23 June 2024.