You know that trusty Linkin bio move that we all pull on
Instagram to help with conversions? Well, word on the street
is it may be on its way out. So in this
episode, I'm gonna talk about what's really happening with Linkin
bio, what's replacing it, and what you can do as a business
owner and a marketer. This is the Mindful Marketing Podcast
episode 320, and this show today is brought
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contract ends. Terms and conditions apply. Click the link in the show
notes for more information. Alright. So let's talk about link
in bio. Link in bio wasn't always a thing on
Instagram. So if we're gonna rewind the clock and go back in history,
Instagram was a very image centric platform when it came
out. And in fact, it was very personable. We all
remember posting our breakfast with the Valencia
filter on it. Well, since marketers took over
Instagram and Instagram did not have any links
hyperlinked in their posts, marketers came up with a
link in bio. Very similar to how on x,
formerly known as Twitter, back in the day, it was the community there
that created hashtags. Well, the community on Instagram
created the term click the link in the bio. So
users, the the people scrolling through the app, if they see something that's
interesting, the call to action was to go over to the
profile page and click the link there. So this then quickly became
adopted by influencers and brands. And as
Instagram grew in popularity, everyone says
link in bio to indicate, hey, go click the link in the
bio if you want more information. It kind of became second
nature in the app. They did later add in a
clickable link in stories, but do y'all remember this? It was
only available to those, profiles that had over
10,000 followers. So everyone was trying to get
to 10 k followers so they can get the link in stories, but it was
the swipe up feature. That was such a long
time ago. But that was Instagram. Okay. So you had the link in
your bio, and then if you had over 10,000 followers, you could say swipe up
for more information, and that swipe up action would also
be a link. Then comes along third party tools like
Linktree. So because of the singular link
in the bio, it was very common for marketers
and influencers and brands to swap that link
out for whatever it was they were currently promoting. If it was a specific
product, they change their link to that that product. If it was a free something,
they changed the link to the free something. And so that was part of the
experience. And then Linktree was created, which is one of the very first
aggregate tools that allowed, content creators to put multiple links on a landing
page. So you didn't know you didn't
links on a landing page. So you didn't know you didn't have to go to
your profile and keep updating the link. You'd have the one link that was already
always there, and then you could update link tree and also link out to multiple
things.
Fast forward to today, we now have 5 links
available in the bio. And if you have a,
Meta Pro account, like you've paid for your blue check
mark, you can now have an enhanced
link, strategy where you can add images and things like that as
well. K? Now link in bio is a great,
example of the community coming together for changing
something. Right? There's no links available in the post, so we all create link in
bio. And it's second nature, very low friction, easy way
to drive traffic. You just say click the link in the bio, and it's second
nature at this point. It's how people use the app.
Okay? But there are some limitations to saying go click
the link in the bio. It's a couple of steps. And
in the 10 plus years that I've been doing this business,
all of the analytics show that traffic from Instagram
is much lower than other platforms. I'm looking at you, Facebook. I'm looking at
you, LinkedIn, even YouTube. Traffic is much lower than
other platforms. However, traffic from Instagram does seem
tend to be more committed traffic. What I mean by that
is they're clicking multiple pages. They're signing up for the thing. K. When I look
in something like Google Analytics, when I look at Instagram's traffic, they're
on that website longer than someone who came in from Facebook, generally
anecdotally speaking. That's because it's a couple of steps
to click the link in the bio. And as much as I love
using Instagram for conversions, it's still not
really a great platform for conversions. I will talk
about later how that's changing. It's still not a
great platform for conversion. So what happens
is someone has to click on your profile, go to your
profile, click on the link in the profile. If you're using a link
tree, they have to look at the links that are there, find the one that
they're looking for, click on that link, go to a landing page. And if they're
signing up for a free thing, then enter their email address
and get something from that. Right? And so there's quite a number
of steps involved, and so a lot of people don't go through all of those
steps. The ones that do very, very dedicated group of people.
It's the user experience that's not really that great, and sometimes it can
be very challenging to update those links,
to be reflective of what's going on in your business right now. So for example,
I built out my own landing page on my website, onlinejreay.com/social.
I put that in all of my social media bios, and it has, like,
some hot links of, what's important, what's going on in my business right
now. But I have a task for my assistant, shout out to Jemmy,
to go and look at that every single week and make sure the content that
we have coming up for that week matches the links that are there. It's
an extra step. Right? It is an extra step. But it's not that bad, because
I have the same link on all social platforms. It's super streamlined.
K? Then comes along ManyChat.
ManyChat changed the game a little bit for this link in
bio scenario. So I'll actually say this. Prior to ManyChat
or kind of alongside when ManyChat was, first being
birthed, Instagram started allowing
accounts that had any number of followers to
put a link in their Instagram stories. And to me,
the link in the stories changed the game. I get the highest conversions
from my stories, and the reason being is that Instagram
stories tends to be my most dedicated
community member. They're there. They're watching. They're chatting with me. They're hanging out with
me. They're they love to be there. And if I say, hey. I've got this
resource that can help you. They sign up for the thing. They buy the thing.
Okay? And because it's a link, you just tap it. It opens the page. It's
a very straightforward user experience.
Okay? So links in stories, in my opinion,
is a better replacement for link in bio and having a bunch
of promo posts on your feed, especially outside of a launch period.
That being said, I love ManyChat. So for a little bit of
background, ManyChat is a third party tool. They are
Meta partners. Okay? So they work with Facebook. They work with WhatsApp. They
work with Instagram. However, they're not owned by Meta. It's a
third party tool, And, they work off a number,
they work in a number of ways. The first way is a triggered base
response. So that means someone has to do a specific, action
or take a specific keyword, like type in a specific keyword on your post
or in a message, and then an automated robot will
respond. Now you can set this up however you'd like, but it is an
automation. So you may have seen this on Instagram. If I say,
like, right now at the time of recording this, I am wrapping up my
Instagram boot camp. I say on my Instagram, comment
the word boot camp, and I will send you the details for the boot
camp. So anytime someone says the word boot camp on my post,
I can send it to be any post or that post specifically.
This bot will then run them through the process of getting them signed up for
the boot camp. Okay? So instead of having to click the link
in the bio, there's a whole automated process behind the scenes.
And since you can set it up however you'd like, it could be very
conversational in nature. I have it set up so that if you comment on a
post or you send me a DM with your keyword, it'll walk you through
some steps. I ask for your email address. I ask if you wanna be signed
up, and then I send you reminders about the boot camp as well. K?
And if you said, yes, I wanna sign up, but you didn't sign up,
there's a follow-up sequence to that as well that's like, hey. You said yes, but
I don't have your email address. Can you get it for me? K? That
is ManyChat in a nutshell. You don't have to set it up like that. There
are a number of different ways you can do it. You can even have it
set up so that, you know, very simple ManyChat funnel. I
actually have on my YouTube channel right now that's just a
keyword and a link. They comment the word, I have one set up
like this for my Instagram mindset guide. Comment the word IG
mindset. I'll send you my mindset guide. Literally, it's me DM ing them
the link and saying tap here, then they sign up. K? The reason
I love ManyChat is because it makes the
experience easier for someone who's just scrolling and hanging out on
Instagram. It doesn't feel like it has all of the extra steps of, like, go
click the link in the bio, then look at all my links here, then pick
the one that you want, then sign up for the thing. Okay?
So there's a lot there's a lot that can go
on in those types of scenarios. So ManyChat
makes it a lot simpler to do. Now also,
with ManyChat on the marketing side, I like it because
number 1, I'm in people's inboxes. So I'm sending them a
direct message with this information. So
now that is in their messages. So even if they don't sign up
right now, it's in their messages. They'll see it next time they open up their
messages. Number 2, I like it because I
can create tailored messages. So it doesn't have to feel
like a robotic experience. I use my voice when I'm writing out the
confirmation messages, and I just have a a conversational
flow to everything I'm doing in ManyChat. And then
also, I like it because there's no need to leave the app,
especially with more advanced automations. Instead of having them go
to a landing page and enter their email address, in the automated message
sequence, I can just ask for their email address. And then have
automations add them into my ConvertKit, send them the welcome email from
there, and everything that needs to follow-up from there. So for me,
I personally like that I can have this custom flow, these tailored
messages. And then also I have tagging set up. So I have a
tag for Instagram, for instance, where, you
know, if I were to do something about Instagram in the future, I know this
is a group of people who are interested in Instagram. I can send them more
messages on that topic. The same thing goes for social media managers. Whenever
I create automated sequences for,
my social media managers, I tag them as a social media manager. And then
any of my offers that I sell about building a
social media management business, I can then reach
out to them directly. And one of the interesting ways I've done this is
in the raise your rates funnel. So I have a free private podcast
called raise your rates. And if you sign up for the podcast,
one of my calls to action to kinda start a conversation with
someone is for them to DM me with a keyword.
And if they DM me that keyword, I give them more free stuff, and that's
all set up through ManyChat. So I really enjoy,
seeing those come in because to me, it's like a signal someone's listening.
Now they're in my inbox. Now there's another touch point. I really like
it. Anecdotally, I have yet to
see a really good case study comparing link in
bio clicks versus automated response clicks
from something like ManyChat. Because there are competitors out there, ManyChat isn't the
only one. And I think one of the competitors, if they wanted to break into
this space, one of the things they should do is create a,
a test of which gets higher conversions.
Because anecdotally anecdotally, the,
ManyChat bots get maybe slightly more
conversions than the link in bio, but it's pretty on par. It's pretty on
par. I know people who are like, ManyChat stans.
They love to say that ManyChat is the way to go. I'm not
convinced. I've seen this, you know, with some of my past clients. I've seen
this with my own account. People still like clicking the link in the bio because
it's just like what we do. And also, even though people are commenting, there's
a percentage of people who just fall off. They comment the word, you know, boot
camp. I email them and say, hey, you wanna sign up for the boot camp?
They're like, yeah. They never give their email address. They never sign up.
Even though I'm, like, following up with them, you know, 24 hours later, hey, I
didn't grab your email. Can you type it in? I've been ghosted. My bot has
been ghosted. So anecdotally, I don't see
conversions high enough to be like, yes, ManyChat all the
way. And also, you have to keep your your community, your
audience in mind. I do find that marketers are
quicker to use a ManyChat bot than, like, your average everyday
consumer for the most part. So other marketers
tend to love things like this. They tend to love automations. So,
you know, take that with a grain of salt. Now there are some drawbacks
to using automations like ManyChat. The biggest one
is that it can be very easily mismanaged. One of the
hardest things to do for my opinion with the ManyChat bots
is to pick a keyword. So for my launch plan
that is a free lead magnet that I have, I use the word
launch as, like, the trigger word. And if
someone accidentally types launch, it's like the bot goes off, and then
now they're getting something they didn't ask for. So that can be
embarrassing. One time, when this podcast was called the
oh, wait. No. It was a school. When the school I was doing a promo
for the school, and I said type s s s for Savvy Social School, and
I'll send you details for the school. In my mind, I'm like, nobody else would
type s s s unless they unless they wanna be in the school.
No. The bot went off when someone said, yes. This
with, like, a dozen s's, and that dozen s's had 3 s s s's
in it. And then they're like the bot's like, hey. I saw your interest in
the school. I'm gonna DM you. I was like, no, bot. Down, boy. Like, it's
it went off on the most annoying of time. So you have to be
really intentional about the keywords that you select. The other thing
that can be a challenge in managing ManyChat is that it
gets really annoying in the follow ups. So I sign up for a lot of
things because I'm a marketer, and I just like to see the behind the scenes
of how things work. And so sometimes I'll use the comment DM
situation when I'm just curious. I'm just wanna see how it works,
because I'm nosy. And then I get start getting messages, like, daily
messages from this brand, and I'm like, unsubscribe, stop. Like, there
it's not there's no way to stop unless you block them. So it can
be very annoying if brands don't have a proper plan in place
to only message people at key times. The
other thing is I think there is a little bit of a learning curve with
ManyChat. I don't think it's as intuitive
as they say it is. I think it can be I think it can be
challenging to set up. Not hard, but there's a lot
of touch points and there's a lot of little details. And so one of the
reasons why in a Savvy Social School, I set up like a ManyChat,
template, like a cheat sheet. Like, here's everything you need before you go into the
bot to set it up, because there's so many little things that you
can add that you can get lost in the sauce if you're trying to to
set it up. And then also to maintain it. You know, if you have different
launches and things going on, different carts and things that are opening, it it can
be a little bit of a maintenance thing to do. And then lastly,
one of the drawbacks of using ManyChat for automation is
that automations, especially if they're poorly done,
can feel impersonal. And this is just the challenge
of living in an automated world right now. The
rise of AI. It feels nice. It sounds like it could
be great, and yet we all have had experience
with AI gone rogue where we're like, bots, we didn't
ask for this. And it's, like, the plot of every
dystopian movie. Right? The robots are taking over the world. Also,
ManyChat's not free. There is a cost. My plan's $25. I know
they have a free one, but because of all the things I have set up,
it's $25 a month. Not a huge cost, but, like, enough for me to go.
Every time the bill comes in, I'm like, do I need this? So
it is a thought. So the big question then remains. Do we
use link in bio? Do we use ManyChat? My answer
is use both. The hybrid approach. And
this may not be what you wanna hear because the drama on the
Internet is that people are either for LinkedIn bio or
they're for ManyChat. There's not a lot of people saying try a hybrid
approach. Because I think marketers are trying to sell their programs, let's be
honest. Obviously, tools like ManyChat are trying to sell
their tool as the greatest thing since sliced
bread. But I also think the hybrid approach is great for
this strategy, especially if you have a very engaged
community. You can say, comment this keyword to get
this resource or click the link in the bio. It's not that
many extra words. And depending on the person looking at it, some
people wanna comment, some people wanna click the link in the bio. And I think
it kind of, dissuades those people who don't wanna
comment. And that's been the biggest, argument against
ManyChat that I've seen is that some people don't want it
known that they're looking at this resource. For example,
let's say you are newly pregnant and you see a
resource that says, how to deal with 1st
trimester nausea, and you're like, I definitely want this, but
it's like, comment the word nausea and we'll send it to you. But you don't
want all your friends and family to know that you're pregnant yet.
What are you gonna do? You're gonna go click the link in the bio. That's
what you're gonna do. And so sometimes, leaving a comment publicly on
a post is not something that you wanna do. So having the alternative there
to that can be very helpful. Or if you're just nosy like me, sometimes
I look at stuff from competitors and I'm like, oh, I wonder what this is.
I'm not commenting a keyword. I'm gonna go to their website and try to find
it. So I think the sweet spot can be very helpful, and it can be
the best of both worlds. I don't wanna diminish
the power of familiarity. We know what
LinkedIn bio is. And while ManyChat isn't necessarily new,
it didn't really become super popular until the past 12 months.
And so we've been living the last, what, 15 years with a
link in bio and then the last year and a bit
with many chat bots. Familiarity,
can be very familiarity can be a really powerful tool
in marketing. And so people are used to clicking the link in bio, do not
I wouldn't recommend discounting that. Now one of the things I love about
ManyChat as well is that it does give your post an instant engagement
boost because people are commenting. And, humans, we
are we have herd mentality. Okay? We see someone else doing something. We're like, oh,
what are they doing? Right? So when you see a bunch of people on a
post saying boot camp, boot camp, you're like, I want in on the boot camp,
and you type boot camp too so that you're in on the game. But the
opposite can be true. If someone says comment the keyword and you go to the
comments, there's no comments for the keyword. You're like, am I the only one here?
Is anyone here? Hello? Hello? And so it can have a
negative effect if your account isn't already engaging.
And so that is definitely something to keep in mind when you're thinking about
this strategy, which is why I do recommend a hybrid approach. That being
said, for newer account, I recommend just sticking with saying link in
bio. And, also, you can say comment keyword and then manually follow-up
follow-up with people. Nothing wrong with that saying, comment on
this post, and I will DM you the resource. You could just
manually DM people. That's also an option too. Now here's the
twist to this whole thing. About 3 weeks
ago, Meta released their q two report, and I
covered this in my private podcast for the Savvy Social School.
If you're not in the Savvy Social School, you gotta come join us.
We have a lot of fun over there, and I release social media news,
updates sometimes daily depending on what's happening in the world with
social media news. And one of the things that, Mark
Zuckerberg said in his q two report was that they're working
on more AI generated tools. The most recent one
is their AI characters, where you as a brand
can create a bot based on your brand. So, like, Snoop Dogg can
have the Snoop Dogg bot, and then the Snoop Dogg bot will answer
questions for you. In reading about this, it sounds very
similar to some of the things that ManyChat can do. So if someone direct
messages you and says, hey, what are your prices? You can have
the bot automatically respond. And Meta has made this very
clear that this is a bot. They're not trying to make it look like the
account is actually responding, which is different than ManyChat. And this is a
tool that they are developing. So it's in progress, and I think
it's gonna become the replacement to ManyChat.
That's my prediction. That's my speculation. But with the rise of AI and
and kind of the AI tools that are already embedded in Meta, it it would
be very easy for them to completely ice out a tool like ManyChat
by having a triggered response, like comment this
question or keyword, and we'll send you a resource and have the
ability to set that natively up in the app. Ugh, game chaser.
I hope Meta does this personally, so I can save my little 20 to
$25 has a month. And also, it's less work,
to set up another tool if everything's all together.
So that's my speculation, my prediction for the future.
So, there you go. There you have it. If you are sitting on the
fence and you're not sure which one to use, stick with link in
bio. Link in bio is very familiar. You can use
some of these third party tools like a link tree to keep your links fresh,
but you also have up to 5 links now in the bio. If you're
looking for some change, you can test out some automation.
I'll have my affiliate link in the description for ManyChat. You can
also go to onlinedreya.com/manychat. Test it out for
yourself. I have YouTube videos and tutorials on how to use this, see if
it works for you. And if you want even more
ManyChat automations and tips and tricks, you gotta join us in
the Savvy Social School where we just geek out about social media.
We experiment, we play, we try a lot of things, especially for those
of you who are not new, but you're like, man, I really wanna take social
media seriously. This is the membership for you. Come on in and
join us. Next week, I am talking about marketing through
a pivot. I've gone through a pivot myself this year.
I'll have a update about that. I actually have a pretty big announcement to share
next week as well. So stay tuned for that. Oh, a
teaser. And, of course, make sure that you give us a 5 star rating
on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Helps keep us in the top 100
marketing podcasts. That's my show for today. I'll see you next
week. Bye.