How to Make a LinkTree Page on Your Own Site – Easy Instagram Landing Page

I’m definitely not a blogger who blogs about blogging, but I have met an a HUGE community of bloggers as a blogger myself. Despite our differences in niche – motherhood, lifestyle, food, fashion – we all have one thing in common and that is the desire to drive TRAFFIC to our sites. One way to leverage the “one link” in your Instagram bio is use a tool like LinkTree to serve as a page that houses all the links you want to show someone who clicks through from Instagram. And it’s a pretty cool free tool but there are 2 reasons you shouldn’t be using LinkTree in your Instagram bio:

1. You want that traffic to be driving to YOUR site 
2. You want to control the branding of the page and experience of your users when they leave Instagram trying to follow one of your calls-to-action

It’s so easy to create your own Instagram landing page that’s even bigger and better than a LinkTree page. Here’s my Instagram landing page in action: lovelyluckylife.com/instagram-links

It’s really easy to create a personalized Instagram landing page on your own WordPress site using a free plugin – here’s how: 

1. In WordPress, create a page (not a post) – name it whatever you want the URL to look like in your Instagram profile (example: YOURURL.com/WhateverYouNameThatPage). This page won’t be shown as a new post, so it’ll only be navigable whenever you post the link, which will only be in your Insta profile. 
2. On your page, add a photo of yourself if you want a personal touch – I also added a short “welcome” paragraph for my Insta people. Add headers for whatever sections you want on your landing page – I have “Favorite Things” for affiliate links and products, “The Latest Posts” to show my latest blog posts, “Shop My Instas” for my RewardStyle plugin, and “Let’s Hang” for my other social links.  
3. Download the plugin “Shortcodes Ultimate” – it’s free! And activate it. 
4. You’ll use 2 types of shortcodes – buttons & latest posts. 
   1. The buttons shortcode allows you to customize colors, shapes, etc of buttons that will live on your landing page. I created a button template (black button, white text) and each time I want a new button I just copy and paste the code but change the button’s URL and text (circled below). Here’s an example of a button I use to promote my Pinterest account:  You just change out the URL and the text between the ending “]” and the “[/su button]”. Here are all the customizations you can make to the button design – play around and see what you like for your page. 
      
   2. The latest posts shortcode allows you to display as many of your recent posts as you’d like – this way it automatically pulls in your latest published posts (yay for automation!) – you can customize certain aspects depending on what you want shown. Here’s the code I use (you can just copy and paste this onto your page after you’ve downloaded the shortcode plugin): 
      • [ su_posts template=”templates/teaser-loop.php” id=”” posts_per_page=”5″ post_type=”post” taxonomy=”category” tax_term=”” tax_operator=”IN” author=”” meta_key=”” offset=”0″ order=”DESC” orderby=”date” post_parent=”” post_status=”publish” ignore_sticky_posts=”no” ]
      • {NOTE! there’s a space between the opening and closing [ and ] that you’ll need to delete if you’re copying and pasting – it will need to look exactly like it does in the image below}
        • change the number for “posts per page” to whatever number you want, I show 5. Teaser loop just shows the thumbnail and title of the post.  
   3. You can also add your RewardStyle widget on this page – within the RewardStyle platform, create an RS widget by going to Apps > LikeToKnowIt Widget and then customize size, platform, frame, etc. Copy and paste the shortcode into your page’s code. 
   4. For social links, I just used my previously-created button design and link to my other channels that way. 
   5. Grab the link you created in step 1 and copy and paste it into your Instagram profile under “website”. 

Voila! You’ve got your own version of LinkTree, only better! Email me @ lov[email protected] if you have any questions <3