Anyone who has built a following on Instagram might feel like they don’t need to look anywhere else in order to grow their personal brand and maintain the momentum they’ve gathered so far.
However, the reality is that creating a website can make a big difference to your trajectory in the long run, and provide all sorts of benefits that you might not have thought about. To show you exactly how much of an asset a site can be, let’s talk about the biggest reasons that should compel you to launch one if Instagram is your bread and butter.
Tips on Web Hosting
Before we dive in, it’s worth mentioning that having a website isn’t just about adding the right content but also about building it on the right foundations. That’s where finding a reliable web hosting provider comes into play, as it’s the only way to have your site up and running smoothly at all times.
You need to ensure that you use quality hosting services to present your content in the best light. There are plenty of options out there, including NameHero, which not only has its own packages available but is also the leading reseller hosting provider in the industry.
A good host will keep your site live no matter what and ensure that performance is swift, security is sufficient, and access is available to fans worldwide. With the right hosting service in place, the rest of your site will be starting from a strong position.
For example, cheap VPS hosting is an excellent choice for those looking for affordability without compromising performance.
Your Website is Part of Your Professional Online Presence
Having a website to accompany your Instagram marketing will allow you to present yourself professionally. You can create custom pages with more detailed information about who you are and what services or products you offer, as well as showcase any press coverage that might be relevant to potential clients.
It’s also a way to make your contact info available to anyone who needs it. For example, if you’ve invested in the best phone systems to deal with calls from customers, clients, and potential sponsors, you can make sure that your number is front and center on your website. This is especially important if you don’t want to field all of your business communications through the medium of direct messages on Instagram, which is an unwieldy affair at the best of times.
Moreover, having an attractive, search engine-friendly website also provides users with another avenue for finding out more about your brand, rather than being solely reliant on Instagram’s algorithms. This means better visibility on Google and other search engines while making it easy to link back from your site directly into specific posts on Instagram, so followers can find content quickly.
Control the Narrative: Showcase What You Want to Highlight on your Own Site
With a website, you’ve got complete control over how your brand is presented, allowing you to shape the narrative as it relates to what content or products you want people to see.
Conversely, with Instagram and other social media platforms, there’s no guarantee that followers will stumble across certain posts, which can mean that all of the work that you’ve poured into them goes to waste. Having a separate site lets you be the arbiter of what content is presented to anyone who visits. So any campaigns you’ve planned can get the attention they deserve, and you can also shape how you’re perceived more effectively than if you were only doing so via a third party social platform.
Boost Content Discovery with SEO Strategies Built into a Website
We’ve already touched on the fact that you can optimize web content for search engine discovery, and it’s a much more in-depth and manageable affair than being reliant on hashtags to get your posts seen.
With strategies like keyword research, meta tags and descriptions, link building, and more, you’ll have an easier time getting discovered by potential customers searching online. This increased visibility will help boost brand recognition and will ultimately lead to higher engagement rates on both your website and Instagram account.
That’s not to say that search engine optimization (SEO) is always a straightforward affair. In fact, it takes time to perfect, so outsourcing it to a specialist or an agency if you don’t have the skills or the time to handle it when building your site makes sense.
Take Advantage of Advanced Features and Functionalities
There are all sorts of abilities that are associated with websites that Instagram either doesn’t offer or provides in a way that puts you at a disadvantage.
With your own site, you can easily add interactive elements like polls, forms, quizzes, and surveys to find out more about your audience. You can also create custom pages for different topics or products without relying on third-party services. And of course you can integrate social media feeds directly into your site so that this is still a core part of the experience, which will ease the transition for visitors who know you from Instagram or elsewhere. For more instructions on how to do this, check out the detailed guide by flowbox.
Better yet, you can even incorporate eCommerce solutions if you want to start selling online. Being able to sell directly to your audience means that you’ll take a bigger cut of the revenue that this generates rather than having to split it with a social platform.
Increase Engagement Through Interactivity
As the steward of your own website, you can increase engagement with your followers through interactive elements that go above and beyond what’s available on Instagram.
For instance, if you want to offer downloadable content, then this is a possibility and means you can give fans access to digital assets that are of higher quality and of course, which you are in complete control of.
You can even embrace AI chatbots that can answer questions about your brand without needing you to always be available to respond to comments and queries that are commonly coming through on your social feeds.
All of this works towards keeping visitors on the page longer, which in turn means that they become more invested in what you have to offer. And if you’re keen to convert them there and then, whether into a paying customer or just into a mailing list subscriber, this makes a big difference.
What’s more, it’s easy to track data related to user interactions when everything is channeled through your site, so you can better understand who is engaging with your content and how they are interacting.
Make It Personal: Customize the Look & Feel
You can make a website as personal or professional as you’d like when creating a website. Whether that means incorporating your brand colors and fonts into the design, adding custom images to showcase products or services, or even building out an entire blog section with content related to your niche, all of this is possible.
There are countless tools available for customization, so you don’t have to be an expert web designer in order to create something unique and impactful. It also means you don’t just need to adhere to the same regimented way that Instagram requires its users to present themselves but can instead let your creativity run wild and ideally connect more closely with the expectations of your audience in the process.
Keep Growing: Reach New Audiences With a Platform That’s Easy to Update
Having your own website also gives you the opportunity to reach new audiences, both through organic search and paid advertising campaigns. And the best part is that it’s easy to update content across all pages on a regular basis, so if something changes or evolves in your niche, you can adjust accordingly without having to worry about losing existing followers.
This way, even as trends come and go with Instagram algorithm updates, you’ll always have an up-to-date platform for engaging potential customers. Taking the reins rather than leaving the future of your brand up to fate is a core part of the appeal of running a website alongside a successful Instagram account, whether you’re an individual influencer or a business.
Stand Out From Competitors By Offering Something Different
The web is the world’s largest marketplace, and so when you’re on Instagram, you’re effectively competing against every other user on this platform.
Rather than only being reliant on your success or failure in this particular corner of the internet, with a website, you’re able to stand apart from the competition and do something that makes you a bit different from your contemporaries and peers.
This is particularly relevant to individuals or organizations that have found an audience on Instagram in a short span of time, and are eager to capitalize on this. If you aren’t doing everything you can to carve your own niche and show what makes you more than just another micro influencer account, then your future prospects are less secure.
Establish Credibility as an Expert in Your Niche
Speaking of standing out, you’ll likely want to achieve this by offering followers more value for their time and attention than can be delivered via the medium of Instagram. That means focusing on what makes you an expert and demonstrating your knowledge and skills in an engaging and accessible way.
Your website can be your calling card in this context. It can contain everything from longform articles, to video clips, to images and much more besides, with each tidbit of content coming together to assert your authority within your niche.
Then there’s the fact that with a website, it becomes easier for media outlets and industry insiders to find out more about what you do and have a clear sense of your credibility without needing to make further inquiries. This could lead to press coverage that helps solidify your reputation, making it a self-perpetuating path to prominence.
Grow Your Audience with an Email List & Newsletter
We briefly touched on mailing lists as a conversion option for snagging visitors to your website and turning them into more permanent members of your user base. This is another element that deserves to be expanded upon.
By offering people who click through to your site from Instagram or a search engine the chance to sign up to your mailing list, they can actively opt-in for regular updates about what’s new in your niche or any special offers that might be available if relevant.
It’s easy to connect this list of contacts directly to Instagram, so followers can remain in the loop on everything you post, which means more engagement across all channels. This kind of cross-pollination results in real, sustainable audience growth over time rather than only happening in sporadic spurts that feel like they’re not within your means to manage.
Plan for an Instagram-Free Future
Anyone with a thriving Instagram account needs to think about what would happen if the platform were to disappear one day. While it might seem like an impossible staple of the social scene right now, history shows that even the mightiest platforms can crumble and fall, so you want to have contingencies in place to account for this.
Having your own website serves as a backup plan in such scenarios. It will leave you with an enduring online presence, regardless of changes that might occur on Instagram or any other social communities you use.
This is a piece of advice that even applies to those who are only just at the beginning of their Instagram audience-building journey. While it’s good to hope for the best, you should also be planning for the worst.
Key Takeaways
Hopefully, you’re no longer on the fence about creating a website because there’s so much to be gained from doing so if your Instagram following is already through the roof. In fact, you’ve got a ready-made audience that will lap up whatever site you put together, so you’ll have a potentially simpler time catapulting your new site into the stratosphere when it is finally ready.
