Mariel Nardi is our Manager of Social Media. In this episode of the podcast series, she talks with our Chief Technology Manager about how to use Linktree to manage an Instagram business account.

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Hello AMT-Lab listeners, this is Ashley Anderson Kowach, Chief Technology Manager of the Arts Management and Technology Laboratory. On this episode, I’m speaking with Mariel Nardi, our Manager of Social Media about Linktree and it’s application for social media management. Enjoy!

Ashley Anderson Kowach: I'm here with Mariel Nardi,

Mariel Nardi: Hi!

AAK: Hi. She is our manager of social media for AMT-Lab and today we will be talking about Linktree.

MN: Great.

AAK: You recently wrote an article for AMT-Lab explaining Linktree, and some pros and cons and some costs involved with it. Can you give our listeners a brief overview of what Linktree is and what it does?

MN: Sure. So Linktree is a link sharing service that's specific to Instagram. Basically, it sounds kind of silly, but it's just a link to more links. The only place in Instagram where you are able to share a link to like, maybe your own personal website or other information is in your Instagram profile and your Instagram bio, and if somebody wanted to share more than one bit of information on an Instagram post with link information, they would have to constantly change out that link in their Instagram bio to match whatever they're talking about and every individual post. Linktree is kind of an aggregator to where you are able to just have that one link in your bio and update the service with whatever new content that you're referring to in your individual Instagram posts.

AAK: Okay. Does it update automatically, or is that something that you have to do? So if I make an Instagram post and there are, you know, things in the post, is it going

to, is it going to the link tree or is like, or do I have to go in and say...

MN: So I do two separate things. I make the post where I refer to a piece of content and I go to LInktree and I add in that specific link and specific title of the article that I'm referring to. Recently, we had a an article about Google Chrome music.

AAK: Uh huh.

MN: And I refer to that article and our latest Instagram post, and told her readers to go click the link in the bio if they want to learn more. So we had a few readers who were interested in doing that. They went to our profile, click the link in the bio, and then found the top listing, which was the article that I was referring to in the individual Instagram post. It’s sort of a travel chain to get people to where you want to eventually have them land.

AAK: Okay. And so also this would work if you were sharing content from another from

something other than AMT-Lab, you would put links to like the New York time.

MN: Sure. Yeah.

AAK: And if there were other things in that article from the New York Times, you can add additional links. So, say they're talking about something from Google.

MN: Okay.

AAK: Say it's a tech review in the New York Times, you could link it to the New York Times and then also additionally link to, like, maybe a specific thing that they're talking about within that article? Or is that too many links? What's the best way to use this?

MN: I would say you're directing people to one particular article and every individual Instagram post, right? At least that's how we operate. So, by just directing them to that one thing, that's probably the most effective way to go about it. But yeah, it doesn't have to be your own website content. We've shared links to voter registration information, we’ve shared links to, I think New York Times articles, MIT Media Lab articles, all kinds of different things. So it doesn't necessarily have to be your own content, but it sort of lives in the same space in that particular sort of link file, if you will, of all of the things that you refer to on Instagram.

AAK: Okay. I guess in a way, you've kind of answered this, in your article on the AMT-Lab website, you talked about there being a possible benefit to using link tree instead of creating an Instagram landing page. So first of all, how is that different?

MN: Okay

AAK: And second of all, why is it better?

MN: First of all, it's functionally it's not really all that different. There are two things that do the same thing. An Instagram landing page that you would create for your own mobile version of your website would operate in similar fashion as Linktree does in its own particular way. The concept is the same. However, to answer your second question, why is it better, I honestly think that just depends on the user. If you're working on a really small team, like we have at AMT-Lab and we're not constantly updating the structure of the website and altering it in significant ways. we just, we have a lot going on, you know, to do something easy Linktree is the easier version of that, and I think that provides the option for more types of users to be able to share web content that's outside of Instagram, on Instagram. For those who do have a

bigger team, who have a better bigger web content distribution system that's a little more equipped to be constantly changing the website, I think an Instagram landing page on its own is a good idea because the thing that we sort of struggle with when we talk about “are we getting our followers exactly to where we want them to go”, is there are a lot of steps involved to getting people to what we want them to get to. So I have to post on Instagram about this particular article, I have to send them away from the Instagram post to the link in the bio, I have to hope that they click that, and then I have to hope that they find what they were originally looking for and then click that article as well.

AAK: Okay.

MN: That's a lot of steps and Linktree, even just directing your followers to Linktree, you’re actually not directing them fully to your website. It's sort of putting another step in between. But that's kind of the sacrifice you make when having an easier way of getting this sort of easier way to bring sort of aggregate all the web content that you refer to. It’s sort of trade off.

AAK: Okay. And since you started the Instagram account and started using Linktree,

what have you noticed? Any sort of growth over time and people going through Linktree getting to the AMT website?

MN: Yeah, I think I think so we've been using Linktree almost since the get-go. I was really interested in finding a service that allowed us to share our articles on Instagram, because it's such a massive growing platform and has a very different set of users than Facebook does for us, and like LinkedIn has for us, as well as Twitter. It's all sort of different. We're trying to get as many eyeballs to see our content as possible. So for me, I wanted to find something pretty quickly. Also, I did not like having to change out that link week by week and the bio that gets a little tiring. So that makes that a lot easier as well. I think over time, I have seen more people start to click on more of our links. And if I go back through the history of things that we've clicked on in the past, I think I have seen some people maybe click on the link that they wanted to go to. And then I think also possibly, I've seen some people maybe not click on that link and click on something else that they found more interesting. But if the goal is to get people to our website, then I think that helps that happen in an easier manner.

AAK: So once they're there, it doesn't matter where they go within the website as long...we're just happy to have you there. (laughter)

MN: Yeah, we’re happy to have you. I think that's the best attitude.

AAK: Have a look around!

MN: Yeah.

AAK: Okay. Cool. Well, I think we kind of hit on everything. Brett, do you want to ask anything?

Brett Crawford: What would you recommend for people to use as they are trying on Linktree? Advice you would give people?

MN: Um, advice I would give people who are trying out Linktree...Stick with it. Make sure that you're tagging your Instagram posts in a way that people who are more likely to follow that sort of process of clicking multiple things to get to the content that they want to see, make sure you're tagging your content for the right eyes. So, the more the more targeted your tags are, and the more effective your tags are, and you're getting your niche content to the niche communities, the more likely I think you're going to have people follow that process and get to the content that they want to see instead of losing people along the way,

AAK: Right.

MN: Like, if I’m just generally like, “technology, all technology” and then that's it, if I'm not going like “blockchain” and getting to the blockchain people then I think it'll be less likely that you'll get the eyes that you want to see it.

AAK: Okay. So what you're saying is be, be aware that you want your Linktree and you're tagging to work together.

MN: Everything should just work together. That's the better way of saying it. Yeah, everything should work together to get people to where you want them to go.

AAK: Thanks Mariel!

MN: You're welcome.

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