One of the tools we've long used as part of our digital marketing system is a feature that will send your Instagram content directly to your website as a dedicated post. This article describes how the new Instagratify tool pairs up with your finance website to archive your own Instagram content on your own website as posts.
If you're unfamiliar with Instagratify, the tool is used to filter your instagram content onto any number of other social networks. The user of a hashtag serves as a filter and directs the system to follow a number of defined filtering rules. The system supports images, albums (included animated GIFs), and video, and it is usage of this single tool where we've seen our clients fundamentally alter their method and style of real-time social engagement. The WordPress filter is just one of a number of rules that apply.
The Instagratify platform hasn't changes much in the decade we've used it, but the way the data is rendered on your website has altered considerably with the revised version of our 'standard' mortgage broker website framework. In summary, we now send Instagram content to a dedicated post archive rather than into your standard posts archive,. This change permits the necessary segregation between your more formal content and the unstructured and often irrelevant content shared on social media. Because yo'll invariably share your quota of cat-pics and other nonsense you may not want on your website, the content is simply excluded by the use of (or the omission of) a simple hashtag.
The image below shows the standard filtering panel that permits you to assign social media filtering rules based on defined instagram hashtags; the last option in the list determines if your Instagram content is sent to WordPress.
Pictured: Social Rules Panel. Any number of the same social accounts may be associated with each rule. For example, you may include any number of Twitter accounts or any number of Facebook pages as a destination for the same Instagram post. The same Instagram image may be sent to unlimited number of websites - perfect for large businesses, franchises, or aggregation groups. An option also exists to send your Instagram videos to YouTube.
in ways that automates your presence and makes social engagement seriously effortless. You might also be interested in an article that introduces our set-and-forget Social Media Libraries (part of a much bigger Social Platform). If you're a large business or franchise you might be interested in the social facilities used to manage multiple accounts. The various social services that were once used exclusively by Platinum clients are now progressively being made available to all subscribers.Creating WordPress is just one feature of Instagratify, but it's a powerful tool with a range of options that makes it something you might consider using every day.
The Result
The result of the Instagram image as sent to your WordPress is shown below. A dedicated archive of Instagram images is maintained in isolation of your standard WordPress posts.
Pictured: The Instagram archive (left) and the Instagram image post (right). Each page may be formatted to your liking in virtually every respect. As with almost every page on our mortgage broker website each page includes an escalation-based calendar subscription form. The form used is determined by the Yabber form assignment panel.
While Instagram images are sent to the Instagram archive by default, you may filter them through into your standard posts archive (i.e. your blog) by using the hashtag of #ispost in your Instagram description. This might be suitable for those occasions where you're compelled to provide information quickly, and when time or circumstances prevents you writing a quick article.
It's somewhat absurd that we often promote heavily into the big black hole of social media with little to no engagement... but we do so because social content is usually quick, easy, necessary, and effortless to create and share, so it's social platforms we all tend to engage with most often (often at the expense of website content). The notion that we'll assign all the value of our content (and effort) to a single social network and disregard the asset on our own website (and everywhere else) is little nuts, particularly when the content we create might assist with SEO or user engagement. Everything we do should be leveraged in order to provide an omnipresence-style advantage, and sending Instagram content in different directions based on its audience multiples your time and starts to further justify the effort.
General Options
A large number of options apply, but the basic formatting applied to posts on your website are determined based on just a few options (pictured below). Yabber is a multi-website system so different rules may be applied to each of your websites.
Pictured: Pictured are general options that apply to Instagram images as they're sent to your website. As described in a moment, you can force your own Instagram (WP) title by way of a code in your message. Note the option to select the 'Featured Image' type - this is introduced shortly. An SEO Canonical URL option determines where SEO value is assigned (your website or Instagram).
Images used on your posts are sent to WordPress directly so they're made available in your standard WordPress library. When returned into a post your Instagram images are scaled via the use of our own image shortcode to precise dimensions.
The Featured Image
In the previous version of Instagratify it was the WordPress featured images that consistently proved to be a nuisance. Every now and again you'll sensibly post a screenshot or newspaper clipping to Instagram but the image makes for an awful featured image on your website. We've modified the system so WordPress featured images are set based on the hashtag usage in your Instagram post.
Pictured: In order to create a library of images that will eventually be applied as WordPress featured images (for Instagram posts) we must first upload them. The panel allows the upload of as many images as required.
Once images are uploaded they're simply assigned to various hashtags. If an Instagram post to the defined website matches against the drag-and-drop list of tags the selected image will be applied as a website featured image. The first matching hashtag found in your Instagram post is generally used.
Pictured: Once you select a website the hashtags are assigned to an image that will be used as your featured image. The hashtags panels can be dragged-and-dropped into position, and it's this position that they're generally evaluated. The image is quite long so is snipped for illustrative purposes.
In many cases you won't want to apply specific featured images to your Instagram WordPress post, and it's in these cases you may simply use a random image from your uploaded Instagram "Featured" library. In cases where the #featured hashtag is used all your defined rules are ignored and your Instagram image itself is used as the featured background.
Instagratify WordPress Options
Instagram obviously doesn't provide a title option but it's likely you'll want to include a title for use in your WordPress post. In some cases you may want to include a description and/or excerpt in WordPress that is different to the text provided on Instagram. To this end, various codes can be used in Instagram to force specific content, such as [title: Your Title Here] or [description: Your Description Here]. At other times you may want to schedule the article for WordPress at a specific time. The various Instagratify options are described in an article titled "The New Instagratify Social Media Tool". In most cases we recommend including title code so the default date-based title isn't used.
Instagram Post Type SEO
As with every page on your website, the SEO markup and other data is automatically determined and sent back to your website for inclusion within the page. This Object Graph image (or the primary SEO image) is set to the Instagram image - not the featured image associated with the page.
Automate YouTube and Wistia Videos to WordPress
For a number of years our systems have provided a facility to send your YouTube and Wistia videos to WordPress. In light of some of the features we've added to the Instagram module in the last few months we'll be updating the video module to mirror some of the functionality described on this page. You will find details of the revised YouTube functionality in an article titled "Send YouTube and Wistia Videos to WordPress Automatically" (we will no longer use the YouTube thumbnail as a featured image - it looked awful).
Video Introduction
The video introduces the WordPress component of Instagratify in brief.
Conclusion
What Instagratify has done is turn the simple tool into a true and rather powerful publishing platform. If you're ever out-and-about and you want to have something published in minutes you can now do so, with the appropriate formatting applied to your website based on the Yabber rules.
Social is a necessary evil. A lot of us apply a great deal of effort into sending content to social when we're doing so into an empty void... and if we're lucky enough to see engagement it's usually to the same audience. Social isn't great unless we garnish the reach necessary to have an impact, so broad distribution of content is the means upon which this is achieved. Because of the value Instagratify assigns to your entire digital network you'll be far more likely to engage with the platform (even if nobody seems to be taking notice), and in doing so the increased engagement on the platform starts to draw a new audience.
Social Media is a tool we've worked tirelessly to automate in different ways, so while Instagratify is a fantastic tool it's still just one of the social systems we provide. We've found the most popular social feature is a system to automatically schedule libraries of engaging social content to various social networks with the click of a single button. In fact, because we encourage the use of Satellite or interest-based social accounts you can quickly create an account on, say Facebook, and then schedule a few years worth of content without effort.
