Presented by Snapchat but polished and made mainstream by Instagram, the Stories format has become a phenomenon on social networks.
Instagram stories have been eagerly embraced by marketing agencies. marketing digital and now gobble up a significant portion of budgets marketing in the whole world.
Of course, as with any new medium, this storytelling format has its own drawbacks. For example, stories disappear after 24 hours, which means your team's creative work disappears as well.
To solve this problem, and relieve the broken nerves of Instagrammers and digital marketers everywhere, there is a new solution based on WordPress: EmbedStories, the first WordPress plugin for Instagram stories .
Developped by EmbedSocial, a company specializing in social proofing tools that synchronize seamlessly with social networking networks.
A brief overview
It's a remarkably simple idea but extremely useful: while also saving and archiving your stories in a secure web application (saving your team's creative work for later reuse!), EmbedStories allows, with a line of code, to display them, in real time, on any website.
That's right, a simple embed code will display your Instagram Stories every time you post one. It can do this on any website that supports iframes or Javascript, than any properly installed WordPress site can.
Key Features
- Connect multiple Instagram accounts and retrieve their content – this functionality allows EmbedStories to offer functionalities that meet the use cases of large advertising agencies digital marketing industry and influencers managing multiple Instagram accounts
- Retrieve and archive stories automatically - once you have connected your Instagram account with EmbedStories, it will immediately start fetching your stories. You don't need to activate or manage this feature, the system will automatically store the stories of all connected accounts.
- Unlimited widgets to display stories on any website - The platform does not limit the number of web widgets. You can use sliders, or the list for the same story or for a different story, the platform is flexible and doesn't require you to pay for additional widgets.
- Several layouts and various customization options - EmbedStories widgets are constantly improving and you can choose from the following layouts: carousel, list gallery, floating popover or you can display a simple circle of stories which when clicked displays the story in a viewer .
- Make your Instagram stories marketable - add buttons in Instagram story when they appear on your website. By doing this, you will create a new sales channel and increase your conversion rates for the products you promote in your Instagram Stories.
- Convert stories to AMP format - And finally, a powerful feature that will make your website ready to respond to the official Google Stories launch. It will use Instagram stories and convert them to an AMP format that Google likes.
How to embed the Instagram Stories widget on your site?
To install the EmbedStories plugin and start displaying your Instagram stories on your site, you must first install and activate it in your WordPress dashboard. Then you will need to create an EmbedStories account from which the system will provide you with shortcodes that you can use in your WordPress pages or Text widgets.
Le WordPress Plugin is available for free and pro accounts.
To install and activate the EmbedStories plugin, follow the steps below:
- Log in to your WordPress administrator, go to "Plugins"
- Click on the button "Add new"
- Enter EmbedStories in the search field
- Once the result is displayed, click on "Install now", then on "Activate".
- Then, go to the EmbedStories page and create an account
- Sign in to your EmbedStories account and click "Continue with Facebook *"and follow the steps to allow the system to fetch your Instagram stories
- Once your Instagram pages are loaded, click "Add a source"
- In the Widget screen, copy just the shortcode at the top right
- Go back to your WordPress page and paste the shortcode where you want your Instagram stories to appear
* Please Note: The official Instagram API requires you to connect your Instagram account to a Facebook page in order to allow EmbedStories or any other third party app to fetch your Instagram Stories.
Here is a detailed video demo on how to embed Instagram stories on your WordPress site:
The EmbedStories plugin will showcase all of the current and new stories you create after signing in with your EmbedStories account. In other words, your old Instagram stories will not be available because they are already gone after 24 hours.
That's all! Now every time you post an Instagram story it will appear in the position where you placed the shortcode.
How to use the Instagram Stories plugin
You can use the PRO version to remove the branding and use the most powerful features of the EmbedStories platform, such as:
- Custom Instagram Stories Web Widgets
- Instagram stories gallery
- Shoppable Instagram Stories
- Convert to AMP story format
Continue reading below to learn more about each of the PRO features:
Custom Instagram Stories Web Widgets
Once you generate your Instagram stories, you are able to create unlimited widgets with different customizations and web widget formats.
Lightbox is a unique and personalized widget that will display as a popover in a fixed position or at the top of your website and display the latest story.
You can use settings to make it disappear in seconds or customize the look.
When clicked, the story opens in a slideshow format and in a lightbox mode.
Here is it in action:
Instagram stories gallery
This feature allows users to create a gallery with multiple stories. To do this, log into your EmbedStories account, go to Galleries and click on the button at the top right “Create a new”.
The main options provided by this feature are:
- Choose the stories to display in the gallery
This option is possible thanks to the automatic archiving of the system in the background every time you post an Instagram story.
To choose specific stories that you want to display in the gallery, find the 'Story dates' option and in the selection field choose the dates that represent a specific story.
Here is a screenshot of this feature:
- Customize the layout and choose the slider with thumbnails or a list gallery
To change the layout, find the 'Layout' option in the settings sidebar on the left and choose Cursor, Viewer, or List.
The screenshot below is an example of a gallery that, when clicked, displays the stories in a viewer mode, creating a captivating full screen experience.
Instagram stories with a call to action
Most Instagrammers are aware that Instagram restricts the ability to add links to Instagram stories to users with 10 or more followers. To make this limitation less painful, EmbedStories allows any user to add a link to their stories when posted on their own website, regardless of the number of their subscribers.
By doing this, users can create an interesting selling format for their website, and use the creative work they have posted on Instagram as a new sales channel.
Users can choose from pre-defined buttons such as Buy Now, Register, Learn More, Contact Us or they can write their own “Call-To-Action” text.
Here is an example of an CTA button:
Convert to AMP story format
In February 2018, Google recognized the growing importance of the story format by adding articles to their search results. Additionally, the AMP format is a recent addition to the AMP project that provides content editors with a mobile-focused format to deliver news and information as compelling stories, as described in the Google Developers blog .
To allow Google to recognize a web page as Google History, the web page must provide an AMP history code that Google crawling can extract and display as an article format in Google search results. .
The Google AMP Stories will be released to everyone later this year and EmbedSocial will make sure you're ready for it. The current functionality allows you to automatically create a version of each of your stories in the AMP story format. The system provides a pre-generated HTML file that you can upload to your website.
Once the link has been browsed by Google, it will appear in Google's search results.
Here is an overview of Instagram story converted to Google Story format.
Next steps
Using Instagram tools will make your life easier, while also saving you time and money in producing and posting content.
Instagram stories are an undeniably popular format that any good specialist in marketing digital technology must master, and EmbedStories provides a comprehensive and consistent goal for this. same the free version, it's easy to see how this tool can smooth and improve your Instagram workflow.
If you want to connect more Instagram accounts and also use the PRO features you will find a plan to meet your needs at a reasonable price, starting at only 19 $ / month.
