Love ‘em or hate ‘em. QR Codes seem to be a marketing tool that isn’t going anywhere. Which is totally cool. It definitely has its use. But for this moment, wanted to talk about implementation over Instagram.
Mainly, had the random inspiration to run a little experiment. I’m sure I’m not the only one to experience frustration when scheduling social media, specifically ‘stories’, for Instagram. Mainly an inability to be able to add links to stories via schedulers. To be fair, I don’t have knowledge across the marketplace for these services.
Basically, be it views/impressions, or engagement, people seem to gravitate to stories than they do profiles. Well, reels seem to be getting more and more traction. But from a business perspective, one would assume you’d want to direct that user somewhere. And while you can add links to your stories in-app, business wise, automating your posts is probably more preferable. If anything, so you’re not spending hours a day creating & posting stories to accounts.
And while limited, my experience with schedulers is limited. Previously used Hootesuite when they had their $14.99 plan. But that was before they implemented stories access, and at one point they upped the $14.99 plan to $59.99, with no feature set adds, just upped the price some 5x over.
So currently, when it comes to Instagram, I use Meta’s Business Suite. But when it comes to links in stories? Yes, you can add a link to stories, but only in a “swipe up” function when it posts to Facebook. But nothing for Instagram.
But then, quick randomly, just streaming a show while I’m working one night, and a character would make some comment about she added a QR code to a post, not her fault no one scanned it. Initially I thought that was just lazy writing, because you scan a QR code with your phone to activate a link. And one could only assume, in this context of the show, it’s Instagram. Because other social platforms allow for live links.
Though, it got me thinking, “Can you ‘press’ on a QR code to activate?”
After a little research, sure enough, sounded like you can press on a QR code on your phone and it will activate. So ‘challenge accepted’, mocked up some social media creative for a product at my Artist Shop on Threadless, and looked to see what would happen. And sure enough, once creative was done, AirDropped to my phone, pressing on the QR code took me to the associated link.
Super excited, posted everything to Instagram, went to press, and… nothing.
One can only assume that something about the app prevents the function. Gotta say, I was definitely a little bummed about that one.
But where am I going with all of this? Save you QR for print. Online doesn’t make sense, at least to me.