11 Reasons You Should Turn Your Instagram Into a Blog

Picture this, you’re happily posting on Instagram and gaining a very active and engaged following. One day, your account is gone. You’ve lost all your followers, maybe even your source of income. Why? Because Instagram can do that. Whether you’re hacked or reported for going against their terms, maybe you’ve connected a third-party app that Instagram doesn’t support, it’s happened to lots of people and it can happen to you. So, why should you turn your Instagram into a blog? I know what you’re thinking and you’re right, it will be a lot of effort to get going, but the benefits will be endless.

Why You Should Turn Your Instagram Into a Blog?

Your content is not safe.

Like I said above, one day your account could just be gone and getting in touch with Instagram? Forget about it. A self-hosted blog is something you actually own. When you’re using the free version of WordPress or Blogger, they own your content and blog. With self-hosting, you buy a space on the Internet and that’s where your blog lives. You can have it backed up to different places daily and providing that you have proper security as well, it’s rare that you could lose everything forever like on Instagram.

Your captions cannot be searched on Google.

Ever tried to find an Instagram post of yours from years ago and even though you know the caption word for word, it just won’t show up on Google? That’s because, unlike blog posts, Instagram captions cannot be searched for on Google. People won’t just stumble across your content in a search and therefore, your content is being lost and forgotten about.

More people can find you.

Similar to the point above, more people will actually be able to find your content and you by searching Google and other search engines. You can learn how to help your posts rank well (my very old post on basic SEO still stands as a good start) and that alone can bring in no end of traffic, just from posting your content on a searchable blog instead of Instagram.

People can find your images.

Google Images is a seriously powerful tool. If you learn the basics (as easy as naming your photo files and photos on your blog) then people can actually find you and your content based on your photos alone. Although Instagram does have ALT Tags now, however that is for screen readers for accessibility rather than to make them searchable.

It’s important not to have all your eggs in one basket.

Even with a following of 32,000 (making sure I add that 2000 as I’m finally growing on Instagram and showing off) most of my income, I would say 80%, still comes from my actual blog itself. You need to make sure you have different avenue streams and more than one active channel to fall back. If you’re still asking yourself why you should turn your Instagram into a blog when you’re making an income that you rely on from Instagram, this should be a good enough reason alone. A blog post is far more valuable than an Instagram post.

An Instagram Post is only live on people’s feeds for a few days, if that.

Once you post something new your post will be pushed further and further down. With no search function, your content will be lost, whereas an evergreen blog post could be getting organic traffic from Google every single day.

More content for your readers.

If you find yourself constantly talking about the same topics, always answering the same questions on Instagram, and generally feeling like you’re repeating yourself a lot. A great way to get out of that is to direct people to your blog where they can search all their questions about you and the things you post about until their heart’s content.I have a blog post called, ‘What Do I Dye My Hair With? Crazy Colour Vermillion Red‘, I now get a lot fewer daily questions and a lot more blog views! All these questions like, ‘where do you shop?’, ‘where is your living room furniture from?’ can all be turned into popular blog posts and shared on an Instagram Highlight.

You’re already halfway there with your long captions.

Have you noticed that your posts with long captions do the best? I bet you’d be surprised that you’re probably halfway if not more to a full blog post. Ideally, blog posts should be 300+ words, but if you can double that by explaining more, adding links to further reading (other questions/things you mention) then you’ll be hitting a rank-worthy length blog post!

You’ve already got photos.

We all know the problem with posting too many similar photos on Instagram and how they might not all do well. On a blog post? People love photos! Show every angle of a room or multiple photos of an outfit without boring people. You’ve already got the photos from all your old posts to upload to blog posts to get going!

Turn wish lists on Instagram into money-making blog posts.

Turn your Instagram wish lists into blog posts with affiliate links. Round up your favourite products every month, new in from brands, or trending items, sign up to affiliate programs like AWIN, Skimlinks, RewardStyle, Rakuten and earn money for everyone that clicks and buys something.

You can still promote your Instagram.

You can promote it more than ever! Link to it in every single blog post, have your feed set up to be on your homepage like mine is. To turn your Instagram into a blog does not mean you’re abandoning your Instagram, it just means you’re expanding it to be able to help people more, make money, and start a new hobby!

So there you have it, 11 reasons why you should turn your Instagram into a blog! I hope I have helped to persuade you to start. Or perhaps you know other reasons why people should start one? Leave a comment below and let me know!

Ps – Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram! 😉