We live in a visual era where people are driven by photos. Majority of marketers understand that photos can make or break a marketing campaign. Case in point, two of the fastest growing social networks today are Pinterest and Instagram, both of which thrive off of the concept of sharing images. Instagram’s growing popularity has made it one of the must-have apps for iOS and Android phones. However, until recently users were not able to embed their Instagram photos into blog posts. Well fret no more savvy social picture enthusiasts because WordPress recently announced that you can now embed your carefully filtered and curated images directly into your blog! Talk about great timing too because just yesterday Entrepreneur magazine announced the top five ways in which Instagram can boost your marketing plan.
Now for the how-to, first what you need to know is that this works best with images you have tweeted out because you need to access the image URL. For anyone familiar with Instagram, you know that it is a strictly phone based app, with very little web presence. So even if you go to intagram.com, and log in to your account, you can not access your photo stream. So, from your Twitter profile page you can see your most recent images, including the ones you shared via Instagram.
Most recent images in Twitter feed.
Next, select the image you wish to embed into your blog post. Your view will now look like the one below.
Image preview in Twitter browser.
Please note you do not want to use the Twitter URL that appears at the top of your web browser — this URL will direct you to Twitter, and not Instagram. Instead you want to click on the photo, and your picture will open in a new window or tab. See the below image;, this URL will now link back to Instagram.
This is the Instagram URL needed to embed the image into WordPress blog post.
Take this URL and copy it into your blog post where you want the Instagram image to appear. Remember to make sure that the URL is on its own line within the post.
Instagram URL inserted into blog post.
I would now highly advise that you click to “Save Draft”. Then hit “Preview”, the image will now appear in you blog post as shown below.
Instagram image embedded into published blog post (on “preview” mode).
If for any reason the image is NOT showing in your “Preview mode” view, and you only see the Instagram URL there (like in the below image), don’t fret because not all hope is lost!
Only URL showing in “Preview mode”, NOT the Instagram image.
You will simply then need to go back to your draft blog post. First, delete the URL from the “Visual” view. Then (while still in draft mode) change your WordPress screen view from “Visual” to “Text” (reference image below).
Switching draft view of your blog post.
Once you are in “Text” view mode, then add the Instagram URL where you wan the image to appear in your blog post. Remember the URL must still be on its own line (as shown above). Again, you will need to “Save Draft” and then press “Preview”. Your image will now appear directly embedded into your blog post “Preview mode” view (as you can clearly see below).
Oh, and that’s me and Mona (most talented little show dog there ever was)!
Any questions? Or need more clarification? Comment below, and I will get back to you.
Savvy Social Fashionista 