When we’re posting on socials, it often feels like being pulled in two different directions. On one hand, we have an audience to please and keep engaged. On the other hand, that audience will never see our posts if we don’t appease the algorithm.

This begs the question: who are we really working for on socials?

This thought popped into my head as I considered whether or not outlets should post links on social posts.

Research shows that posts including links frequently receive less engagement, impressions and reach. 

But is not providing a link directly to your story doing your audience a disservice?

What the research says

Buffer, a social media and marketing tool, did some research back in 2022 that found posts including links performed much worse compared to those that didn’t.

On Twitter/X, posts with a link received 7.2% fewer retweets and 28% less reach. LinkedIn posts with links received three times less impressions than those without and a whopping 70% lower engagement rate.

It’s hypothesized that these platforms provide less visibility to posts that include links because they don’t want us to leave the platform.

A workaround to this is using a “link in bio” tool. This way, the post doesn’t have the link, so the algorithm promotes it, but the link is still accessible.

And this works. That same buffer podcast says that tweets including “link in bio” generate 21.24% more impressions, 8.98% more retweets and 40% more reach than tweets with links.

Research vs. Reality

It sounds like using the “link in bio” tactic is the method. But in reality, when we’re stuck in the dopamine loop of scrolling… who’s actually going to snap out of that to go to your profile to open a link?

Plus, for a news outlet, you’re probably not linking to one specific story in your bio. The link would likely bring audiences to a home page. So not only are you asking your audience to stop scrolling, go to your account, click a linktree and then open your homepage… but now you’re asking them to search for the story they’re interested in once they’re there.

That’s a hard ask of us brainless doomscrollers.

What do we do?

What we need is to strike a balance between appeasing the algorithm and the audience. That may look different for different outlets.

On Instagram, using a link sticker in a story could be the method. You could even say “link in story.” That way the link is still within reach… just by clicking on the profile picture above the post.

Maybe you do avoid links entirely. In that case, adding as much context to both the copy and visual of the post is imperative. You have to be sure your audience can understand the story just by that one post alone.

Or maybe you say screw the algorithm and include the link anyway. I mean, who’s a robot to tell you what to do?