Estimated read time: 2 minutes
Yes.
Who knew? I kind of stumbled onto it myself.
I was creating a new podcast for my book – Content Performance Culture.
The book is available as paperback, Kindle, Alexa skill and on podcast channels, including Spotify.
I noticed that Spotify allows sharing to Instagram Stories. And which is very unusual for Instagram it links back to the audio on Spotify so people can actually listen to it and don’t have to go searching for it or click on the link in the bio.
Certainly I’m always a fan of trying new ways to drive engagement, consumption and especially clicks to content.
Being able to share content to Instagram Stories is potentially one more way to do that.
Of course that’s already somewhat doable. Some accounts can share links to their Instagram Stories. And at a very rudimentary level we can always share screenshots with website addresses like I’ve done in this example:
You’ve heard me lament before that blog posts and other articles really should have share buttons, but the share to Instagram Story or share to Instagram in general is not something that’s common and often just wouldn’t work anyway.
It’s certainly something digital strategists want to be able to do. For example I’ve seen share buttons before that have the Instagram logo. I would ask what that button does and they would say that it would allow the article to be shared to Instagram. As far as I know that’s still not a routinely available function that works. Unfortunately.
But Spotify podcasts can be shared to Instagram Stories. Let me show you how.
Find the podcast in the Spotify app. Click on the three dots by the episode you want to share.
General rule: Can’t find something online, look for the three dots or the hamburger menu.
Then you get these options:
Just like you would for any network to share click Instagram Story.
It simply copies over to IG Stories as a story.
There’s no audio until people click “Play in Spotify” but you can add animations as with all IG Stories.
For users to listen they have to click on the small Spotify tag in the top left. Maybe consider putting a pointing arrow toward that area so it’s not as easy to miss.
Once clicked you are prompted to go to Spotify.
It’s definitely another distribution channel that I will keep playing with to get my podcast in front of even more potential listeners.
If you share all your podcast Instagram Stories – which I would recommend – consider adding them as an Instagram Story highlights tap as well. This article explains how to do that.
If you have Facebook Stories sharing enabled it also pushes to your Facebook account. There viewers can click to listen as well.
This article was first published in December 2019 updated February 2020 with some minor updates throughout.
