I’ve seen a lot requests for this info on Shoppable Product Tags. Many of you have messaged me on facebook and Instagram so today I’m sharing it with you step-by-step. I did make a video about this but Facebook recently changed some things with the setup so I simplified the instructions for you. If you didn’t know, Shoppable product tags allow you to tag an image on instagram with your affiliate/RewardStyle links. If you don’t have swipe ups on stories but you qualify for IG shopping this is a great alternative especially for paid campaigns. Just make sure the links you are using are within facebooks policies.
Let’s Get Started with the Set Up
In order to set up shopping tags on your instagram photos there are several pre-requisites you have to meet.
Prerequisites
Connect your facebook page to instagram
Im not talking about a personal Facebook account though. I mean an actual business page like a page for your blog or instagram.
Switch to Business profile on Instagram
You can do this on Instagram by going Settings>Account>Switch to Business Account. You cannot do this is you are set up as a Creator Account. For some reason the tags never work on Creator accounts.
Set up Instagram Shopping
Third, you have to be approved for Instagram Shopping. You can set this up on Instagram by going to Settings>Business>Set up Instagram Shopping.
If for some reason you cannot complete the last step and you see a message that you are not eligible for Instagram shopping you will not be able to move ahead in the set up. If you did complete the steps above now you can move on to setting up the product catalog. This part is easy but there has been a bit of confusion with the set up.
Some of you might already have RewardStyle products listed on your Facebook pages. Facebook is in process of phasing this out. The reason is because Facebook shops were really not meant for affiliate links. Facebook Shops were made for people that hold actual inventory, not affiliate links. This is why some of you when trying to set up catalogs you are trying to go through facebook shops and getting an error or it’s asking you to set up shipping options. DO NOT try doing it this way. Follow the these Steps…
From your Desktop, open the following link in a new browser then use the carousel below to create your catalog in 6 easy steps!
https://www.facebook.com/products/catalogs/new
Products generally sync over to instagram within a few minutes. If you go back into instagram now and go to Settings>Business>Shopping you should see your new product catalog. Now when you create a new post in instagram you can tag products as well as people. I know it might seem like a lot because you might have thousands of saved products and you might be wondering if there is a way to bulk add products right from RewardStyle and the answer is no. I would start by adding the ones you post most often and go from there. Now I update mine once a week now with anything I purchased throughout the week and it only takes a few minutes.
Important things you need to know
How Long is the Cookie Window
I also want to add that a few people have asked me about the cookie window. To be honest I’m not sure about it. I know with stories I think it’s only 5 minutes if you link to the product directly. I’m not sure if it’s the same with product tags. One way around that though is when you are adding products to your catalog, use your LTK post link instead of the product link. That way they will be taken to the LTK post first and they can click the product link from there instead. The only thing is that if you do it like this you would have to add the item to your catalog every single time you create a new LTK post so that it corresponds to that post. In the long run I think it might not be worth it. However if you are going to do it this way instead of uploading a pic of individual items into your catalog I would just upload the actual image from instagram to your catalog and give it a unique name.
Another thing to remember is to look over Facebook policies. Shoppable Product Tags can be used for all different types of links however Facebook is kind of sketchy when it comes to health products. You may be able to add them in your catalog but if you try tagging them on a photo FB can restrict them. For example I had a campaign with a Teeth Whitening company and tried to use the trackable link and it got flagged by Facebook saying it was against their policy. I think any product that is considered a health item that could possibly mislead someone is against their policy. Now I stick to clothing and beauty items only.
If you have any further questions or trouble setting this up feel free to comment below and I will get back as soon as possible or you can DM me on Instagram or FB.
Erica
You are an ANGEL for this! Thanks for sharing girl!!!
Anytime! Let me know if you get stuck on anything!
Very interesting!
About to add my first product — This I am guessing will NOT work for collages or flat lays ??? I can only tag ONE item in an IG post???
you can tag up to 5 items per post