If you want to engage your visitors in a direct and personal way, embedding your Instagram feed on your WordPress website is an effective strategy. However, you may not want every single Instagram photo, video, or story to appear on your business site.
By using a WordPress Instagram feed plugin such as Spotlight, you can control exactly what content gets featured. With Spotlight’s filters and moderation options, you can strip all irrelevant posts from your embedded feed.
In this post, we’ll introduce you to the Spotlight plugin and explain the benefits of using it. Then we’ll show you how to hide Instagram posts, including how to strategically create and place multiple feeds on your website. Let’s get started!
An Introduction to Spotlight: A WordPress Plugin for Embedding Instagram Feeds
Spotlight is a WordPress Instagram feed plugin that enables you to embed Instagram posts and videos anywhere on your website:
There are many benefits to embedding your Instagram feed on your WordPress site. For example, it helps to:
- Keep your site fresh. An embedded feed ensures that your site always features new and interesting content.
- Drive more traffic to your Instagram account. Spotlight automatically adds a Follow on Instagram button to your feed.
- Provide powerful social proof. An Instagram feed can help show people who are engaging with your brand through likes, comments, and tagged content.
- Encourage visitors to spend more time on your site. Spotlight’s Load more button encourages visitors to explore an infinite-scrolling list of your Instagram content.
The free Spotlight plugin comes with a ton of features, and lets you display your Instagram photos and videos in a grid layout. You can also use Spotlight to customize the look and feel of your embedded Instagram feed, including changing elements such as the Follow and Load More buttons:
However, Spotlight Pro unlocks advanced features and functionalities. In addition to more layout options (Masonry, Highlight, and Slider) and the ability to display Instagram Stories in your feed, Spotlight PRO lets you hide specific posts.
Occasionally, you may post personal content that isn’t related to your website, such as selfies or family photos. Spotlight PRO makes it easy to hide these posts through filters and moderations.
How to Hide Specific Posts From Your WordPress Instagram Feed (In 4 Steps)
In the following steps, we’ll show you how to hide specific posts from your Instagram feed using Spotlight, and how to embed the feed anywhere on your WordPress site. Let’s get started!
Step 1: Install Spotlight and Connect It to Your Instagram Account
If you haven’t already, the first step is to download and install the Spotlight PRO plugin on your WordPress site:
You can do so by going to Plugins > Add New in your dashboard, and then searching for Spotlight Social Media Feeds. Once the free plugin is installed, you can upgrade to PRO right from your WordPress dashboard. You can also purchase and download Spotlight PRO from the developer’s website.
Once the plugin is activated, you’ll also need to connect Spotlight to your Instagram account. You can use either a Personal or Business account. Then Spotlight will automatically import your posts and you can start designing your feed.
Step 2: Choose and Configure Filters to Apply to Your Instagram Feed
You can control the content that appears in your embedded WordPress Instagram feed using captions, filters, and moderation. You can access all of these settings by selecting Instagram Feeds > Feeds from the WordPress dashboard, and creating a new feed.
Once you’ve created your Instagram feed, click on the Filter tab:
You can choose exactly what content will appear in your embedded Instagram feed. The first option will be to hide or show posts based on captions.
You can choose to only show posts that contain specific words or phrases in their captions, or hide posts based on the same information:
Perhaps your Instagram is primarily dedicated to your eCommerce business, but you occasionally post testimonials. You could filter posts to include only those with testimonial-related captions, and display your testimonial feed on specific posts or pages.
Similarly, you can filter posts by hashtag. With Spotlight’s filtering options, you can create a feed for each hashtag, and strategically place these feeds around your site:
For example, you might display your headphones content on the page advertising your headphone products, and earphones alongside your earphone products:
You can also apply global filters across your Instagram feeds for hashtags or words that should never appear on your website. For example, this might include products you no longer offer or tagged content that mentions competitors. You can also set up global filters by selecting Instagram feeds > Settings from WordPress’ left-hand menu, and then selecting the Global filters tab:
You can then apply these global filters when creating your feeds, using any of the Include global filters checkboxes:
You can also modify your global filters, by selecting the Edit global filters link. You can learn more about global filters over at the official Spotlight documentation.
Step 3: Moderate Which Specific Photos Appear in Your Instagram Feed
Spotlight’s caption, hashtag, and global filters are great for customizing your WordPress Instagram feed based on content and topics. However, you can also hand-select the photos and videos that appear in your embedded feed.
To do so, click on the Moderate tab:
There, you can choose to Hide the selected posts or Only show the selected posts. Then simply select the posts to apply each type of moderation to.
Step 4: Display Your Instagram Feed Anywhere on Your WordPress Website
Once you’re done configuring your Instagram feed’s filters, you can embed it anywhere on your WordPress site. To do so, select the Embed tab, give your feed a name, and click on Save:
Next, you have three options.
You can either:
- Copy the provided shortcode and paste it into any WordPress page, post, or widget area on your site,
- Use the dedicated WordPress block in the Block editor, or
- Opt for the widget.
For the last two options, all you need to do is remember the name of your feed and choose it from the dropdown menu.
That’s it! Your Instagram feed will now appear in the chosen area of your website.
Conclusion
Featuring your Instagram content can be a great way to keep your website fresh and engaging. Whether it’s a simple gallery or an Instagram slider, it all counts to add social proof for any creator, brand and company.
However, you don’t want to risk losing control over the photos, videos, and stories that show up on your website.
By embedding your Instagram feed using a plugin such as Spotlight, you can filter and moderate your content or hand-pick the posts to include or exclude. Display only your best Instagram posts.
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