How to post etsy link on instagram

Hello, r/etsy!

I've been figuring out over the last two weeks how to set up my Etsy shop on my business Facebook and Instagram page, so that followers can browse my products on the social media app, then be taken to Etsy to complete the purchase. From a few posts about this recently, where I asked for help, there seemed to be a large number of people who also didn't know how to set any of this up, or had tried and given up. I figured I would share some of what I learned during this process as a sort of "how to" post, since I finally got my Etsy shop all set up for Facebook and Instagram shopping. Surprisingly, Facebook doesn't have any thorough documentation about how this entire process works, they just have documentation about specific steps within the overall process, which is where a lot of my confusion stemmed from.

So, this post hopefully demystifies the process a bit and makes it seem a bit more straightforward. All in all, it took me about 2 weeks to get completely set up and approved. Step 2, below, takes the longest, and depending on your level of technological prowess and willingness for trial/error, it could take a few hours. The rest is actually pretty simple.

DISCLAIMER 1: This is specifically for those of us who are directly linking our Etsy shop to Facebook/Instagram shopping (not a catalog from our own website or Shopify, or whatever other 3rd party selling app). At the end of this whole process, your followers/shoppers will be able to browse your products on Facebook/Instagram and you will be able to tag products in your photos. Customers will then be able to complete their purchase on Etsy. Facebook has other options for checking out, like directly checking out through Facebook/Instagram, however I didn't prefer that, so I'm not covering that here.

DISCLAIMER 2: There are so many things that need to be in place and connected properly for this to work. If you run into issues while setting this up, I would highly recommend reaching out to Facebook Support directly. They were surprisingly responsive when I reached out about an issue I had while setting up my shop!

DISCLAIMER 3: If anything I say here is incorrect, kindly drop a comment or PM me and I will edit the post so others are better informed. I only went through this process once (and sorta fumbled my way through at that) so I wouldn't be surprised if this is not a perfect, all-inclusive how-to lesson!

WHAT YOU NEED:

—Facebook Business Manager Account

—Facebook Business Page

—Instagram Business Profile (only if you want to connect your Facebook shop to Instagram)

—Etsy shop

—Access to Google Sheets

—Meet the Facebook Commerce requirements

—Have your pages connected to Business Manager

—Patience (because it can be confusing!)

—A willingness to research and learn :)

STEP 1: VERIFY YOUR ETSY DOMAIN

Etsy provides super clear instructions on how to do this, so I'm just gonna drop the link here. Navigate to your domains in Facebook Business Manager by going to: Business Settings > Brand Safety > Domains, then follow Etsy's instructions.

You must verify your domain to be eligible to sell on Facebook or Instagram.

WARNING: This is the most confusing/time-intensive step, so bear with me.

Your catalog will hold all of your products.

—You can have only 1 catalog per shop.

—You can only have physical products for sale in your shop.

—You need at least 12 products to be able to sell through Facebook/Instagram.

There is not an integration between Etsy and Facebook that allows sellers to easily upload their Etsy listings to Facebook. So, you first need to create a data feed. The data feed will then be used to create your catalog and ultimately display your products on your Facebook and Instagram shops.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE/CAVEAT: All of your listing data will need to be uploaded to Facebook and maintained manually by you. Since there isn't an integration between Etsy and Facebook, when something sells on Etsy, the quantity/availability on Facebook shops will not automatically adjust like it does on Etsy. It would be your responsibility to update your data feed so that your Facebook shop is displaying your products accurately. If you have a ton of products that sell fast, setting up your Facebook/Instagram shop in this way may not be the best fit. If Facebook finds out that what is showing up in your Facebook shop is not accurate, you may become ineligible to sell on Facebook/Instagram (see the commerce requirements).

First, head to Etsy and download all of your listing data. Shop Manager > Settings > Options > Download Data. Download your "Currently For Sale Listings" and save the CSV file.

Next, set up your products in Google Sheets.

I would recommend using Google Sheets, as opposed to Excel or manually adding items to your catalog. If using Google Sheets, Facebook will automatically update your products based on what is in the Google Sheet every hour, every day, or every week—whatever you set it to. If a product sells on Etsy, you can edit the quantity in the spreadsheet and wait for Facebook to automatically update the quantity in your Facebook shop over the next hour, eliminating the need for manual reuploading your data.

Create a new Google Sheet. Go to File > Import > Upload and select the CSV you just saved. You'll need to delete most of the rows and you might need to clean up a few columns.

Since Facebook has certain data feed specifications, I created a sample Google Sheet with all the necessary columns you can use as a template. There are some additional notes about each column on the sample sheet I would advise reading. Copy row 1 of the sample sheet and place it as row 1 of your data feed sheet. Make sure the title of the column matches what the column is and adjust as needed. Be sure to keep the wording of the column titles exactly as they are in the sample sheet, otherwise your upload may have errors.

Fill out the spreadsheet completely with your data.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR INSTAGRAM SHOPS*: If you intend to also set up your shop on Instagram, you will need to make sure the URL you are placing in your data feed matches the domain you verified earlier. Etsy listings default to display as http://www.etsy.com/listing/listingnumber, which will create errors when you go to set up your Instagram shop since the domain is etsy.com, not shopname.etsy.com. To get around this, copy/paste your listing link, then add your subdomain prefix before "etsy.com" (for example, http://www.shopname.etsy.com/listing/listingnumber) and take out any other unnecessary characters at the end of the URL string. The link formatted with your subdomain will still direct people to the correct listing.*

When finished, create your catalog: go to Facebook Business Manager > Catalog Manager > Create Catalog > Select Ecommerce > Follow the remaining prompts.

Next, upload your data feed: go to Catalog (in the Catalog Manager sidebar menu) > Data Sources > Bulk Upload > Click Google Sheets > Follow the remaining prompts.

Your products should start uploading to the catalog and if you filled out the spreadsheet correctly, your upload should be successful. If you have errors in your spreadsheet, review the error log provided by Facebook and adjust, review their troubleshooting help sheet, or use their feed debugger to identify the problem spots.

With your catalog successfully uploaded, you should now be able to set up your shop.

IMPORTANT: You must create your Facebook shop first, before trying to connect your shop to Instagram. Facebook will review your shop to ensure it meets all their requirements. Assuming your commerce account is approved, you should then be able to connect your shop to Instagram.

Go to Facebook Business Manager > Commerce Manager > Shops > Follow the remaining prompts. Be sure to select only your Facebook page when you get to where you'd like to connect your shop.

Collections are customer facing "folders" (more or less) that hold your products. Facebook reviews your collections and all of your products prior to your shop being published to ensure they meet their commerce requirements. Upon review and approval of your collections, you will be able to publish your shop.

You can have 6-30 products in each collection and you must have at least two collections to publish your shop. After you create your collections, you can add them to your shop in the Shop Editor.

The review process on your collections can take up to 24 hours, so this is a good time to take a break and come back later with a fresh brain.

Approval on your commerce account will come via email. Once you've been approved, you can then publish your shop to your Facebook page.

STEP 5: UPDATE YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE

After your commerce account has been approved for Facebook Shopping, you can update your Facebook page so that users can browse your items directly on Facebook.

If your Facebook page is not already set to the "Shopping" template, change that now. On your Facebook page, go to Settings > Templates & Tabs > Select Shopping. Then update your page button so that customers are taken to your Facebook shop instead of your website. [Note: I had some problems updating my button, so if you get stuck here or can't update it for whatever reason, give it a few days to work itself out.]

The last step in all of this is setting up your shop on Instagram, if you want to.

First, disconnect your Instagram profile from your Facebook page. Do this by going to your Facebook page > Settings > Instagram > Disconnect. Do the same on your Instagram profile by going to Settings > Account > Linked Accounts > Facebook > Disconnect. For whatever reason, you need to start fresh when connecting your Facebook shop to Instagram. You will reconnect your Facebook and Instagram pages as you set up your Instagram shop.

With your accounts disconnected, on the Instagram app, go to Settings > Business > Set up Instagram Shopping > Follow the remaining prompts.

If you've made it this far and have followed these directions, everything should work, including reconnecting your Facebook page.

At the end of this process, you'll get a confirmation screen that your Instagram shop has been sent for approval. Like your Facebook shop, your Instagram shop will be approved as well, which can take up to a week. When your Instagram profile gets approved for shopping on Instagram, you'll get a Instagram notification telling you so. Customers will then be able to view your shop on your Instagram profile and you can start tagging products in your photos.

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I hope this was helpful! If anything is unclear or if you have questions, I'm more than happy to try to answer in the comments.

Last updated: 9/17/2020

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