The Best WordPress Instagram Feed Widgets

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With millions of daily users, Instagram is a social media marketing platform you cannot afford to ignore. You can integrate Instagram into your WordPress website in numerous ways. WordPress' vast plugin ecosystem and broad HTML compatibility for widgets makes it simple for businesses to showcase their Instagram content to their website visitors, an advantage unavailable even in legacy open-source CMS solutions like Drupal. To future-proof their business, many brands are deciding to migrate from Drupal to WordPress so they can easily extend their site's functionality whenever needed without much hassle. As WordPress provides a lot of Instagram feed widget and plugin options for brands, it is also quite likely that you will find a solution that fits your needs perfectly. In this article, let's understand the advantages these widgets and plugins bring and delve into the top six Instagram feed widgets.

Why Use WordPress Instagram Feed Widgets

You spend hours every week managing your Instagram feed, but your entire brand's audience isn't on Instagram. Why put all that hard work to waste? By using WordPress Instagram feed widgets, you can display your Instagram feed on your WordPress site. This gives your visitors a much more visually appealing experience when they discover your site via Google or other search engines. Plus, it keeps your website constantly updated with new content. Think of this as a way of turning your site into a one stop shop for your blog, products, and social updates. Plus, your visitors can click through to follow you on Instagram or share images if they want to.

1. Smash Balloon

Smash Balloon, formerly known as Instagram Feed, is a popular WordPress Instagram plugin with an excellent user rating. The plugin is free to use and has over 900,000 active installs. Smash Balloon allows you to display photos from multiple non-private Instagram accounts. You also have the option of creating numerous feeds to use throughout your site. Each of these feeds can show photos from several accounts. It is, therefore, a great way of ensuring your website displays a constant stream of photos from a variety of sources. With this plugin, you get to control how the images are displayed on your site. You can adjust the sizes of your photos and choose the number of images shown at any one time. Visitors to your site can display more content from your featured feed using the optional load more button. Key features
  • Smash Balloon is fully responsive and mobile friendly. It looks great on any device
  • Regular updates ensure that the plugin remains compatible with the latest changes to Instagram
  • Easy customization of layout, color, size, and spacing
  • You can choose between a beautiful header at the top of your feed and infinite scrolling
  • Follow on Instagram button

2. Curator.io

Curator.io works well for multiple social networks including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. It is a great option if you want to display content from several social media networks. This feature helps Curator stand out from many other WordPress Instagram feed widgets. The premium version supports:
  • Instagram feeds
  • Facebook feeds, groups, albums, and events
  • Twitter feeds
  • Pinterest pins, boards, and latest pins
On top of supporting multiple social accounts, Curator.io also allows you to integrate content from other users' accounts. The material from these feeds is then displayed in your pages, posts and the sidebar areas of your website. Key features
  • Mobile responsive content and maximum device compatibility
  • Attractive, professional looking galleries
  • Numerous customizable options
  • Great options with memorable message display

3. 10Web Social Photo Feed

10Web Social Photo Feed, originally called WD Instagram Feed, allows you to display content from your Instagram account on your website. While it's easy to customize, it does take a little longer to set up due to all the available options. It's designed to help increase engagement by offering a wide variety of display styles to help grab a visitor's attention quickly. 10Web Social Photo Feed works well for beginners as it's not complicated to add to your site. If you need a basic option, this could easily work well for you. It comes in both a free and premium version. Key features:
  • Automatic feed and sync updates
  • Customize display style and number of photos in just a few click
  • Improves site loading times as data is pulled directly from Instagram versus being stored locally
  • Choose what happens if a visitor clicks an image, such as leaving your site or opening a new window

4. WP Instagram Widget

This is a relatively easy way to display content from your Instagram account on your website. WP Instagram Widget is easy to set up. No authentication is needed. You enter your basic Instagram account details and choose where to display the widget on your website. In addition to making WP Instagram Widget easy to use, simplicity has an added advantage of reducing the loading times of your website. This widget is an excellent choice for someone looking for a basic, streamlined option. Key features
  • The installation and activation process is easy
  • Simple user-sensible mark-ups
  • The widget is customizable; you can change it to match your theme.
  • Filters that help to adjust cache timings

5. Feed Them Social

Most WordPress Instagram feed widgets only focus on Instagram, but Feed Them Social allows you to work with Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube. The only drawback is you only have access to Facebook feeds in the free version. The premium version includes the ability to show feeds from other social platforms as well. You can display your feeds anywhere on your site and customize them to fit your brand perfectly. The premium version allows you to choose refresh rates, auto load and scrolling options. In some ways, it's similar to Curator, but doesn't offer a free option for all social networks. Key features:
  • Easily generated shortcodes to add content from all supported networks
  • Mobile-friendly design to work on any device
  • Customize colors and layouts
  • Share buttons available for supported networks

6. Instagram Journal

Instagram Journal only offers a premium option, but it's designed to work seamlessly with WordPress and Instagram to offer an unparalled experience. If you're a photographer, artist, or other visual professional, you may also want to consider the Instagram Journal WordPress theme which is made to perfectly showcase your images and offer an engaging experience to your visitors. Display photos from your own account and/or a friend's. You can also filter by hashtag and location. While it only works with Instagram, it's one of the more powerful WordPress Instagram feed widgets available. It's easy to install and once you add in your customizations, you're all set. Key features:
  • Multiple filters to choose exactly what to display and fully leverage everything Instagram has to offer
  • Responsive design to display on every device
  • Customize gallery size, photo size and much more
  • Comes complete with video tutorials to help you get started faster

Wrapping up

A good Instagram presence is instrumental in encouraging your audience to visit and spend time on your site. This is why it's so important to integrate Instagram on your site and not just have two separate presences online. While the WordPress Instagram feed widgets mentioned in this article are not an exhaustive list, tools such as Curator.io may be a good choice for your business. With affordable pricing and extensive customization options, it's good for businesses of all sizes and budgets. Let us know, what WordPress Instagram widget are you currently using?
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