On Thursday July 10th, Instagram delivered the final blow to Vine. Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration but it's kinda true! When Instagram first launched their video functionality recently, the one thing working against them (and in favor of Vine) was the fact that you couldn't embed the videos on other sites. But now you can!

I don't know if you can recognize how excited I am about this, but I am. And here's why: This takes your social media strategy to a whole new level! Now, you can take your Instagram videos and photos and embed them directly into your website or blog for additional SEO rankings and branding style. If you've been using Instagram for your business, you have established a "look" or a "style" that represents you. Now you can take that right over to your website and further enhance your branding.

Or, if you wanted to showcase a client or business partner's Instagram post, you could embed their post into your site! Or, likewise someone could do this for you. Are you seeing the additional benefits here? And don't worry, your embedded posts will always retain the ownership of the original post.

Yes, your post will show the Instagram user name of the original post and that name will actually hyperlink to the person's Instagram account. Want to drive traffic to your Instagram account and gain new followers? Embed the occasional post in your blogs and send traffic directly to your Instagram account!

So, how do you embed your Instagram photos and videos? It's really very simple.

1. Log on to your Instagram account on your computer.
2. Select the photo you want to share.
3. You'll notice a square share box on the right side margin of the photo. Click on this to open a pop-up box.
4. Copy the HTML code listed in the pop-up box.
5. Go over to your website and insert your code into your post.

That's it. It's really that easy.

Just make sure that you insert the code into the HTML section of your website page or blog page. You can't just slap the code into the middle of a regular blog post.

A side note worth mentioning is that for those people using WordPress.com blogs, you cannot embed an Instagram post. The embed code uses iframe which is blocked by WordPress.com for security reasons. This is why I don't have an example of an embedded post for you. (I know, I should have a self-hosted site... but that's for a different conversation!) If you would, however, like to see what an embedded post looks like, I recommend you check out my friend, Mike Allton's blog post on this same topic.

Here's another tidbit for you to consider: Only public photos and videos can be embedded into websites. So, if your account is set to private, no one can use your images, including you. If your account is set to private, and you want to share your photos in this manner, you will need to unlock your account. (I also recommend you read my previous post about using private accounts on Instagram).

I sincerely believe that this is a win-win opportunity for marketers. Again, I am always impressed at how well Instagram caters to businesses and marketers. They make it so easy for us to use this site for our brand marketing!

I want to know what you think. Are you excited about this feature? Please leave your comments below.