In 2016, Instagram unveiled Business Profiles. Since then, a lot of companies have converted their personal Instagram profiles into business profiles.
Given that Facebook now owns Instagram, the change appeared inevitable. Instagram emphasizes the visual component, often acting as a Facebook extension, and this is especially true for commercial accounts and advertising.
Instagram Company Page
However, there was some opposition to the modification. Many companies realized that their Facebook pages had lower organic reach than individual Facebook profiles. They were concerned that Instagram will experience the same thing. In actuality, an Instagram Business Profile does not seem to carry the same negative connotations as a Facebook Business Page. If you keep sharing high-quality content on Instagram, you probably won’t notice much of a drop in organic reach.
Although maintaining a Facebook page is a necessity for switching to an Instagram Business Profile, this doesn’t imply you should avoid having one for your company.
When you switch to a business profile, you will, however, lose the following two features:
Making it possible for your posts to be private
instead of linking to several Facebook profiles, you link your Instagram account to the Facebook page for your company.
These capabilities might be useful for personal accounts, but they wouldn’t be any use at all for commercial accounts, which is probably why Instagram eliminated them.
A business typically has quite different motivations for running an Instagram account than a person, even a solopreneur. You share details of your life with your loved ones on your own Instagram account. A company maintains an Instagram account to grow its following and, ideally, attract consumers. You could still wish to use a personal account if you run a business for your non-business activities.
1. Use Instagram Insights
For the typical Instagram user, Instagram doesn’t offer many analytics and performance information. Facebook developed Instagram Insights for businesses and power users in response to this issue for businesses.
Businesses can access all the crucial information they require about their account and the performance of their posts with Instagram Insights. It provides knowledge about what information is effective and what is not. You can use the data it provides about your followers to create a profile of the people who are interested in you.
You may check your Instagram activity for the previous week, including the number of posts, impressions, reach, profile views, website visits, and email clicks. In fact, you can look at this data for up to 90 days.
Once you have at least 100 followers, it then provides you with complete demographic information on your followers, including their gender, ages, locations by cities and countries, and when they are most active.
You can also explore your older posts in Instagram Insight by engagement and impressions over a specified time frame of up to two years. Additionally, it provides information on conventional posts, Stories, reels, IGTV videos, live videos, and advertisements.
Naturally, there are instances when you might want even more in-depth information about how well your Instagram strategy is working. Top Instagram Analytics Tools for 2021 contains recommendations for this.
2. The presence of a contact button
Adding a Contact button to your profile is a useful option available for accounts with a Business Profile. You may program the button so that when someone clicks it, you will be reached via email, phone, or a map showing your location.
You can also choose to sync your Facebook page’s public contact information with it. Accordingly, anyone with the ability to edit your Facebook page can make changes to the content that syncs to both that page and your Instagram account.
Another option is to provide an action button. Customers may interact with your business immediately from your Instagram profile thanks to action buttons that link it to other websites and online services. Three different Action Buttons are currently available on Instagram: Order Food, Book Now, and Reserve.
3. Your Profile Will Display Your Industry
Facebook prompted you to choose the sector your company operates in when you started your page. Therefore, this information transfers to your Instagram profile when you link your Instagram Business Profile to your Facebook page. If necessary in the future, you may change this information directly inside Instagram.
4. Instagram Stories now support links
The inability to typically use clickable links is one of the most aggravating aspects of Instagram from a marketing perspective. If you run a personal profile, your profile’s URL is the only one you can display.
However, Instagram Stories offers an additional choice. How to Use Instagram Stories Like a Pro has been explained. The ability to add a URL to an Instagram story is a useful feature for some Instagram accounts.
This is especially useful because, according to Locowise, 75% of Instagram users follow up by visiting a website after viewing a post.
But not all businesses have access to the Instagram Stories link-adding feature. Before Instagram grants you access to this feature, your company profile must have 10,000 followers. As an alternative, if you possess a verified badge, you will be eligible for this swipe-up feature.
When you upload your Instagram Story, you can include a link if you match the requirements. To begin, click the chain-shaped icon at the top of your Story (the fourth icon from the right). After that, click + Web link to enter the URL. You’re ready to go once you click Done.
5. Capable of running Instagram ads and publishing promoted posts
You must run a Business Profile if you have the funds to advertise on Instagram and promote your Instagram posts.
The relationship between Facebook and Instagram is again readily apparent in this context. You create your Facebook advertising and select the placement of your ads. One of the choices Facebook offers you is Instagram; the other choices are various places on Facebook and Messenger.
Instagram Shoppable posts have been an invention that has just just been introduced. Similar to how people tag their friends, these enable businesses to identify their postings with specific products. People are taken to a complete product description with a “Buy Now” button when they tap on the tags. When they do, they can tap that button to buy your product.
6. Ability to Check Age
Setting a minimum age is another handy option for some firms with an Instagram business profile. If you own a liquor store, for instance, you can set a minimum age that corresponds to the local legal drinking age. By doing this, you can make sure that you aren’t advertising your work to viewers who might not be of legal age.
However, more creator accounts are operated by influencers than business accounts.
Many influencers decide to run company accounts despite the fact that they don’t actually run a business. They handle their Instagramming on a professional level and take it very seriously.
Influencers aim to expand their audience and boost engagement. Their mission is aided by the extra resources and information provided by an Instagram business profile. Additionally, they give influencers extra data to share with the brands they collaborate with.
When working on behalf of a brand, it is an extra advantage if good influencers can add URLs to their Instagram Stories.
Creator Accounts, a third type of account that Instagram has introduced, appear to better target influencers.
Confoundingly, there currently only seem to be two categories of profiles on Instagram: personal accounts and professional accounts. But there are essentially two different categories of professional accounts: creator accounts and business accounts. Instagram refers to both Business and Creator accounts when it refers to professional accounts in its documentation.
Instagram’s Business accounts are now advertised as being “ideal for stores, local companies, brands, organizations, and service providers.” It states that “ideal for public figures, content producers, artists, and influencers” are Creator accounts.
Many of the advantages of Business accounts are also available with greater freedom with Creator accounts. For instance, Creator profiles have the option to conceal their contact details as well as their Instagram business categories. Additionally, creators can display many categories on their Facebook and Instagram sites. Users of Creator accounts can also control who is permitted to message them.
Additionally, creators get access to Creator Studio, which offers more features and improved insights.
How to Change from a Personal to a Business Profile
You are only permitted to have five Instagram accounts. However, unless you have a variety of target audiences and choose to create a different account for each one, this is unlikely to have an impact on you.
Go to your profile page view instagram stories anonymously account and click the “hamburger” icon (the three horizontal bars) in the top right corner. On the following screen, tap Settings. In most circumstances, select Account after navigating to the settings. Select “Switch to Professional Account” from the options box after scrolling down. Rarely, that choice may appear right on your Settings page, in which case you won’t need to first tap onto your Account page. Verify that your account is not set to a private account. You can tap Add New Professional Account on your Account page if you currently have an Instagram business profile and would like to add another (up to the maximum allowed five).
Regardless of how you got here, you need to click Continue on the following screen.
After choosing a category for your business, Instagram will ask you to touch Done, OK to confirm, Business, and then Next. Instagram will request the contact information for your company. Click Next. Keep in mind that you should compose these with your readers in mind. Your company’s address, phone number, and email are all included.
Once you’ve done that, connect your company’s Instagram account to your company’s Facebook page by following the on-screen instructions.
After completing the aforementioned steps, your Instagram business profile will be complete. To get back to your profile, tap the X in the top-right corner.
In the end, Business Profiles on Instagram provide a better marketing experience, regardless matter whether you are a company looking to send your message directly or a serious user looking to grow your following and interaction. But if you’re an influencer, switching to a Creator account will definitely be in your best interest.
