What Is Instagram Professional Account

Write Captions And Use Hashtags

Keep your caption brief and use appropriate hashtags. Hashtags are often used in a joking way, but they are also how millions of photos are found, and in turn, your content can be found. The most popular hashtags range in the hundreds of millions of times used, so if youre targeting a particular niche, consider using a more specific hashtag.

Also, keep the hashtags to a reasonable number. Followers dont want to be spammed with dozens of hashtags per post.

Pro tip:;check out Top Hashtags to see whats popular on Instagram.

Heres an example of a picture with hashtags that we posted to our OutboundEngine company Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by OutboundEngine on Jan 18, 2019 at 10:37am PST

Why And How To Set Up Your Instagram Business Profile

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When Instagram first launched, personal and businesses had a single Instagram profile format. There were no bells and whistles, just a basic bio and your Instagram feed.

Social media really does change quickly, because in 2016, Instagram introduced business profiles. And since then, the new profile has introduced a new way of social marketing.

And the benefits of Instagram business profiles have been significant.

Since the start of business profiles, contact buttons were born, became more prominent, the platform launched its own analytics. And now everyone, from corporations to startups to influencers, has an Instagram business profile.

Join us for conversations about the future of social media and business, featuring Alexis Ohanian, Seven Seven Six Founder and Former Executive Chair of Reddit, and Alexandra Waldman, Co-Founder of Universal Standard.

What Are These Accounts

When we create an Instagram account, a personal account is automatically generated. So far so good, but most people are not aware of the other types of accounts, which can be chosen according to their activity on the social network. Instagram is increasingly innovating in its features, and the type of account you choose will determine which features it will or will not have.

There are three types of Instagram accounts, organized into two categories: personal and professional.

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Profile Basics & Choosing A Username

Next, youll create a username and password. If youre setting up Instagram for a company, the username should be the companys name, or as close as you can get it. If youre a real estate agent, insurance agent, or the like, choose a variation of your name, business, location. You need something that distinguishes you from a personal account.

For example, or will work.

Note: Instagram will automatically generate a username for you based on the name you input. This can easily be changed as you go through these prompts.

Instagram Business Account Vs Personal How Do You Identify A Business Account

Instagram business accounts offer brands more opportunities than IG personal accounts of employees or founders.

say that there are 25+ million business profiles on this platform, and over 200 million users visit at least one business profile every day.

Moreover, 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram, according to the same stats.

You can run an Instagram business account just as easily as a personal account, with some major added bonuses: you can get insights on your audiences behaviour with analytics and you can also make your brand easier to reach.

So how can you tell if an Instagram account is a business account?

In this article, I’m going to show you the differences between an Instagram business account and a personal account.

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How Do You Add Instagram Categories To Your Account

First thing first, theres a specific you need to have before you can attach any categories to account:

• Creator account
• Business account

A personal account does not allow for business categories, so its necessary to make the change before you can move forward.

There are many advantages and , but one of the major benefits is gaining access to analytics and other features necessary to grow your account.

Luckily, setting up an Instagram business account is free and easy.

First, click the hamburger menu in the top right-hand corner of your profile page and go to your settings.

At the very bottom, click on Switch to Professional Account.

Now, tap on Business.

From here, Instagram will guide you through the next steps. You are going to need to have a Facebook business page set up to get your Instagram business account up and running, so if you dont have one, youll need to quickly create on.

After creating your Instagram business account, Instagram will ask you to select a category for your business.

Remember there are hundreds of different business categories to choose from! Feel free to try and be as specific as possible. Instagram will suggest some of the top Instagram categories for you to pick from, but you can also search for others.

Once your business account is complete, your profile will display your category below your name.

Why Not To Use One Login

It can be convenient but there are a couple reasons you may regret setting it up.

Anyone who knows how to log into one account will also have access to all linked accounts.

Business access

You may want a business partner or social media manager to access your business IG, but not your personal one! If this might ever be a possibility, I recommend you avoid one login.

If you did it and now want to separate them, keep scrolling to the section below the next one.

Desktop access

Instagram says that each of your accounts will keep their individual login and password, which you can still use to log into each account separately. But if they share a password, more trouble ensues.

If accounts share a password, youll be able to access only the primary account on instagram.com.

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Access To Instagram Insights

Knowledge is power, they say. In that case, Business Profiles are the most powerful of them all: theyre brimming with data thanks to the Insights function.

With Insights, youll get a deep breakdown of profile views, reach, impressions and clicks, plus demographic and activity information about your audience.

For example, looking at my own reach from the past week, I can see that my fans were extremely active on Instagram on Wednesday. Good to know for future mom-centric content!

But in all seriousness, these metrics offer an incredible opportunity to analyze your profiles performance and success. For more information on how to make Insights work for you, check out

How To Switch To Instagram For Business

Making the switch is pretty easy. Navigate to your profile in Instagram , and under Account Settings youll see an option called Switch to Business Profile.

You will then be asked to log into Facebook within the app.

After that, youll be asked to select which Facebook page you want to connect. You must be an admin of the page youre wanting to connect, and can only connect one Instagram Business profile and Facebook page together.

Instagram will then ask which contact information you want to pull from your Facebook page, such as customer service phone number, email address, or mailing address. A minimum of one contact is required to set up an Instagram Business profile.

Just like that, youre set up on Instagram for Business. You can see the differences between the Business profile below.

The variations;include a Contact button which accesses the contact info previously mentioned, the business type you have selected within Facebook, and at the top right next to your settings cog wheel is your access to Insights.

Its important to note that Instagram Insights does not pull historical data. Rather, it starts collecting once an Instagram Business profile is set up:

If you ever want to switch back to a regular profile, you can;do so in Account Settings.

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Why You Should Switch To An Instagram For Business Account

If you operate a visual business think bakery, coffee shop, clothing line, etc. and you dont have a business profile on Instagram, you might be missing out on a large, interested audience. Regardless of whether youre using Instagram for social advertising or just the organic reach, its a platform you cant ignore.

, and Constant Contact was one of the first businesses to gain hands-on access to the new features.

Having a business profile gives you access to a variety of tools and functionality, including analytics on your posts and stories, additional calls-to-action and buttons you can put on your profile, and third-party integrations with services like MINDBODY,;which are constantly in development.

Lets walk through how to change your account to a business account and explain the advantages for your small business.

Not sure where to start with marketing? Thats why we created The Download.

The Download is the ultimate practical, step-by-step guide to online marketing. In this free guide, well show you how people find you online and how to set yourself up for success to meet your business or nonprofit goals.

How To Switch To An Instagram Business Profile Or Creator Profile:

Now that youre up-to-speed on the benefits of Instagram Business and Creator profiles, you can make the switch thats right for you.

Heres how:

How to Switch to an Instagram Creator Profile:

If youre thinking of moving to a Creator profile, the first thing you need to do is check if Instagram has made the feature available to you:

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How To Switch Back To A Personal Instagram Account

If you decide an Instagram business or creator account isnt for you, its possible to revert right back to a personal account.

You can also switch between business and creator accounts to find the one that makes the most sense for your brand.

All you have to do is head right back to your account settings, and this time the blue;Switch to Professional Account call-to-action will be replaced with two different options:;Switch to Personal Account or;Switch to Creator Account.

Do Business Instagram Accounts Get Less Engagement

The results showed that engagement for personal profiles was about 1% higher than for business profiles. This arises because in the case of business profiles, as the number of followers increases, the content on the business profile is showed to fewer people, leading to lower reach and a further decrease in engagement.

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The Cons Of A Private Account

As with anything in life, there are pros and cons to every decision. In some cases, the pros outweigh the cons. In this case, well, there are a lot more cons than pros. It still might be better for you to make your profile private, but consider all of the below before you make that decision.

Con: It doesnt stop harassing direct messages. If youre the target of harassment, going private will stop people from being able to steal your content for malicious use, leave malicious comments on your content, or otherwise access your content. However, they are still able to send you private messages on the site. In order to stop such messages, you need to block the accounts themselves. If whoever is harassing you is dedicated enough, theyll simply keep making more of them and bombing you with direct messages.

Con: It doesnt hide your account activity on public accounts. If you like a photo or leave a comment on a photo posted by someone who is public, your like or comment will still be public. You cannot use a private account to hide unsavory activity. Ive seen more than one public figure get caught liking or leaving inappropriate comments on photos of beautiful models, thinking theyre protected. Obviously, this is only a con if youre hoping to hide shameful activity, but its still a potential con to some people.

Experiment With Different Content Types

Instagram is so much more than photos. There are now a huge range of content types on the platform, including:

• Video
• Stories
• IGTV

And if you want to increase your reach and engagement on the platform, it’s important to share a mix of content types. As we shared in :

“The algorithm looks at interest and strives to show people the content types that they interact with most often. So, if one person likes and comments on Instagram Reels more often than other post types, theyre likely to see more Reels in their Instagram feed.”

Each type of content has advantages and everyone has their own preferences on Instagram some people love Reels, whereas others don’t use the feed and only check Stories. So if you want to maximize your reach and engagement, the best strategy is to use a variety of content types.

Struggling for content ideas? Our guide on social media content might give you some inspiration.

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So Which One Is Best Suited To You

Instagram suggests that the Creator Account isbest used by public figures, content creators, photographers, artists and influencers. Whereas the Business Account is suitable for retailers, local businesses, brands, organisations or service providers.

Lets look closer at what each account offers and how they differ.

Gaining insight

Creators and businesses pay close attention to their contents performance and audience data, to ensure theyre sharing the right content for their followers. This is why both account types offer insights. This covers how content performs, such as impressions breakdown, reach, saves, shares, profile visits, website clicks and follows.

Owners of Creator and Business accounts can also view audience demographic data. This provides information on follower growth, top audience locations, age range, gender split and their most active days and times. These account analytics also share insights on recent content interactions and your accounts overall impressions and reach from the past week.

Two-tab inbox

With wide reach comes a large amount of DMs. Thats why both accounts offer the two-tab inbox, labelled Primary and General, to better manage your incoming DMs.

The Primary Inbox is where high priority messages land from the accounts you follow, accounts you have previously messaged or tagged in a Story or accounts that Instagram believes would be of interest to you. These accounts may be verified, have mutual followers or are well known.

Brand Information And Highlights On Profile

Instagram allows you to highlight the most important information directly under your description, to make it easily accessible to everyone.

You can create quick shortcuts to highlight your main stories, you can create topics for your content and feature them, and you can add buttons to sent people to your website, call, or email you.

For the audience who still prefers the old-school way of buying, youll be able to send them directly at your business doorstep, with the get directions feature.All of this only means that all the information potential customers will need from you will be easily accessible in your profile.

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How To Make Your Account

Now that youve gotten an insight into what a Professional Account is, youre most likely wondering how to make one. Heres a walk-through of the process so you can get started sooner rather than later:

**#: Branded Content Approval

As a business account holder, you can restrict who can tag you as a branded content partner in their posts. This is a useful feature that will prevent Instagram users from falsely listing your brand as endorsing their profile.

To set branded content approvals, open your profile and tap the button with three lines in the top-right corner of the screen. This will open the sidebar menu where you can access your Instagram settings.

From here, tap the settings button and scroll down to Business Settings. Here you should see an option for Branded content.

You can use the toggle button to switch on Require Approvals. You can also create a list of Approved Accounts, who can tag your account in their content without your approval.

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Some Influencers Operate Business Accounts But More Operate Creator Accounts

Quite a few influencers choose to operate business accounts, even though they don’t really run a business. They take their Instagramming seriously and manage it on a business basis.

Influencers want to build their following and increase their engagement. The additional tools and insights offered by an Instagram Business Profile help their quest. They also provide more information for influencers to share with the brands with whom they work.

Good influencers can also perform magic with Instagram Stories, and it is an added benefit if they can add URLs when working on behalf of a brand.

However, Instagram has recently set up a third type of account that appears to better target influencers Creator Accounts.

Confusingly, when you look at Instagram, there now appear to be just two types of accounts: Personal accounts and Professional accounts. However, there are actually two types of Professional accounts: Business accounts and Creator accounts. So, whenever Instagram uses the term Professional accounts in its documentation, it means both Business and Creator accounts.

Instagram now states that its Business accounts are “best for retailers, local businesses, brands, organizations and service providers.” It describes Creator accounts as being “best for public figures, content producers, artists, and influencers.”

How To Switch To An Instagram Business Profile

Ready to take the leap into a business profile?;Heres your step-by-step guide.

Hot tip: before you get started, your profile should be set to public. Private accounts are unable to be converted into business accounts.

1. Open up your Instagram profile, and select the menu at the top right corner .

2. Tap Settings.

3. Tap Account.

4. Tap Switch to professional account.

5.Choose a descriptor for your business whether thats a grocery store, an artist, a band, or a clothing brand. Youll have the option to display this on your profile or not.

6. If youve selected a category that may be considered a business, youll be presented with the option to self-identify as a business or a creator. Select business.

7. Review your contact information, which includes your phone number, physical address and email. These will be publicly visible on your profile, but you can edit or remove at any time.

8. Connect your Instagram account to your business Facebook Page and click Next.

9. Youll be prompted at this point to complete your profile, invite friends, and share photos and videos. Your business account is all set to go.

Congratulations! Your Instagram account is now officially open for business. But the work doesnt stop here. Now its time to figure out a strategy for engagement, content and promotion or if youve got a few minutes to spare, singing a few bars of Taking Care of Business with me.

Check out here, and well see you on the gram soon.

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