Many of us started using Instagram as an ordinary user. Maybe you didn’t even have a business on your radar when you started, but now you do. What’s the best way to move forward? What kind of account should you have? Should you have multiple accounts?
Let me start by saying I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having multiple Instagram accounts. I have a few different accounts that serve different purposes, which is pretty common. If you want to have a private personal account for friends and family, that’s fine. Just make sure they know that you also have a business account in case they are interested in following along over there. A simple way to do this is by making a post and you can tag the business account in your bio. A private, personal account should not be used for your business.
There are two professional types of accounts on Instagram: Business and Creator.
A Business Account includes:
- Analytics, called Insights, to tell you about your audience, which posts did better than others, the best times to post, and more
- The option to add a call-to-action button to your profile for contact info, gift card sales, a website, and more
- The ability to use scheduling tools like Later, Creator Studio, Hootsuite, etc.
- The ability to run paid advertising
- A label beneath your display name that lists your business category (but this can be removed if you want)
- Instagram Shoppable posts, when you sync your store with Instagram (not available to all accounts yet)
- Quick replies that allow you to make a shortcut in your account settings, especially helpful if you answer the same questions often
A Creator Account has a lot of similarities to a business account with some tweaks:
- Instead of seeing weekly unfollows, creator accounts can see daily unfollows.
- The ability to see analytics on desktop via Creator Studio
- Shoppable posts
- The ability to hide a call-to-action button
- Quick replies
All in all, it’s not that big of a change but if you’re running a business, you need one of these two options. I personally use a Creator Account.
What if you have multiple brands? Should you use the same account?
NO! If you have multiple businesses, you need separate accounts for each business unless they are extremely similar like one sells scrunchies and the other sells headbands. I started a health coaching business in 2016 and then started a marketing business in 2019. At first, I wanted to keep things simple and I thought having one account for both businesses would be the answer. I quickly learned it made things much more complicated and confused the heck out of my audience. They were used to seeing me post about fitness and food, then all of a sudden I was talking about how to use a hashtag. I laugh about it now but it’s a valuable lesson in branding. As a rule of thumb: if it confuses you, it’s definitely going to confuse them. Avoid confusion at all costs.
If you have more questions about this topic, send me a message here via my contact form or on Instagram @stressfreesocial.