Top 6 Advantages of Switching to an Instagram Business Profile

February 01, 2019

Since Instagram introduced business profiles in 2016, the major dilemma among brands using the social media platform was whether to switch to a business profile or maintain their personal account. And while the free conversion made it an easy decision for a lot of organizations to make the switch, with over 25 million business profiles currently on Instagram, some brands are hesitant to do so because they are afraid that this might affect their user engagement and following.

 

If you happen to be one of these brands, here’s the good news – switching to a business account will not have any adverse effects on your profile. On the contrary, there are a lot of advantages waiting for you once you’ve made the switch. To help you make up your mind, we have rounded up the top six benefits of switching from an Instagram personal account to a business profile:

 

 

Monitor Your Performance Using Instagram Insights

Every business owner or marketer that has attempted to expand their reach on social media would want to know whether their marketing efforts are effective or not, and one way to find out is through analytics. When you switch to an Instagram business profile, you gain access to Instagram Insights, their built-in analytics tool, that provides you with valuable information about your followers and how your posts are performing.

 

With Insights, you will be able to check your engagement rate, and see how many likes, comments, and shares have been made on your posts. You will also learn more about your followers, such as whether most of them are male or female, their age range, the locations of these followers, as well as the hours and days that they are most active on Instagram. You can also view analytics for your Instagram Stories by going to your profile, clicking on the menu icon located at the top right corner, and then tapping on the graph icon.

 

Knowing these details will allow you to have a greater understanding of your audience and measure the impact of your Instagram marketing strategies. It will also enable you to modify your strategies, such as optimizing content, so you can more effectively reach your goals.

 

 

Schedule Your Instagram Posts

With Instagram having made major changes to their API, users can now schedule their Instagram posts. Prior to this development, users who wanted to schedule their Instagram updates would get a notification when it was time to post, with their caption and photo. Now, business profile users are able to schedule their posts and these would automatically get published on Instagram without having to deal with reminders or push notifications.

 

It is important to note, though, that Instagram business profile users need to have their Instagram account connected to their Facebook Page and use an Instagram scheduler like Later. Unlike Facebook, Instagram posts cannot be scheduled natively within the app.

 

 

Share Links on Your Instagram Stories

Not only can you share your website and promo links on your Instagram bio, you can now add these on your Instagram Stories, too. This is a great way to increase visitors to your site and also your drive sales for your online store, especially if you have ongoing promotions. If you have been struggling to get more of your email subscribers to read your email newsletters and click on your links, you might find it easier to get interactions from Instagram users through your Stories. With about 400 million active daily users, the potential from Instagram Stories looks pretty good.

 

There is just one caveat. Only business profiles with at least 10,000 followers can add links to their Instagram Stories. If your followers don’t make the cut, that’s alright. You can still post on Instagram Stories and promote your link as a text or add your link to your bio and invite your viewers to go to your bio and click on the link from there. In the meantime, work on your user engagement and get them to start following your brand.

 

 

Boost Your Posts and Run Ads

Boosting posts and running ads on Instagram are cost effective ways to expand your exposure on this channel, increase engagement among your target users, and gain followers, and these functions are only available to business profiles. The advertising tools on Instagram not only allow you to set up and run campaigns, they also allow you to track them.

 

With around 75% of Instagram users taking action after seeing Instagram ads, such as clicking on the website link or making a purchase, there is no doubt that allocating budget for Instagram ads is a good idea. If you are still hesitant to try this feature, just imagine most of your competitors posting ads and gaining more followers by a significant number. The only way to be competitive is to run ads as well.

 

 

Sell on Instagram Through Shoppable PostsPerson Holding Black Iphone 5

Having a business profile also allows you to tag your products with Shoppable Posts and sell directly from your organic Instagram posts. Make sure to post eye catching photos to draw the users’ attention to your content. With the right images, good captions, and relevant hashtags, you can increase your online sales just by tagging your products on Instagram.

 

Tagging your products on your post will allow Instagram users to see more information about them, such as product name, price, and the link to your website where they can make a purchase. You can tag up to a maximum of five products per image and up to twenty products per carousel. Aside from appearing in your followers’ feeds, Instagram users will also be able to browse the “Shop” feed on your Instagram profile.

 

 

Improve Your Overall Engagement on Instagram

When you switch from a personal Instagram account to a business profile, you gain access to so many features that allow you to improve your engagement with your target users and followers. Not only are you able to utilize tools to boost your exposure, you are also given access to tools that will allow you to assess your marketing strategy on this platform, enabling you to act fast and modify your strategy whenever necessary.

 

Still don’t want to make the switch to business profile? We thought so.

 

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