Instagram business accounts offer brands more opportunities than IG personal accounts of employees or founders.
Instagram statistics 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.
Instagram Business Account Vs. IG Personal Account
👉 1. What is an Instagram business account?
👉 2. The differences between an Instagram business account and a personal one
👉 3. The benefits of an Instagram business account
👉 4. How to create an Instagram business account
👉 5. How to identify a business account on Instagram
#1. What is an Instagram business account?
Currently, there are three types of accounts Instagram offers:
- IG personal account
- IG business account
- IG creator account
While a personal account is pretty self-explanatory, the business account was created with brands and companies in mind, in order to help them reach and understand their audience and generate leads for their business.
A business account offers a wide range of data and stats on a brand’s Instagram content.
However, this is not to be confused with an Instagram creator account, which is meant to support independent creators and influencers, although businesses can also benefit from it.
#2. The differences between an Instagram business account and a personal one
An Instagram business account acts pretty much like a personal account: you can upload pictures, videos, and Stories about your brand or business.
You can connect with your customers, start conversations, share your brand values, and even make your company more accessible physically, by sharing information about your location, phone, and email.
In short, you allow potential customers to contact you at a click (or tap) of a button.
But the real bonus comes with data. With a Instagram business account, you can:
- Get real-time metrics on how your posts, stories and promoted posts perform throughout the day.
- Understand how your followers interact with your content, their likes, dislikes and interests
- Find out the profile of your target audience: where they live, their ages, their timezones. This will help you create content tailored to them
- Run ads and optimize your adevertising campaigns based on relevand data.
Find out what data says on how to create relevant Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns!
#3. The benefits of an Instagram business account
There are quite a few advantages to creating an IG business account, that help you considerably improve the content you are sharing on the platform: from profile information, to posts, to stories, to IGTV.
Let’s have a quick step-by-step!
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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, you’ll 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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Real-time analytics
With a business account, you have access to analytics.
Analytics for Instagram are very important because you can get an overview of your content strategy and how engaged your audience really is.
Clicking the 'insights' button of your profile page, or the ‘insights’ section from the dropdown in the top right of the screen, you'll get a list of:
- Profile stats:
- Interactions
- Profile visits
- Reach
- Impressions
- Top posts, stories, and IGTV videos
- Taps on buttons such as email, website, or get directions
- Stories stats
- Impressions
- Reach
- Follows
- Forward Taps
- Back
- Next Story
- Exited
- Content metrics:
- Calls
- Comments
- Emails
- Engagement
- Follows
- Get directions
- Impressions
- Interactions
- Likes
- Reach
- Saves
- IGTV stats:
- Average percentage watched
- Comments
- Likes
- Reach
- Saves
- Shares
- Video views
You can also use a third party analytics tool like Socialinsider, to get extra data and stats such as:
- Historical data for any Instagram business account
- Followers growth over time
- Average engagement and engagement rate per post, story or profile
- Posts evolution
- Top hashtags of posts and Stories
- Stats on posts by type: video, image or carousel
- Average view time of videos
- Ads impressions and CTRs
- Ad spend
- Overall performance of a campaign (with all its content)
Find out the complete list of Instagram metrics that ever marketer needs to know in 2020
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Run ads
Last but not least, the Instagram business account makes ad creation easy through Facebook Ad Manager.
Brands have multiple platform options for placing social media ads, including Instagram.
Around 35.6% of ads are placed on Instagram, and obtain an average click-through rate of 0.82% per ad, according to a recent Facebook ads study.
You can create top performing Instagram ads by using image, video, carousel, slideshow, or collection regular ads, or opt for story ads.
There are only a few steps to follow:
- Defining your goals
- Setting your objectives
- Choosing your audience
- Selecting the ad type or format
- Uploading your images and videos
#4. How to create an Instagram business profile
If you want to create an Instagram business profile you have to follow five easy steps to transform your personal account into a business profile within minutes.
- Login to your Instagram account and go to settings
- Tap Switch to Professional Account
- Instagram will prompt you to **connect to a Facebook business page** (you need to have Admin access to the Facebook page)
- Choose a category for your profile/business
- Fill out your contact details (make sure you include all the important information)
As shown in Instagram guides, under Public Business Information, you can edit the following: the Page your Instagram professional account is connected to, Business Category, and Business contact info.
Did you know that carousel posts can improve engagement? Here's the data that proves it!
#5. How to identify a business account on Instagram
There are a few notable differences between a business account and a personal account.
For example, if you see any options to contact the company directly (“call” or “email”), that particular brand is using a business profile.
More exactly, if you see a phone number, an email address, a business category, and even a physical location - that's a business account.
Look at Startbucks, for example. Although they have many locations across the globe, there is still a phone number available, together with the link.
As you can see in Sue B. Zimmerman’s case, her Instagram account has all the information you need to know in order to know who you are following.
The same thing goes for Socialinsider’s own instagram. We have our bio, link, and saved our favourite stories in highlighted categories: podcast, studies, product, tips, and team.
You can edit your business information from the Edit Profile section of your professional account.
Keep in mind that businesses also have the option to display or hide the business category and contact information on their profile.
Final thought
Now that you know the difference between a business account and a personal account you can take the first steps and create your own professional account.
Enjoy comprehensive Instagram metrics that can help you get inside the mind of your audience.
If you choose a business account, you’ll find everything you need to know about growing your business through Instagram right here on Socialinsider's blog.
Start a free Socialinsider trial today and track your Instagram analytics!
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