Social Media

Instagram Business vs Personal Account

Hayley Haggerty

By now, you’ve probably set up your first Instagram account. Perhaps you’ve thought about using it for your personal life or for a company or business you’re a part of. What are some advantages and disadvantages to managing a personal Instagram account or a Business account? In this article, we’ll take you through some of the pros and cons of each, leaving you more prepared than ever to tackle the Instagram world.

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Instagram Business vs Personal Account: The Pros

What are some benefits of converting your Instagram to a Business Account? As with creating any social media account for your business, you want to make sure the platform you choose is the right one – not only for you, but for your brand, too.

Below are just a few of the benefits of creating a Business Instagram Account. We’ve also included the instructions for finding these in your Account Settings.

1. Easily Contact Your Page

Using your Business Instagram Account, you can easily direct customers to your website, email address, and more. You can even add your phone number so customers can call right from the app, instead of clicking somewhere else to get in touch with you. Adding your information to the Contact button makes contacting your business a breeze, even for your most technologically-challenged customers.

This way, you can take messages, questions, and more from one location instead of multiple places. It’s even easy for you!

2. Brand Recognition for Your Business Account

Whether you’re representing a small Mom & Pop shop or a five-star restaurant, you want your Instagram account to be easily recognizable.

Pick a profile picture with your logo that makes you stand out, along with your username. Then, find a way to add your slogan or some other identifying feature from your Business into your profile description. The more information your customers have at their fingertips to easily identify you and your business account, the better.

After all, who wants their account to be mixed up with someone else’s?

3. Instagram Shopping

Instagram’s integrated shopping features make pulling in customers easier than ever.

Along with the ease of directing customers to your business’ website, you can sell your products straight from the app. You can even tag your featured or popular items within your posts so customers can shop right from your pictures through direct links to your products.

Plus, Instagram Checkout can make it so your customers never have to leave your page to purchase their favorite items.

4. Quick Replies

If you’ve ever used Facebook Messenger to connect with your audience and potential customers through your Business Page, then you know how invaluable Quick Replies can be. If you feel you’re overwhelmed with repetitive messages, simply hit the option for “Quick Replies” in your Instagram settings. Then, you can create standard replies for your most common questions.

This alleviates your time cost of replying to customers because your answers will already be programmed in the app. Not to mention, you can end up devoting more time to other areas of your account.

5. Use Instagram’s Analytical Insights for Your Business

Instagram offers analytics tools and insights for you to grow your business through hashtags, followers, and more. You can easily get first impressions of who’s looking at your posts, your post reach, and engagement. By clicking on the Insights section listed at the top of your profile, you can:

  • Examine reports from your top ten posts over the last seven days
  • Review your performance for each post
  • Analyze who’s visiting your profile

You can also break down this information by each post by clicking the See More button.

Instagram Business vs Personal Account: The Cons

What are some disadvantages to creating your Business Instagram Account?

Creating your Business Instagram Account can seem like a smart idea for most companies and businesses who want to grow their following on more kinds of social media. However, you might want to take some of these disadvantages to creating your account into consideration first.

1. Ad Boosts Require Money

If you want to grow your reach on Instagram using your Business Account, ads and boosting posts are common methods. However, many users have pointed out that the more money you spend on ads and post boosting, the more people see your business – which means you may have to spend more money to get the large following you want. For those with a limited budget to spend on social media, this is less than ideal.

2. Higher Engagement Numbers on Personal Instagram Accounts

Some studies done on the Instagram algorithms have shown that Personal Instragram Accounts tend to generate higher organic numbers. This is simply because Instagram’s algorithm often favors authentic, real content versus content that is created to sell a product.

Thus, if you post a picture on your Business Account designed to promote a service or product, it may automatically start out with a penalty from Instagram’s algorithm.

The end result? You may not reach as many people as you may want to reach with your post.

3. Your Target Demographic

Social media experts generally agree that people aged 35 and younger are the ones who primarily use Instagram. If your target demographic is older, you might have a harder time getting your content to the right audience.

4. Uploading Photos via Mobile Only

To use Instagram well, you must have the phone app to upload pictures, apply filters, etc. You can use the desktop website, but only if it’s a desktop app. This may be limiting for businesses who primarily use desktop computers to manage their social media accounts, and don’t have a dedicated phone for company use.

5. Linking Your Facebook Accounts

If you end up linking your Facebook account or page to your Instagram Business Profile, you may notice that it only gives you the option to link a single page. Instagram assumes you only have one Facebook page to link – which may be true for many organizations.

However, personal Instagram accounts allow you to link as many Facebook profiles and pages as you want to one account. This feature comes in especially handy when cross-sharing between two platforms.

But if you want to share an Instagram post from your Business account to your Facebook page, you can only share it to the one Business page you have linked to the app.

This could prove to be a bit of a hassle for companies with multiple Facebook pages, or for sharing your posts to a potential wider audience on Facebook.

A Final Word

Creating a Personal Instagram Account vs your Business Instagram Account can sometimes feel overwhelming. Not having the right tools and information at your disposal makes that process even harder. Hopefully, our instructions and well-informed tips can take the confusion out of the choice for you. Thanks for reading, and good luck on your Instagram journey!

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Hayley Haggerty