Should Your Instagram Profile Be A Personal Or Business Account?

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There have been a lot of opinions and chatter on whether brands and influencers alike are better off with personal Instagram accounts versus business accounts. While there are certainly pros and cons for each, it seems that the answer isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone. So, which is better for you? Here are a few questions to help you decide:

Do you have over 10,000 followers?

Regardless of whether you’re an influencer or you have a small business or a massive one, the number of followers you have is something to consider when deciding between a personal or business account. Business profiles with over 10,000 followers have the ability to include a “swipe up” link in Instagram stories. This feature has a lot of benefits like driving traffic to your homepage, including an affiliate link to earn commission, or pointing your audience to any direct call to action you may wish for them to take.

For example, Southwest Airlines recently spoke about how Hurricane Florence may impact some airports. Southwest included a swipe-up link to its travel advisory homepage for more information for those who may be affected. Similarly, Nordstrom featured its "Top 10 Trends for the Season" on its Instagram Stories and included a swipe-up link to drive users directly to the point of purchase for each item. If your audience is 10,000 or larger, it could be reason enough to justify switching to a business profile, as this functionality currently isn’t available to personal accounts (or users below 10,000).

Would Instagram analytics be useful to you?

For many, being able to have specific insights to their Instagram audience is valuable information. Currently, only business profiles are able to access these data points. While some third-party software is available to provide insights to any user, the ease of monitoring this regularly within the Instagram app is definitely a perk.

Users interested in closely understanding who their followers are, when they’re active on Instagram and where they’re located (to name a few details) should consider switching to business profiles. You can leverage this valuable information to optimize your content. For example, when our clients have had important announcements to make via Instagram, we've carefully considered what day of the week and time their audience would be most active and likely to see this messaging, thanks to the information provided by insights.

Is having a private account something that’s important to you?

For some, the ability to set their profile to private could be of concern for security reasons. If that’s the case, a personal account is the only way to enable this. Business pages currently require your page to be public, so you may need to weigh the pros and cons of which matters more to you.

Do you have a need to link to multiple Facebook pages?

If you need to link your page to multiple Facebook accounts, you’ll need to be set up as a personal page. Since Instagram and Facebook are owned by the same company, Instagram requires you to connect your account to a single corresponding Facebook page in order to become a business account. If, for example, you run a restaurant group with multiple Facebook pages for each of your restaurants, you wouldn’t be able to link to each Facebook page from your Instagram if you wanted a business account.

Are you interested in promoting a post?

If you have a media budget (even a small one) and are interested in boosting or promoting one of your Instagram posts, you must be registered as a business account. Personal accounts can certainly promote goods, services or any other kind of advertisement, but you won’t be able to control the reach by boosting it unless you switch to a business account.

Are you prepared to invest in your page eventually?

While we can’t be entirely certain, if Instagram follows in Facebook’s footsteps, it’s only a matter of time before business pages will be required to put some sort of funding behind their posts in order for the content to be seen.

As you can see from the reasons listed above, there are currently dozens of perks and reasons why having a business page could behoove you. With that said, if you’re not treating your Instagram as a business you’d eventually be willing to invest in monetarily, you might want to consider this before making the switch.

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