23. A BUSINESS PROFILE ON INSTAGRAM: YES OR NO?
The first thing that may cross your mind when you start an Instagram page for your business is 'Should I choose for a Business profile or not?'. It's a normal question to ask yourself, but there are pros and contras to switching into this kind of profile. One of the main reasons why people hesitate is because of the huge drop in engagement or the Instagram Algorithm. Oh yes, there's our Algorithm friend again... But of course there are also positive reasons why a Business profile can be helpful for your brand or company. Let's find out whether you should switch or not.
What is the difference between a Personal profile and a Business profile? There are over 15million Business profiles on Instagram since the launch of it back in 2016. Many of them are also Influencers as you have the possibility to view statistics with this kind of profile and get to know your audience in detail. You can also get the insights of each content you place and promote your Instagram posts with advertisements. The best part of it is that you don't need a certain amount of followers to switch into a Business profile. You can do it from the beginning or after having a Personal account for a while.
A Personal account is really for those who don't have a (personal) brand to promote, don't run a company or sell products.
Both profiles have exclusive features. With the Personal account you can turn your profile on private and choose who follows you and who can see your content. This avoids that strangers can see anything about you. The other exclusive feature is the possibility to link back to multiple Facebook pages. On the Business profile it's maximum one page.
As said before you can exclusively have the insights of your profile with the Business account but also the contact and email buttons are special features. This will help people to contact your company more easily. But a feature you maybe didn't know is that adding a link into your Instagram Stories is also only available on a Business account and not with the Personal profile.
Do you start doubting now because of all the extra tools you will miss out if you keep it personal? bYooma made a flowchart for you to follow and find the answer you have been looking for.
If you're a brand it's worth to take the risk to go for a Business Profile even though the engagement may drop and you will loose some organic reach. But in the end all the other marketing possibilities are more important than the little percentage of lost. And if you hesitate too much, you can always switch back to a Personal account later on...
