Instagram Business Accounts – Worth The Switch?

With over 500 million daily active users it’s no surprise that Instagram is the favoured channel for brand collaborations. In fact it’s so popular in the influencer marketing community, that in our recent survey to over 1000 influencers 78% said that Instagram was their primary platform for collaborations.

However, up until recently there have been a few little bug bears with Instagram that you don’t get with its sister platform Facebook. Namely the lack of visibility over your posts engagement rates and understanding who your followers actually are!

Switching your account to an Instagram business account promises to change all of this. But there has been a great deal of chatter in the community as to whether or not it helps or hinders influencers – especially if you don’t have big budgets to promote your posts.

To help you decide what’s best for you, I have answered all of your questions below.

What’s the difference?

The core difference between a personal and business profile is the insight you get into your stories, posts and followers. Up until now the only way to see your engagement rates automatically updated or audience demographics was through tools like the ZINE influencer media kit. But now if you switch your account to business you will be able to see:

• Growth over time
• Reach over time
• Impressions
• Follower demographics
• Stories insights

With a business account you can also add in company information (like contact details and hours of operation), and pay to boost posts.

Why now?

Instagram wants to help brands and influencers to view and understand the performance of sponsored posts. Your audience insights can now be accessed by third parties, like ZINE which means you can get all the info from your business account on your media kit and share it with brands – no more screenshots, yay!

Who can get an Instagram business account?

Anyone can switch their account to business and it’s totally free. However you have to have a minimum of 100 followers (not a problem for you instafamous) for the demographics data to kick in. Switching to a business account can be done in seconds through the settings section of your account. And if you don’t enjoy the benefits, you can always switch back just as easily.

And The cons…

Some users have reported slightly lower engagement which they pin down to lower visibility as Instagram prioritizes personal posts over business ones (unless of course they have been promoted). This can be especially worrying for influencers with a moderate following, however there is no concrete evidence that this is the case and Instagram themselves are keeping shtum.

The verdict

While the idea of having some of your posts pushed down is rather daunting, if you’re serious about being a professional influencer the data analytics that will be unlocked through switching your account is invaluable. Getting a deeper understanding of what resonates with your audience and ultimately who that audience is, is to key to those evergreen engagement rates. And similarly, if you know who your audience is, you can pitch yourself better to brands. Our advice to professional influencers is to make use of all the free tools out there for influencers from Instagram business to ZINE media kits, to know who you are reaching and what is resonating.

The ZINE media kit for influencers:

Sign up for your free ZINE media kit and connect all your social media channels for a beautiful digital portfolio that automatically updates with your latest content, follower numbers and engagement rates. You can even add past collaborations, a price list and fully customize your media kit. It takes just 2 minutes and once connected you get a private link you can share with brands you’d like to collaborate with. ZINE will be launching advanced audience insights for business accounts in Q2 2018.

Maeve Sugrue

I’m Head of Marketing at ZINE where I am helping peers and customers who want to revolutionise their influencer marketing strategy. I love food, fitness and Min Pins.