The world of social media has offered the best marketing tools for businesses, be it small or large. Nowadays, everyone can advertise, without having too much knowledge about marketing, and its tools. Ever since Instagram introduced the business profile option a couple of years ago, many, especially small businesses and freelancers, have been wondering if they should switch to a business profile or keep their personal one and build a personal-business brand on it.
Large corporations did not think long before making a (logical) decision to switch to a business profile. What else do they have left? However, even today, many small businesses are not even sure what to do, or how to do it.
The confusion about what to do has been created by stories that claimed that algorithms do not support business profiles because social networks are increasingly becoming “pay to play” places where you simply have to come to terms with payment if you want the profile to be of tangible benefit.
One thing is for sure, there are currently more than 25 million business profiles on this social network, and they must have a reason for existing. So, if you also have your own business and are wondering if you need to switch to a business profile and how, after this text, you’ll find it much easier. But first, let’s consider the difference between a personal ad business profile.
What is the difference between a personal and a business profile?
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The biggest difference is that by switching to a business profile you get options like audience analytics, access to ads and advertising opportunities, the ability to add basic contact information in a special category, and not in bio as on a personal profile.
In short, a business profile is an enhanced version of a personal profile. Visually there is almost no difference but if you want to advertise what you do and use all the business features that Instagram offers then switching is a good idea.
How to adapt it properly?
Based on what has been said previously, you have two options. Either create a business profile from scratch or turn your existing one into a business. If you chose to switch, you’ll do it by simply clicking the switch to a business account in the settings area. To successfully complete the transition, you will need a Facebook page (not a personal profile) for which you are the Admin. If you don’t have one and want a business profile on Instagram, now it’s a good idea to create one. Further on, you’ll be selecting the category, and filling up basic information about it.
After you’ve successfully made the profile, make sure you consistently share content. That’s the first thing you need to do. However, it may be time-consuming, especially if you don’t have the luxury of spending too much time online. Worry no further, because there’s a solution, and it’s doing all the publishing, interacting, and attracting people to your business automatically. It can be found on inflact.com.
Besides regular publishing, sharing posts and stories regularly is also important.
How should you use posts versus stories?
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One important thing to keep in mind is that posts stay on your profile forever (unless they are deleted), so it’s best to use them for updates with photos and various content. Stories are temporary and disappear after 24 hours (unless you save them in your Highlights) so you can play with them.
While the platform allows you to share multiple photos with each post, it’s best to limit the number of photos you include in a post to two or three. Avoid spamming your followers by posting no more than once a day. You can compose as many stories as you want and add as many new stories as you want and as many as you think you need, remember that your story is separate from the rest of the feed.
Videos on posts can take up to a minute. Videos on Stories can take up to 15 seconds.
For greater reach, you can use hashtags both in posts and in stories. On posts, it is advisable to use several hashtags throughout the subtitle or add a collection of relevant hashtags to the end of the title. In stories, stick to one or two hashtag stickers to avoid absolute clutter.
Advertising
What is digital marketing without advertising? Online advertising is growing year by year, and budgets are getting bigger and more flexible. A couple of years ago people were completely unaware of this. Only 7 billion dollars were spent on advertising in 2017, which is a big jump compared to the year before when about 3.6 billion was spent. The amount has done nothing but grow these years, due to the pandemic and the lockdowns.
If the amount frightens you, keep in mind that you don’t have to invest millions. Be careful not to expect advertising miracles right at the beginning, but be persistent in advertising and hire a professional marketer. This will help you increase the results of advertising.
Extras on the profile
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On your personal profile, you can put everything in a bio (as much as it fits) which often looks crowded and crumpled, resulting in no one reading it. On your business profile, you get several icons like email, calling options, addresses, and similar add-ons to which you can add your information and allow customers and clients to contact or reach you quickly and easily.
Shopping option
The biggest news on this platform was is the possibility of shopping directly on the profile and without leaving the application, which has been happily embraced by many brands and companies. And since there are millions of people on it, spending most of their time browsing and clicking, it has become by far the best-selling option.
As you can see from this article, this social media platform has grown immensely in the last couple of years, from being a photo-sharing community to a huge shopping platform. It means that every serious business owner just has to have a profile.
