How to create a business account on Instagram

Users who frequently start Instagram accounts to promote their services highlight the lack of marketing tools, detailed statistics, posts settings.

But in reality, Instagram has all that! The truth is, these tools are not available for ordinary pages, but for the so-called business accounts. There you can easily view statistics, adjust more flexible posts settings. And in the profile header, there can be necessary links, email address, and contact phone numbers.

Who may need an Instagram account

Let’s figure out who may need to manage this type of account:

• Those promoting their products or services on Instagram itself.
• Users who use Instagram as an advertising platform to provide real-world services: a customer can easily place an order there, find out all necessary information and communicate a seller using contact information.
• Bloggers can also make use of switching to a business account. This way, they can track posts efficiency, access detailed statistics and demonstrate it to potential advertisers and business partners.

Advantages and opportunities of a business account

There are many advantages to a business account on Instagram. For instance, if this network is a major distribution channel, a user probably has several accounts. And they are not business accounts.

You can combine them beneath the same roof without the need to create a Facebook profile, email address, phone number, etc. for each of them. You can easily contact the owner of that page via the screen “Message” button (previously called “Contact”). It is located right in the profile header. After clicking on it, the following communication channels will be available:

• Phone call.
• Address – “Locate”.
• Email address.
• Account statistics.

It bears repeating that the most important and useful is an opportunity to independently track statistics of your account or a particular posts as well as to demonstrate it to stakeholders after you create a business account. Statistics can be shown to potential advertisers.

Besides, owners of business accounts can create official advertisements:

• In a feed and in “Stories” via Facebook profile.
• In a feed – via the Instagram app on a mobile device. In that case, the “Promote” option will be available below every post.

You can work with advertisements right on your mobile device. This is useful for those users who are always on their way and do not have access to computer.

In general, all who have Internet business should switch to business accounts on Instagram. Thus, they can make their work much more effective. Plus, as we will show later, the process of creating a business account is very simple, quick, and completely free.

How to create a business account

We should say beforehand that you cannot start a business account on Instagram from zero. You should primarily have and ordinary account. There’s no need to say how you can create it. Let’s assume you already have it.

Then – if you haven’t done it yet – we recommend linking your Instagram account to a Facebook page. It is highly desirable to have a commercial page and not personal since all posts will be automatically sent to your company page.

Later, you have to make several simple steps:

1. Launch Instagram on your device and enter your yet ordinary account.
2. Go to “Settings”.
3. Go to the “Account” settings, scroll down the menu and find the “Switch to a business account” option.
4. Later – simply click a button to continue and choose a category of your account. For instance, “Personal blog” if you are a blogger. Or you can choose any other category from the list.
5. Make sure your email address and contact phone number are correct as they will be shown in the profile header. You can edit them at this stage if necessary.
6. We also recommend to link your account to a Facebook profile by a tap on the respective switcher. You may skip this, but Facebook will automatically a blank public page and ask you to confirm your ownership rights to it.

If your Instagram profile was not linked to Facebook before, the system will offer to type in its login and password.

At this stage, the creation of a business account is complete. Now you can fully exploit all of its advantages. At first, you can feel confused because of the lack of statistics. Regardless of how many followers you have and how active they are – this is not considered at all before you create a business account. Only after you create it, new statistical data will be considered. Plus, reach, view and engagement statistics will only be available for new posts. There is another type of account has recently appeared which allows tracking statistics though in a more compressed format. This is the so-called Author’s account, but we don’t recommend using it in commercial purposes.

Can you go back to a personal account?

Of course, you can. This is done in a similar way as mentioned above, but you only need to choose the “Switch to a personal account”. You can make your business account private. To do that, you need to make your account personal and private, and then to switch it to a business account again.