Today, I would like to take a little bit of time to share some information about Instagram’s “professional account” options and the tools it grants your profile when you decide to switch from a regular personal Instagram account to a more business focused interface of the platform.
I have been using and exploiting the Instagram’s professional account’s advantages daily for quite some times now, as much for my own accounts as for some of my clients’.
Relying on such a tool day in day out can make you forget how not obvious it may be for other users to rely on it, or to even know the option exists (not everyone spend their life on this side of Instagram).
To make it clear, switching to a professional Instagram account is easy to do as well as free.
I will detail below the advantages of switching to a professional account and how to activate it on the social platform in a few clicks. Let’s go!
Setting-up a professional account on Instagram is a mandatory starting point if you are keen on working consistently on your business’ communication strategy on the platform, and even on Facebook!
Let us shed some light on the functionalities one can access when switching to an Instagram professional account.
Why Switch to an Instagram Professional Account or Business Profile?
The particularities of this type of account make it possible, among other advantages, to benefit from statistics measurements of your publications’ and promotions’ performances. They also allow to synchronize the publication of your posts, including cross-platforms publications, which can be very useful and time-saving if you regularly post simultaneously on several Instagram accounts or on Instagram AND Facebook at once.
With this kind of profile, you can also launch ad campaigns on both Instagram and Facebook, and rely on many little “plus” that just make life easier for a business online, particularly when they are keen on engaging users and audiences the best they can with the tools they get out there.
Two business profiles of rather famous brands: Auchan and Décathlon France. Notice the call-to-action button “View Shop” to access Décathlon’s online catalogue of products, and the possibility to directly contact their teams thanks to the “Message” and “Call” buttons.
Also notice the “Shop” tab symbolized by the shopping bag situated below the archived Stories of Décathlon, as well as the “Filters” tab symbolized by the human face with sparkles, allowing the users to stage themselves in sport-related virtual environments.
Let me detail below what the main advantages of a professional account are and how to switch it on from your account(s).
Switching From a Personal Account to a Professional Account
Before starting, let me point out that there is no need to create a new Instagram account in order to assign it a professional status.
You can actually switch an existing account from a status to another at any given time, and this for free of course.
Indeed, when you create a new account on Instagram, you create by default a personal account that will either be:
🍓 a private account, which means that the contents you share on this account will be only accessible if you grant the users authorization to follow you when they request it;
🍓 or a public account, whose type of personal account implies that the contents you share on it will be available to see by any users of the platform, even those who do not follow you.
The public personal account is the type of account businesses and companies rely on when debuting on Instagram. They do not yet have switched to a professional account but naturally want to reach as much audiences as possible. It may currently be your case 😊
However, this type of account do not allow to gather and record the data that are useful for a business in order to understand how their publications reach their audiences and how it engages and bring together communities (to know what is the demography of their audiences for example, or to know how many users visited their company’s profile…)
As specified earlier in this article, to switch for a professional account status is to access extremely useful tools for your business online.
Find them summed-up below.
Grow more familiar with your audiences’ demography thanks to the Instagram statistics available for business profiles. 
Reach wider audiences and build your community step-by-step by launching ad campaigns, cross-posting your contents on several platforms simultaneously, or by connecting several Instagram accounts to your business account. 
Foster direct contact with your customers through Instagram.
Nothing is simpler than to switch from a personal account to a professional account. To do so, you would only need to get into your parameters settings and to select the corresponding option.
I am inviting you to have a little look at the video below whose aim is to guide you to the first step of the process in literally 3 clicks.
How to Switch to a Professional Account from a Personal Account?
Set-up Your Business Professional Account in 5 Minutes Tops: What Are The Steps?
🍓 choose the category that best fit the professional sector of your company. This will allow Instagram to propose relevant options to your business by making personalized call to action buttons available, or Instagram Story’s options of personalization adapted to your business…
You can choose to showcase or not your selected category on your company’s profile.
A few example of categories available: restaurant, grocery store, beauty/cosmetics…
🍓 select to be either a “professional” or “creator” professional account.
If you are rather a content creator -such as an influencer or an artist- than a business per say, the “creator” professional account might be more appropriate for you.
Resources to Go Further
If you would like to gather more information in order to draw as much advantages as possible from Instagram for your business, go peruse the Guide to getting started on Instagram for businesses made available online by the social platform.
about the tools made available by the social network.
Otherwise, La Lune des Fraises remains available to accompany you in the setting of your Instagram professional account and in launching your first ad campaigns!
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