Should you convert a basic Instagram account to a creator or business account?
Hell yeah, you should!
When Instagram started, there was just one profile – basic. You could keep it private or make it public. But time changes everything, and so did Instagram. The photo-sharing platform unleashed on us Business Profiles. These came with contact buttons on the main page, insight tools and of course, shoppable posts.
‘Gram is now bringing another change. It is disabling the Instagram Legacy API Platform and finally migrating to Facebook Graph API.
When you get rid of all the technical mumbo-jumbo, the crux of the matter is that businesses and creators would be better off if they switch to a Creator or Business Account instead of retaining the old, basic profile.
How do you set up a Creator Account on Instagram? Here’s the official link explaining the steps.
How do you switch to a Business Account on Instagram? Follow the steps explained on this official link.
But why do you need to convert your Instagram profile into a Creator or Business Account? That’s what we answer here.
Reasons You Should Switch to A Creator Account or Business Account on Instagram
Since DYT is a creator-first community, we tackle the why for Creator Accounts first.
What’s an Instagram Creator Account?
Creator Account is a new-ish addition to Instagram. It is a type of business account focused solely on, you guessed it, creators or influencers. Because it is meant for creators, the tools you get with it are a little different from Professional Accounts (another name Insta uses for business accounts).
What are the advantages of a Creator Account?
It gives you more flexibility, better tools, and simpler messaging control.
Growth Insights:
This is the greatest benefit of switching to a Creator Account because you can evaluate how your content is performing and what your followers look like. Here’s what you get within the Insights tab:
- Content metrics: These let you see how people engaged with a particular post, story or promotion.
- Activity metrics: These give you an idea of what actions your followers take. Plus, it gives you weekly reach and impressions of your content.
- Audience metrics: These have 411 on your followers from location to gender to age!
With a Creator Profile, you can even keep a tab on how many people followed or unfollowed you in a day. Why is that great? Because those numbers give a fair idea of what content works and what type of content needs to be scrapped.
Flexible Inbox:
Another excellent merit of a Creator Account is the control over your DMs. As an influencer, your inbox is a chaos of spam messages, authentic collab requests and genuine questions on products/services you talk about.
Filtering these messages is a near-impossible task right now, and quite a lot falls through the cracks. With the Creator Account, your inbox is organised into three tabs:
- Primary: This will have the messages you’d like to see first. If you think a message is unimportant, you can swipe it to the General tab.
- General: This will have messages that are not time-sensitive or unimportant.
- Request: These are messages from people you don’t follow. You can sort them according to date or top accounts to make sure you don’t ignore a relevant DM.
Control Notification:
FYI, you don’t just get to control the DMs by prioritizing them as per time or relevance. You can even manage their notifications.
All DMs to the Primary Tab automatically send you an alert, meaning you never miss a message from a brand. All messages to the General category by default have no notification, though you can change this setting.
And, and, and, if you’re short on time, the Creator Account comes with quick replies.
Shoppable Posts:
It is a universal fact that most people buy something after they see it on Instagram, and if they can purchase it right from the app, even better. With a Creator Account, you get this perk.
Talking about a brand you love? Giving a shout out to a product you use? Tag them in your post and convert your feed into an online shop.
Add Links:
The one thing most creators bemoan is that Instagram doesn’t allow you to add clickable links in the caption. You have to depend upon the goodwill, more like laziness, of the follower to go to your bio and click it.
With a Creator Account, you can now add swipe-up links in your Stories (if you have 10k+ followers).
What’s an Instagram Business Account? What’s Different About It?
If Creator Accounts is all that, what’s left for Professional Account? Well, not much. It is pretty similar to a Creator Account.
The difference is it is meant for brands. It has a mandatory address and contact button on the top bar. With a creator account, you can choose not to add these. The Insights on a Business Account are based on weekly data, while with Creator Account, you get daily information too.
Another major distinction is scheduling posts using tools or software. A Business Account lets you queue posts, while Creator profiles don’t have this feature.
Creator or Business Account on Instagram: Which to Choose?
The choice is yours. Both accounts come with comparable advantages. The one advice we do give you is to unquestionably convert your basic profile into one of them.
You’ll be upgrading. Big time.
If you still can’t decide between a creator account or business account on Instagram, then pick the former. As an influencer, it will serve you more.
