It was really only a matter of time before we started seeing the business features being rolled out to Instgram. I mean, come on…Facebook DOES own Instagram! When you look at the robust features that Facebook offers businesses, it only makes sense that they start to provide those to businesses on Instagram as well. However, many people are left wondering if they should convert their account or keep it as a personal profile.
So, The Question Is…Should You Switch Your Instagram To A Business Instagram Profile?
The Argument For Changing Your Instagram Profile Over To A Business Profile.
The main features that business profiles now have are the contact, insights, and promotion tools, which could be extremely beneficial to businesses on Instagram!
Contact
The contact features is pretty neat: you get to decide how you want people to reach you: call, text or email. This is pretty great for businesses who want exposure and a call to action.
Insights
The main obvious reason for making the switch is the analytics that it can provide. Instagram’s new business features allow you to get insights into post performance and profile performance that you were never able to easily get before.
Promotion
The new business profiles make it easier for businesses to promote their business to increase their reach and grow their audience. This is similar to how Facebook works where personal profiles can’t advertise, but a business page can.
The Case Against Switching Just Yet…
All of these new features seem pretty great, right? Doesn’t this meant that you should jump up and switch immediately? Not necessarily.
Organic Reach
As someone who has been watching Facebook for the past 10+ years as a user and as a marketer, I know that Facebook slowly took away a business’ organic reach on Facebook. When business pages first came out, you could get loads of organic interactions from your followers! Now, the organic reach is 10-20% if you’re lucky! I’m personally, curious to see how the organic reach for business profiles is altered (or not) with this shift on Instagram.
Stats Are Great But Not Everything
We have some pretty amazing tools we use that allow us to gather vital stats on all of our social media platforms, so I don’t know how essential stats directly “in” Instagram are to me right now. Again, it’s something I’ll be watching to see. Who knows? Instagram may have insights and statistics that no one else has, in which case, the business profile would be worth it hands down!
The moral of the story… For the time being, I’m waiting. However, I’m watchfully waiting, meaning that I’m paying attention to see how it’s working for those that have already converted and how it’s working for businesses who have kept with the basic/personal profile that we’ve always had on Instagram. Social media changes constantly, and it’s hard to keep up sometimes. You may feel that you HAVE to jump on something new right away, but the reality is that some things are fads and some things stick. Watchful observation will help you discern if something is a fading trend, or something here to stay in the world of social media!