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Instagram Account Types: Personal, Business, and Creator
When it comes to creating an Instagram account, many ask, “What type of Instagram account should I make?” Instagram offers three types of accounts, each providing different features and options.
Except for Personal Accounts, Business and Creator Accounts provide valuable analytics and detailed metrics, but is there a better option? Let’s review the differences:
As of now, Instagram’s API access restricts personal accounts from using third-party sites such as Metricool and Facebook Creator Studio, to schedule and analyze content. Business and Creator Accounts have API access.
Instagram Personal Account
When you enter Instagram for first time to create an account, a personal profile will be created by default. This profile is a bit limited since it doesn’t offer metrics and data about your activity. Therefore, you won’t be able to analyze its performance and you can’t add buttons to your bio.
As you can probably guess, personal profiles are geared towards personal use, and may not be the best option for businesses, creators, and marketers.
With a Personal Instagram Account, you can:
- Create content and stories
You can use Instagram without any restriction. That is, you can create posts, stories and live videos. However, you won’t be able to analyze the impact of your publications amongst your followers.
- Add a link to your bio
You can edit your bio and add a link to drive followers to your website.
- Link your account to Facebook
In case you also have a Facebook account you can link it to your Instagram personal profile. With regards to advertising, you can create ads but you can’t boost your posts.
One major difference, and benefit of having a personal profile, is music access. Personal accounts have a much larger library to choose from, whereas Business accounts can only utilize the royalty-free library.
This has frustrated many users, knowing that with a creator or business account, many songs trending in pop culture may not be available for content. This is something to keep in mind when choosing the type of Instagram account you want to create.
You can change your personal account into a content creator or business account any time. [check out the process here]. Go to Settings and select the account. The last option in the settings menu lets you switch to a business or content creator account. As soon as you make the change, your account will become public.
Instagram Creator Account
Creator accounts are mainly directed to public personalities, bloggers, artists or athletes. These creators come from a multitude of professions including fashion designers, entrepreneurs, public figures, or tutor/teachers.
Creator accounts are used to separate companies from influencers. There is not a limit to the number of followers that can access this type of account.
Creator accounts can view analytics, reply to messages, and have the option to include paid collaborations. That is, it’s similar to a business account but with certain features designed for influencers.
Here are other options available for Creator Accounts:
▶️ Inbox management
Influencers normally receive a large amount of messages and questions from their fans. Also, brands can contact these influencers for collaborations. Instagram includes three types of messages:
- General: For messages influencers would like to get back to later.
- Primary: Messages that influencers want to see first.
- Requests: Requests are direct messages from accounts that influencers don’t follow.
▶️ Account Categories
There are multiple options to categorize your account. You can find your area amongst the numerous options that Instagram puts at your disposal: blogger, public figure, singer, athlete, writer, journalist, etc.
You decide whether you want to make this category public or not. To add a category to your profile, head to your profile page, and click on Edit profile. Inside this, you will see a Category option, where you can select or search for your profession.
▶️ Contact option
Both Instagram business and creator accounts have the option to add contact buttons to their bio. This can be an email address, phone number or physical address. You can activate this option or not, at any time.
Instagram Creator accounts can be connected to Metricool to plan your post with push notifications, generate automated reports with all the relevant metrics, and analyze the performance of your competitors. Plus, monitor hashtags.
Instagram Business Account
Business accounts are created for local businesses, brands, organizations and service providers.
The options for Business accounts are similar to those features available for Creator Accounts, including analytics, adding CTA buttons, boosting posts, etc.
Business Accounts have the most options available, especially when it comes to promoting a business. With options such as Shopping, Facebook Ads Manager, and access to Auto-Publish Instagram content using sites such as Metricool, this option is optimal for businesses and brands wanting to use social media as a marketing avenue.
Whether you have a business or creator account, you can connect it to Metricool to help you with your strategy, easily plan and publish content, manage your social media messages, and analyze the performance of your content, all in the same place.
Those are the different Instagram profiles types, and how you can use each one to maximize your efforts.
Do you want to know more about Instagram and how to do marketing in this platform?