Instagram Professional Account allows businesses to create a powerful presence on the platform. Instagram is rapidly becoming an influential platform for businesses to promote their products and services to a larger audience.
In 2023, there were 1.35 billion MAU (monthly active users) of Instagram. That is more than 28% of the world’s Internet users.
This number is expected to grow to 1.44 billion by 2025, making up more than 32% of Internet users. It’s also one of the most popular platforms worldwide, where users spend an average of 5 hours per week.
But what does this mean for businesses?
70% of these users are looking at Instagram for their next purchase. When your audience is there, it’s time to open up shop on the same platform and increase engagement. To achieve this, Meta offers an Instagram Professional Account.
We go into the details of how you can achieve success on Instagram using the Professional Account.
What is an Instagram Professional Account?
With an Instagram Professional Account, businesses can access powerful tools to reach and engage their customers and gain insights about their followers and content performance.
Features to enable this include access to analytics, adding contact buttons and links in the bio, and access to Ads Manager, which allows you to create targeted campaigns to reach and engage with the right audience.
Whether creating a hashtag campaign or running a series of Instagram Stories, Instagram Professional Account helps businesses achieve their goals and drive results.
Different types of Instagram professional accounts
There are two types of Instagram Professional Accounts: Business and Creator accounts.
Business accounts are best for those who are managing a business or brand. These include access to Instagram Shopping, more insights, and promotional tools.
Creator accounts, on the other hand, are best for individuals who are creating content.
This account type gives access to audiovisual content insights and new feature tools to help organize content.
With thoughtful content and a strategic plan, businesses can reach their desired goals quickly and effectively and make Instagram a powerful marketing tool.
What features come with Instagram Professional Account?
Businesses and creators can enjoy many new features on converting to a professional account. These include
- Professional dashboard: This feature allows you to track your performance, access and discover professional tools and explore educational information curated by Instagram.
- Linked permissions: When an Instagram account is connected to a Facebook Page, those with administrative, editing and other roles associated with the Page will be granted the same access to the linked Instagram account. That means more people from your team can manage the account.
- Contact information: In your bio, you can add a contact button to your professional account. With this button, you can share directions to your shop or a phone number or email address users can contact you on.
- Category label: An Instagram Professional Account will display a category below the profile picture. This category will be the same as the one associated with the linked Facebook Page.
- Insights: You’ll receive access to Instagram Insights, through which you can dig deep into who your followers are when they’re online and more. You can narrow your insights for specific posts and see how each performed.
- Secondary inbox: You can organize your messages with an inbox that has Primary and General tabs.
- Ranked requests: You’ll be able to sort your requests by received date or top accounts.
Benefits of an Instagram Professional Account
Are you looking to boost your business visibility on Instagram? An Instagram Professional Account can help you get the most out of your social media branding.
Instagram’s Professional Account lets you use powerful business tools to help you grow your online presence and reach a wider audience. Here are the seven key benefits:
1. Powerful Analytics
With a Professional Account, you gain access to powerful analytics and insights that let you track your post performance on Instagram and better understand your audience. Metrics include reach and impressions, interactions, total followers, audience demographic, etc. With this data, you can create targeted digital marketing strategies and improve performance.
2. Ads Manager
The Ads Manager feature of a Professional Account lets you easily create, manage and optimize your ads on Instagram. You can boost your posts with Instagram Ads, select a target audience, and set a budget. When you promote a post through this method, you can see the results of your ad spends in the Insights tab.
3. Creative Assets
Professional Accounts have access to a library of creative assets, such as videos and images, to help create stunning posts, reels, or stories to showcase your products. Another advantage is you can include links in your Instagram stories as call-to-actions. To use this feature, your account should have 10K followers or more. You can also use Hashtags to drive more engagement. With a reel creator, you can easily design engaging reels that capture your audience’s attention.
4. Business Profile
Building trust is essential, and Instagram Professional Account allows you to add your contact information. Users can visit your profile and use the Contact Us button to reach you by phone or email. You can even include your address if you have a physical store.
5. Shoppable Posts
Professional Accounts can create Shoppable Posts, which link directly to the products you’re promoting on Instagram. Business Accounts can create a Shop tab on their profile and leverage Instagram’s swoon-worthy images as a storefront. This feature is great for e-commerce websites as they don’t have to send their users to another page.
6. Scheduled Posts
You can plan and schedule posts in advance, so you don’t have to worry about updating your account in real time. This is an excellent feature for businesses with strategy and content planning. The business’s social media manager can then focus their time on creating more thoughtful content and strategizing a more engaging plan.
7. Quick Replies
Instagram’s Professional Account lets you reply quickly to all your direct message interactions. Quick replies are pre-written responses to common customer questions. With this feature, you can save time and reply to more customers at any given time.
What are the limitations of an Instagram Professional Account?
If you’ve converted your personal account to a professional one, there will be certain limitations, including:
- You can only share your Instagram posts to Facebook through the page you’ve linked to your Professional Account. Your other Facebook pages will be inaccessible.
- If you want to switch the Facebook Page linked to your account, you have to change your account to a personal version, change the Facebook link, and set up your Instagram Professional Account again.
- Instagram Business Accounts cannot be set to private.
- If a Business Manager owns your Facebook page, you might need to convert your Instagram account to a Professional Account.
How to Create a Professional Account on Instagram?
Converting your personal Instagram account to a Professional Account unlocks new opportunities for your business. It helps you expand your social media presence and reach your business goals.
Note: Before you get started, please ensure you have an Instagram account. One ID can have a maximum of 5 Instagram accounts at a time.
Following the steps below, you can convert your personal profile to a professional account.
- Log in to your Instagram account.
- Click on your profile picture at the bottom right corner of the screen.
- On the top right corner of the screen, you can see three horizontal bars. Click on it.
- Select the Settings option.
- Click on the Account option.
- Scroll down, and you will see two options:
- Switch to a Professional account: Select this if you want to convert your existing account.
- Add a new professional account: Select this option if you want to create a new Professional Account.
- For those who selected ‘Switch to Professional account,’ click the continue button.
- Select a category for your business and click on Done >> OK >> Business >> Next.
- Add your contact details and click on Next. You can skip this step if you don’t want to add your details now.
- If you want to utilize the Meta suite of Business features, you can connect your business account to your Facebook page that’s linked to your business.
How to Optimize your Instagram Professional Account
As we showed above, Professional Accounts have more features than public business profiles. To optimize them, utilize the following features.
Call to action buttons: add a targeted CTA that meets your business goals.
Business profile: Add vital business information such as website address, email, phone number, a description of what your business does, etc.
Instagram Professional Accounts Examples
Now let’s look at some real examples of businesses using Instagram’s Professional Accounts and seeing success.
Nike
Nike (@nike) leverages its Instagram Professional Account to boost its brand image by telling compelling stories. Instead of focusing on their products per se, they use storytelling and raise brand awareness by profiling athletes. With each campaign, they introduce a new call to action on their bio, linking directly to the campaign’s landing page. This enables them to gain more clicks and engagement.
Babel
The language learning app Babbel (@babbel) is taking advantage of Instagram’s Professional Account capabilities by running Ads on Instagram Reels. Reel ads are full-screen, 30-second videos that allow users to interact with content by liking, commenting, and sharing. This has enabled Babel to reach broader audiences and acquire new leads at a cost-effective Ad budget.
Paramount Pictures
The UK account of Paramount Pictures (@paramountuk) boasts 1.2M followers and has used Instagram’s Professional Account feature to creatively engage them. Recently, to promote their movie Top Gun, they blended the classic with the modern by creating a unique augmented reality trailer on Instagram. This ad captivated the existing Top Gun fans, as well as attracted a younger audience, unfamiliar with the franchise. As a result, Paramount Pictures garnered greater brand awareness.
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts
Krispy Kreme Australia (@krispykremeaustralia) utilizes Instagram Professional Account for running various promotional campaigns and to reach new audiences. An example of such a campaign was the retro game’s throwback. Through this, they transformed their Instagram account into a virtual arcade. This led to a substantial increase in their story views, mainly through photo/video ads in their feed as well as stories. Additionally, a scroll-up link was also placed in their stories to a gaming page, which allowed users to return to Krispy Kreme after playing the games. All in all, a very interactive and engaging campaign.
Panasonic
Panasonic Japan (@panasonicjp) leverages Instagram’s Professional Account to drive successful campaigns for their products. Through ad creatives and targeting insights, the brand is able to launch new products, increase awareness, and reach users at multiple points in the buying cycle. For example, Panasonic used Instagram stories and feed ads to introduce its luxury toaster oven. Varying creatives and targeting allowed them to reach users throughout the funnel and drive improved business results.
Regular, Normal, Personal Vs. Professional Instagram Account
As a business, you must weigh the account type best for you. In this section, we’ll cover a regular or a personal account with a Professional Instagram Account.
Both account types allow you to post images, videos, stories, and reels. However, the similarities end here. Unlike the personal account, Instagram Professional Account has the following: Insights and analytics tools, Lead generation tools.
A personal Instagram Account is good if you are an individual who wants to stay connected with family and friends. Plus, you can set your account private, an option not available to Professional accounts.
Instagram Professional Accounts can access additional features such as a CTA button in their profile, scroll-up links in stories, Ads, Shop tab, and Insights. This is a perfect recipe to increase followers and convert them to customers.
Personal account holders cannot schedule their posts, a feature available to Professional accounts. Professional Accounts can also use APIs to scale their interactions.
Professional Account Vs. Instagram Business Account
A Professional Account on Instagram consists of two separate categories: Business and Creator. The primary difference between a Professional Account and a Business Account on Instagram is that an Insta business account is a subset of a Professional Account. A Business Account holder gets all the benefits of a Professional Account.
Professional Account Vs. Instagram Creator Account
In addition to the Business account, Professional Account also consists of a Creator account. It falls in between a personal account and a business account.
Just like Professional Accounts, Creator accounts have the flexibility to control their profile, add contact buttons, prioritize inboxes, and get advanced insights.
The creator account has all the features present in the Professional account except the option to integrate with 3rd party apps through API. Because of this, Creator accounts cannot schedule posts, an option available with other Professional Accounts. Creator accounts also don’t have the option to connect to Facebook pages, as it requires a Business Manager.