EP134: The Instagram Business Show
What is Instagram for Business, what are the benefits of having a business profile and how do you get started?
Episode Summary:
Today’s Episode 134 is all about creating a business profile for your Instagram account and the benefits of doing so.
Topics:
What are the requirements to create a business profile on Instagram and how do you get started?
What are the differences between a personal profile and business profile on Instagram?
What are the advantages and tools are available for business accounts?
What advertising and monetization tools are available to business accounts?
Instagram Facts:
Source: Instagram Blog
There are over 25 Million Business Profiles
Over 2 Million Advertisers Use Instagram
Over 60% of people say they find new products on Instagram
Over 200 million people a day visit Business Profiles
The amount of time people watch videos on Instagram have increased by 80%
1/3 of the most viewed Stories on Instagram are from business profiles.
Bottom Line: Instagram is big player and very important platform for businesses of all shapes and sizes and new features are continuously being added to help businesses leverage Instagram to promote or sell products and it could not be easier to get started converting your personal profile to a business profile.
What are the requirements to create a business profile on Instagram?
The only requirement of converting your personal profile to a business profile is that you must have a Facebook Page setup for your business first. The reason for this is to verify payment credentials and contact information and address, etc on Instagram.
Facebook owns Instagram so once you convert your Instagram account to a Business Account, you will be able to mange your Ads and other features from Instagram on Facebook.
How do you convert your personal Instagram Account to a business account?
Set up Facebook Business Page
Log in to Instagram on your phone
In your profile settings, click Switch to Business Account Link your Facebook Page
Fill out your information about your business
The whole process can be done in a matter of minutes.
What are the differences or limitations between a personal profile and business profile on Instagram?
Limitation #1:
With a Business Profile, you can only share posts from Instagram to your Facebook Business Page.
You cannot share to other pages or your Profile Page.
Note:
If you ever want to change the Facebook Business Page you post to, you simply have to switch back to a Personal Account and then create a new Business Profile and select the new Facebook Business Page which is pretty easy to do.
Limitation #2:
Instagram Business Accounts cannot be set to Private, but a Personal Account can.
Note: If you switch to a business account, you can convert back to a personal account and vice versa at anytime.
What are the advantages and tools are available for business accounts?
Instagram rolled out the business profile option and a set of tools to help business promote and grow on Instagram back in 2016.
Business Status. You will be recognized officially as a business even if you are just starting out or maybe building your brand, so there is marketing power and prestige in the business account.
Connect with Clients & Customers. When you convert to business you can add Contact information and this is a huge benefit especially for businesses with a local presence.
In your profile area you will get buttons where you can add a phone number and Email and Directions and if you have a physical address, it will show up below your profile description.
You can add one link in your profile so you can put your website there. Contact information on business profiles are a significant benefit.
Remember, you can also had searchable hashtags and @mentions in your profile description
Insights. The third and maybe most important benefit is Instagram Insights which gives you detailed analytics and metrics of everything about your Instagram Audience, Your Posts and Ads and Instagram Stories.
Examples of Insights:
You can learn all about your followers: age, gender, location and when they are online.
You can see how many people visit your profile
How many people clicked on your email or directions or your website link?
How many different accounts viewed your posts and stories.
How many likes and comments are your posts getting and how many people have saved your posts?
How many accounts followed you recently?
How many accounts saw your posts?
What % of accounts saw your posts that aren’t following you?
For Instagram Stories:
How many times have your stories been seen?
How many accounts have seen your stories?
Did you know you can see How many times do people tap forward or backwards on your stories?
And when people get tire of your story and swipe out to exit?
What advertising and monetization tools are available to business accounts?
Once you set up a business profile, you can create ads on Instagram to sell your products or increase brand awareness.
There are 4 main types of Ads you can Create on Instagram:
Photo Ads in either square or landscape format
Video Ads up to 60 seconds long in square or wide format
Carousel Ads are square in format and allow you to have multiple photos in one ad that people can swipe through
And finally, there are Story Ads that are vertical and can last up to 15 seconds. FYI, there are 300 million people using Instagram Stories if that gives you any indication of the marketing potential of Stories.
How do you Create Ads on Instagram?
The easiest way to create an Ad on Instagram is from an existing post right on your iPhone. From your phone you can Promote ads.
Click on any post in your feed.
Look for the Promote button, then you get to choose what you want to promotion to do for you?
Choose whether you want to get more profile visits
Get more website visits
Or reach people near an address
You can target specific audiences and you can set your budget. When someone sees your ad post, it will say Sponsored under your profile name.
If you want to create the other types of ads that are a little more dynamic, then you need to use Facebook Ads Manager which is the exact same tool you use if you want to advertise on Facebook.
You can set up ads and campaigns and manage everything in the Facebook Manager and it’s available on desktop and mobile.
Note: You do not have to pay for ads to promote your products and services either on your Main Feed or Stories. You can get really creative with your content and hashtags and tagging and promote whatever you want. The main difference of paying for ads is setting your target audience to a specific demographic.
What Features Are Not Available for General Business Profiles?
Swipe Up Have you ever viewed Instagram Stories where you are told about a website or a product to check out and to Swipe Up to go visit that link?
As of March 2018, Swipe Up is only available to business accounts that have 10,000 followers or more. You will see a little Link icon in the upper right near your Text and drawing tools when you reach 10K, so be on the lookout for that.
Instagram Shop You will see business profiles that have a Shop Now button. This feature is currently only available for approved stores and e-commerce sites in certain industries like Fashion and in select countries but it basically turns Instagram into an interactive shopping catalog and storefront.
You know how you can tag people in Photos, well Shop allows brands to tag merchandise that will pop up a preview of the product along with price and the option to visit the website and purchase. Yeah, shopping could be a big deal, but currently only available to a select group of business profiles.
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