Instagram: personal, professional, creator account, which one to choose?

Find out which type of account best fits your Instagram use: personal, business, or creator.

When creating a new Instagram account, it is possible to choose from different types of profiles: personal, professional or creator. Since it is not always easy to make a choice, we suggest that you discover below the main characteristics of each type of account, their advantages and their disadvantages.

Have a personal account on Instagram

The personal account is the first type of account offered by the social network when it was launched. The personal profile is intended for individuals, for personal and more intimate use.

This type of account offers an important advantage: the possibility of transforming your public profile into a private profile. A private account makes it possible to make your publications (photos, videos, reels, etc.) inaccessible to people who are not among your pre-approved subscribers.

As a reminder, the procedure for switching from a personal account to a private account is quick and easy:

• Click on your profile, then on the icon representing three horizontal bars, located at the top right of your screen,
• Press on Settings, then on Confidentiality,
• In category Account confidentiality, slide the “private account” button to the right to make your profile private.

Among the disadvantages of this type of profile, a personal account does not provide access to statistics on the reach of your publications, the origin of your audience or the number of accounts affected. In addition, these figures are, in general, not very interesting during a personal use of the platform.

Have a professional account on Instagram

What is the use of converting a personal account into a professional account? This type of profile is intended for use by professionals such as companies, brands, organizations or even distributors. The professional account has many advantages:

• Profile enrichment : it is possible to enrich the profile by adding, for example, elements specific to his company such as a phone number, an email or a postal address. A button Contact will appear in the biography of the Instagram account with different possible actions (Route, Call or Email according to the data provided). Note: by using a professional account, you will be required to indicate at least one information among the three mentioned above. You can also add a “category” to your professional account, which will appear below your profile picture and which will indicate your main field of activity (clothing brand, entrepreneur, health / beauty, publisher, restaurant, retail sales. detail, etc.).
• Advanced statistics: a professional account allows brands to collect insights concerning their communities (age, gender, habit of being online, etc.). Access to publication statistics is also possible, and allows you to know what type of post works best (analysis of coverage, interactions, percentage of non-subscribed accounts affected, etc.).
• Secondary messaging: on Instagram, professional profiles have a messaging system with two tabs, namely Principal and General for their DM. This specificity makes it easier to organize your messages and control your notifications. Indeed, in the tab Principal, message notifications are enabled by default, so you don’t miss any exchanges. On the other hand, the tab General disables notifications by default and is intended to group together the DMs to be consulted later.
• Function swipe-up : business accounts can benefit from the functionality of swipe-up, directly integrated into their stories. This function allows brands to add a link in their Stories. On the other hand, it will be necessary to reach 10,000 subscribers to be able to use it.
• Brand content : it is possible to add the mention paid partnership and identify brand partners in a post or Story.

The business account on Instagram also has some drawbacks:

• It is not possible to activate private mode on a professional profile,
• If a Facebook page is associated with your business account, you will be able to share Instagram content only on that page. To change the associated page, you will need to convert your professional account into a personal account, then reconfigure your account for professional use by associating the new Facebook page.

Have a creator account on Instagram

The creator account appeared in 2019 on Instagram and remains particularly aimed at public figures, content creators, artists and influencers.

Very similar to the professional account, two differences are notable:

• The music catalog is much larger when a user has a creator account rather than a professional one,
• It is not possible to enter a postal address in your profile information.

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