21 Jun What is the Instagram Business Profile and should you switch?

Last year, Instagram launched their new business profile and it didn’t take long for companies to make the switch. New tools were specially designed for businesses to better understand their followers and promote business growth within their Instagram feed. The new layout includes simple changes, like the option of adding contact details so that customers can communicate with you directly from your feed to more advanced features like supplying data about your followers and the performance of your posts.

Via @milliesavage_

The most noticeable difference about the new profile is the addition of a contact menu at the bottom of the bio. Depending on what details are provided, businesses can provide customers with the option to call, text, e-mail, or directions to the company (which then launches a map interface). Previously, the only way that followers could communicate with a business outside of Instagram was to follow their website link provided in their bio section. Business profiles can also be categorised, just like Facebook Pages. This is a quick and easy way for consumers to recognise what type of business is being represented.

In addition, business accounts provide access to Instagram Insights.

Insights is an invaluable tool to learn about followers and how they engage with content. They provide an analytic overview of your account by supplying the impression rate, reach, follower activity, website clicks, saves and video/

story views.

Each category supplies its own specific data set. For instance, follower information provides a chart of the current day which details the hours in which followers are most active. It also includes a demographic analysis of your followers, providing details like age range, gender, locations, and their most active hours and days of the week.

Via @the_gris

Finally, the Instagram business profile allows users to create ads.

Before the business account rollout, companies would have to go through Facebook to advertise on Instagram. Now, it’s a simple as selecting a post to promote. From there, you can choose the text for your call to action button, select your target audience, fix your budget and specify the time period.

By using Instagram Insights, businesses can gain a clear understanding of what content is most effective, when to share it for optimal engagement and what to create in the future. This feedback can then be used to promote the best-performing posts by using new ad tools to share the content with more people and promote the brand. Not only is this a way to increase engagement and followers, but a new channel to get customers to interact and purchase from businesses directly.