If you’re a content creator, you want as many people as possible to see your posts and interact with them. While that’s possible with a standard personal Instagram account, switching to an Instagram creator account gives you plenty of opportunities with added features to make the most of everybody’s favorite photo app.
So whether you’re signing up for a brand new account or making the move from personal to creator, you can set yourself up for success as a social media content creator.
An Instagram creator account is a specific type of account setting. Much like a business account, this profile option was made especially for digital creators like influencers, public figures, and artists looking to monetize their personal brands.
The focus here is on personalities, rather than businesses who are selling a product. Using a creator account over a personal one gives potential influencers additional features that help them grow and connect with their audience.
Creators receive different features from those of business and personal accounts. A public personal account is a good starting point, but once you reach a level where a deeper look into your account metrics is important, moving up to the creator setting works best.
For many creators, using social media management tools is one of the easiest ways to create and schedule regular content that engages with an audience, no matter what type of account you’re using.
Several features make Instagram creator accounts distinct from business accounts. Since the focus is on building a personal brand, creator accounts have more music options in the content library, along with greater customization on the profile page. You can also split messages into a Primary and General inbox and participate in additional monetization and partnership options that aren’t available to business or personal accounts.
Instagram business accounts do have some overlap with creator accounts. Both can use third-party management tools and access an analytics dashboard directly within the app. Business accounts also have contact information on their profile page, which is optional for creator accounts, and the option to add a physical location.
One perk that a business account has that creator tools don’t is the ability to add a shop to their profile. While creators can tag shoppable posts, they aren’t able to seek anything directly within the Instagram platform.
The best way to think of the breakdown between these account types is:
Instagram creator accounts come with several extra features. Once you’ve switched over to this account type, you benefit from exclusive options that help you access data about your followers and engage with them more effectively.
Knowing which demographics find your content appealing helps build your brand as an online creator. With your Instagram creator account type, you have access to a dashboard of data that shows you important engagement metrics like follower count, content reach, engagement rate, and audience information.
With more detailed insights about who engages with your content, you can use this information to plan future posts that draw in your audience.
Remember that you can currently only access these insights from a mobile device within the Instagram app. If you’re looking for additional insights, you need to use a third-party tool or Facebook Creator Studio.
As your brand grows, people feel more comfortable sliding into your DMs. You can manage them easily with your creator account’s three inboxes – primary, general, and requests.
Your primary inbox notifies you when you get a message, but general and requests don’t. This stops you from being flooded with notifications and gives you control over who can message you.
When you use a creator account, you have more freedom to customize your profile with the information you want people to know about you. Business accounts have location details directly on their profiles, along with calls to action like “reserve a table” or “order online”. Since these features aren’t relevant to creators, you have the option to show or hide contact details.
Creators can also access new label or category types that aren’t available to business accounts. These labels are a way to more accurately represent what you do and help you show up in searches for those phrases. As a creator, you’ll have the most options to choose from, such as “writer”, “artist”, “filmmaker”, or “chef”.
Although these are also available under business accounts, shoppable posts allow you to tag brands directly when recommending products to your audience. You can add tags for multiple brands to a single post, which isn’t possible with a business account.
There’s also a helpful setting called Paid Partnership tags if you choose to work with brands on sponsored content. To feature a brand on your profile, they need to give you permission to include the shoppable pins and tag them as a partner.
Once you set that up, your partnership with organizations and businesses becomes more efficient. This is important to create transparency around advertising to your audience. Adding a brand tag is also a requirement under FTC (Federal Trade Commission) rules to clearly show that your post is advertising.
Creating a new account from scratch or switching your account type over to creator is simple. From your profile, click on the hamburger menu in the top right corner and navigate to your account settings.
Find the option for “Account type and tools”. Here, you can see what kind of profile type you’re currently using.
Simply switch to a professional account here.
Then, choose your label and decide whether or not you want it displayed on the profile itself. You can also add any contact information you want the public to see.
From here, you have the option to choose a Creator or Business account.
Select Creator and follow the prompts to complete setup and add additional information to your profile.
You’ll also now see a 3-bar bar chart in the top corner next to the menu on your profile page. This is how you access your creator insights dashboard to review your Instagram analytics.
If you ever need to switch account types or want to revert to a private profile, go back through the same steps that you did to make your creator account. Private accounts are currently only an option for personal profiles, so you have to switch to this to toggle that setting.
If you decide to stop creating under your own name and post exclusively as a business, you can also switch to a business account here.
To grow your brand as a content creator, you must understand how all of your social platforms work. Explore the options available to you as a creator and then focus on making the content for your account, connecting with your followers, and seeing new people join your online community.
Looking for greater insight into who’s talking about your brand online? Using the top social media listening tools, you can track and gather information about your audience across the internet.
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