I know this has been long discussed… I read all about it here. Still, there is not a clear path or sides, given so many variables that influence engagement and reach, and make this difficult to test. So I´ll be a little more specific.
First thing, it is not a business, it could be tho… It´s an account with +20K followers. Engagement has experimented a drop in the past few weeks (from 900-1000 likes to around 600-700, sometimes less…). So I started wondering, what about a switch to a Business profile?
The niche is fashion-lifestyle (model, influencer, blogger or similar…), and the main focus is engagement. So my question is, in your experience…
Does Business accounts have much less engagement than personal accounts? Does this still hold true?
New changes in the IG API will force people to switch to Business accounts, no?
Again, engagement is the most important for this account.
I would keep it as a personal account. I had a personal page that grew to be very large, and when I switched it to a business page I noticed a BIG drop in engagement. Instagram sells their own ads and “promo” now so once you become a “business”
Page it’s almost like your in competition. They started sending me messages to pay to “boost” my post (almost as if they are asking to pay for me to buy back my engagement” this is just my experience, I’d say keep it a personal page as long as possible (even if you decide to do business on it.)
No problem, There may be other sections in the forum on how to increase engagement or how to make a steady transition from personal to business without being effected, i was just sharing my personal experience!
i have 2 accounts I switched to business. One suffered( I ruined the account perm) the other did not matter. Put back to non business. One thing to keep in mind is the future. In facebook, business pages( hell all facebook pages) suffered heavy, and I mean heavy losses in posts seen. IF, big IF in the future Instagram seperates business accounts from private( non-business accounts) the same fate waits. 90 percent reduction( if not more in posts seen) as did facebook. Something to think about.
Yep. I was waiting to hear some news about it, certainly it´ll be different for them if you are a personal or business page. Nevertheless, I think the category plays a role in this, it is not the same to be a business or place than to be a personal blogger I´ll wait a little longer.
Thank guys!
I switched my biggest and best accounts to business accounts and everything was fine till some point. Now, almost a year later my pages are ruined. Content I post are equally great but engagement and exposure in explore feed is terrible. It resulted in gaining followers and in visiting my website.
I used to get about organic 10k followers per month without any bot service, just by posting photos, and now I get about 1000 - 2000 followers. I hade between 4000 and 5000 unique visits on my website through IG, now I get about 1000.
That is the account that suffered the most, other 3 are terrible too.
I have 2 main accounts, one is 28.1K now and the other one is 19.3K now. Both are based on motivational and inspirational quotes. By the time I reached 800-1000 likes/post I decided to give a shot and try to use the business profile, just because it looks better and gives additional info. After two days or three I’ve noticed a drop of likes that I was hardly getting 350-450 likes/post. On both my account. So obviously I wasn’t drastically changing my content and it’s to a half of what I was getting. I switched again back to normal, got my engagement back up and then tried again.
I had the same results second time, my engagement dropped completely, other say they feel no difference, but I do value my engagement on both pages.
So my best advice is to avoid it, or try to see if you feel any difference. I know now that for me it surely doens’t work as I would want it to be.
I tried to switch back to personal account and kept in for a few months like personal too but there was no difference, damage was already made. Now I keep it as business account because at least I have swipe up in stories…
Try to temporarily disabled your page for a week… I switched mine to a personal account, temp disabled it for 4 days, and when I logged back in and made a new post the engagement was high again. Not sure if THATS what did it but I’d give it a try if you can spare deactivating it for a few days
No, log in on browser, go to settings, select “TEMP DISABLE a ACCOUNT”, enter password & boom! Your account will be reactivated the next time you try to log in through the app
Also, in case that your account is not a real business, for instance a blogger, public figure etc, and you make the change to business… you won´t have any official documents if they ban your account. Am I right?
As if it is a business account they will ask for billing or taxes document in order to restore it.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
That’s true, I’ve seen some people for tax documents or just send in regular utility bills and Instagram has recovered their disabled account, this was last year though so with the new updates there’s no telling if they’ve become more strict about this… To be safe I wouldn’t switch to a business profile unless you have one of the documents on their list
I´ll wait a little longer.