- You might be asking should I switch
to an Instagram creator profile?
Or you might be asking what's an Instagram creator profile?
Well, first we had regular profiles then business profiles,
now a third option, Instagram creator profiles.
I'll give you all the info you need to decide
if it's right for you right now.
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My name is Jerry Potter.
Yes, it rhymes with the boy wizard,
and today I'm gonna answer the question should I switch
to an Instagram creator profile?
Now we have regular profiles, business profiles,
and creator profiles, what's the difference?
So I'll help you decide which is best for you as well
as show you how to switch.
So the creator account was originally rolled out
to accounts with 10,000 followers or more,
but now it's available to all of us, and it was designed
to let creators and influencers get access to more tools
without having to switch to a business profile.
In fact, when you first go to switch, you'll see
on the screen it says best for public figures,
content producers, artists, and influencers,
so it may not make the most sense if you're a brick
and mortar store, but these days almost everybody,
if you're the face of your company, you are a personal brand
so it may make sense for you in that sense.
A creator account will also give you more information
about your followers including daily unfollow,
follow statistics which is something that even
business profiles don't have, but also their locations,
their age, their gender, those type of things.
If you currently have a private account,
meaning only the people who follow you can actually see
your posts, then you would have to make your account public
to switch to a creator account.
One of my favorite pieces is that a creator account
will let you use Creator Studio which is a free tool
from Facebook and allows you to preschedule your posts,
you can view your insights on your computer,
and you can even reply to your direct messages
on your computer with a full keyboard which I love
'cause I am not a good thumb typer.
If you'd like some tutorials about how
to use Creator Studio, you can find the links
in the description of this video.
Another great thing creator account offers
that even business profiles don't have is multiple inboxes.
You have primary, general, and requests.
You can move people wherever you want,
but the general idea is that primary is
for the main people you want to communicate with.
This could be friends and family, clients and customers
or even potential clients and customers.
General is where messages will go for everyone else.
Some people have been calling this the creepy inbox
because when people send creepy messages,
that's where you can have them assuming it's not
so creepy that you need to block them,
and then requests will show up on the right side there
if anyone who you are not following or that you've never
accepted a message from before sends you a message.
Last couple of things to help you decide
before I show you how to actually switch.
As of now, you can't preschedule and directly publish
your posts on a creator account from a third party tool
like Hootsuite or Buffer, but as I mentioned,
you can do it using Creator Studio, and finally,
a lot of people ask will my reach be affected?
This is my personal experience as well as what I've found
from some fellow people in the industry.
When I switched to a business profile,
I almost immediately saw my reach go down,
but with a creator account, and I've switched back
and forth a few times, I didn't see any decrease in reach
at all so I am a huge fan of a creator account
and I'm glad that I switched.
So if you're ready to switch,
here's how quick and easy it is.
First, you're gonna go to your profile,
just like you see on the screen here for mine.
Then you're gonna tap on the hamburger menu
on the upper right, that's those three lines.
So I tap that, then click on settings,
and then you're gonna click on account,
and then at the very bottom you're gonna click switch
to professional account.
This is gonna give you two choices.
The first one is creator like I showed you at the beginning
of this video, and then the second one is a business profile
so if you want to switch to the creator account,
of course you hit creator and hit next.
This goes through, tells you a little bit about it
which I just covered for you.
Tap next again.
Then you're gonna choose a category.
This does not have to match a business page
like it does for a business profile.
So go through and decide what you're going to be.
When you first look, you see things like actor, artist,
athlete, but if none of those fit, there are some more
broad terms in here like entrepreneur, public figure,
so just figure out what works best for you.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter because as you might see
in the fine print here at the top of the screen,
you have the option to display
or show that category on your page.
Hit next, it's gonna ask if you want to connect it
to your business page if you have one.
If not, you can just click don't connect
to Facebook now at the bottom.
Then you need to put in at least one piece of contact info,
but you don't have to have this public on your profile
if you don't want to.
The account I'm using for this demo is a private account,
so now this warning pops up saying hey, you've gotta have
a public profile if you're gonna have a creator account,
so that's just something you have to confirm.
This is the final screen.
This is where you can turn on the category label
if you want and you can turn on your contact info
if you want it there, and then at the bottom you see
it shows how it'll look on your profile.
Hit done, and you are all set.
So now if you tap the hamburger menu up here
on the upper right, you'll see that insights menu there
where you can access information about your profile.
When you go into your DMs, you'll see the multiple inboxes.
Let's say you changed your mind.
You don't want this to public though.
Then you would go into settings again,
click account, and then you can just tap this button
to switch back to a personal account, and that's it.
More questions about Instagram creator profiles?
Drop them in the comments.
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