Instagram Creator Profile vs. Business Profile

I logged in to my Instagram profile today on a new phone (we can’t talk about the phone just yet, but videos coming soon 🙂 ) and was greeted by a small popup asking me if I wanted to switch to the new “Creator Profile”?

Now, like most “creators,” I have always used the Business Profile option for my Instagram account since, unlike the only other option, the Personal Profile, it has some analytics available to allow you to optimize content, engage with users, and, well, treat it more like a business.

It seems though that Instagram wants to change that.

There is now a third option that is slowly rolling out to creators on the platform that will supposedly give us “more control over our accounts.” So, now that it seems I was given the opportunity to test out this new profile option let’s see what that means exactly.

There are very few differences between the Instagram Creator Profile and the Business Profile for now, with some being more interesting to me than others but none of them being a huge deal honestly. Now, this will probably change as they roll out new features to the Creator Profile but for now, here are the only things I’ve noticed so far.

More Follow/Unfollow Insights

First, there is a small addition to the Insights tab that regular Business Profiles don’t get.

If you tap on Audience now, there is a section for growth that you can tap on the days of the past week to see follows vs. unfollows for that day.

You can also tap See Posts at the top after tapping the date to see all of the stories and feed posts you published on that day to presumably help determine why you were unfollowed or followed.

Honestly, not a significant change but useful at least (would be more helpful if you could see different date ranges besides just the last seven days, but there you go).

New Human Categories (Instead of Business Ones) & Contact Options

What I mean by that is that once you select Creator Profile, you have the option to choose from a variety of options that better describe you than just the “Public Figure” (which sounds super douchey to me, no?). You can select Video Creator, Actor, Coach, Comedian, etc.

You can then choose whether you want this to show up under your name on your profile or not along with a new option for how people/brands can contact you–by phone number for texting/calling or via your email.

 

And, unlike business accounts, you can remove the contact altogether forcing people only to be able to DM you.

 

Direct Message Filters

And finally, for differences between the profiles, we have new filters for direct messages.

Whenever you get a message from someone new, it ends up in your requests section in your DMs like usual, but now instead of it just all being lumped together, Instagram will use some algorithm to determine if the request is potentially more relevant to you and bubble those to the top.

 

The idea here I believe is if it’s someone with a larger following reaching out to collaborate or a brand/PR agency trying to get in contact, etc. you’ll be more likely to see it.

In addition to the new requests sorting, once you accept one, there are two categories you can put the direct message in Primary or General.

 

Supposedly the idea here is that you can put people you talk with a lot (friends, family, colleagues, brands you work with, etc.) in Primary and people you don’t know as well, in General, to further sort things.

You can then go into your Direct Messaging Notification settings, and there is an option to receive notifications only for people in Primary on people in General and Primary, so it’s useful for limiting the number of notifications you get (which I’m always striving for in life).

Conclusion

And there you go, a quick rundown of the differences in the new Instagram Creator Profile and the Business Profile.

I imagine there will be more creator-focused features that’ll come out down the road which will be interesting, but part of me also wonders if this is a way for Instagram to identify their “influencers” on the platform and then use that to impose revenue share for branded content somehow, etc.

On the back of Snapchat deleting branded content posts from influencers recently, and the fact that Instagram is expected to account for more and more of Facebook’s revenue, you do have to wonder, no? For now, though Instagram, I’ll bite.

What do you guys think?