Instagram Personal Profiles

Instagram doesn't provide insights and metrics for personal profiles across third party platforms like Sprout Social. Here’s what you need to know about personal and business profiles, and why you should consider converting to an Instagram Business Profile sooner rather than later.

What is an Instagram Personal Profile?

Instagram Personal Profiles are stand-alone profiles optimized for personal use. In Sprout, you can only post or schedule photos, videos and stories to a personal profile through the Instagram Publishing mobile workflow. Instagram Personal Profiles don't have access to performance metrics, paid capabilities, customer care insights or social listening.

What is the difference between Instagram Personal Profiles and Instagram Business Profiles?

While you can manage your brand’s Instagram presence with a personal profile, Instagram Business Profiles build credibility and the opportunity to form connections by providing a space for contact information, such as a physical address, phone number and email address.

In terms of engagement, Instagram Business Profiles allow you to track and respond to media tags, comments and mentions in Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox. Instagram Business Profiles also enable you to monitor Instagram Hashtags in the Feeds section.

In terms of analytics, performance data including engagement, video views, profile clicks, impressions, profile reach and stories metrics are just some of the insights available exclusively to Instagram Business Profiles.

Since Instagram Business Profiles are connected to Sprout through the connection of a corresponding Facebook Company Page, Ads Manager and paid capabilities are only available for that profile type.

If I have an Instagram Personal Profile but want analytics and paid capabilities, what should I do next?

If you want to take advantage of paid social and/or get the most data surrounding your Instagram presence, Sprout recommends you convert to an Instagram Business Profile. Find instructions here.

If you aren’t able to convert to an Instagram Business Profile, you can re-authenticate your Instagram Personal Profile towards the end of January or early February 2020. Re-authenticating Instagram Personal Profiles will enable you to see sent Instagram messages on your Publishing Calendar in the near future; that is the only metric you will be able to see in terms of analyzing impact.