If you make a short Reels, people are more likely to watch the entire video, and re-watch it.

Which means you get more watch time, more views and more retention. Amazing.

How long should the video be?

You can make a video that is between 3 to 8 seconds. It’s usually the sweet spot.

Does it mean you can’t make long videos?

No. You can make longer videos if you feel like it. Just make sure your video is engaging, fun, entertaining, or speaks to your audience (you’ll know exactly what that means for you). Like we talked about in the 2024 Instagram Trends blog post, people love chatty videos too.

But if you want to boost your retention rate, make short Reels.

Today, we’re diving into a topic we get asked about all the time – what kind of account someone should have on Instagram.

If you’re a business owner navigating the Instagram landscape, this one’s for you. Keep reading because we’re about to break it all down: Personal vs Professional Accounts. And how to make the decision between the Creator vs Business accounts.

How To Tell If You Have a Personal or Professional Account?

If you’re running a business on Instagram – you should not be using a personal account. Instead, you should use what Instagram calls a Professional account. You want to do this because there are special features that are available for professional accounts that business owners will love to have…we’ll go over that in this video.

When you navigate to your profile on Instagram and if you see a Professional Dashboard – this means that you already have a professional account setup. However, if you are logged in on your phone and you don’t see this, that means you have a personal account.

Where to Find the Setting to Change Your Account Type

1. Go to your profile
2. Tap the 3 lines in the upper right corner
3. Then tap settings and privacy
4. Account type and tools 
5. You’ll see the button “Switch to professional account”. 
6. Then you’ll pick a category that best describes your account (we have a hack for this)
7.  Choose between Business or Creator account. 

Which we’re going to get into now!

Business vs. Creator

According to instagram – a creator account is best for public figures, content producers, artists and influencers, while a business account is best for businesses looking to grow and reach customers.

Instagram’s ever-changing, and our opinions on these accounts can be a bit like a rollercoaster. All professional accounts have some really cool features, including a contact button, and access to insights which gives you important information about who your followers are and the performance of your content. It also gives you some options to organize your direct message inbox. 

But if you are wondering which account you should be using – it depends if you use a few specific features. For us, we love a business account.  Why, you ask? Well, a few reasons. For a long time, it’s all about scheduling posts.

Third party apps were not able to connect to creator accounts, only business accounts. And scheduling is a game-changer, saving us time and transforming our Instagram workflow. It is a deal breaker. We specifically love Planoly for it. Not only for the scheduling feature but for the planning. Recently, we’ve seen this may be evolving to include both account types…so we’ll see. 

We actually recorded another video on our channel that walks you through scheduling your Instagram posts for free on the app! You just need one of the Instagram professional accounts.  We’ll link that video below if you are interested.

Main Differences Between Creator and Business Accounts

Creator accounts automatically get access to Instagram’s full music library because they don’t face the same copyright limitations as businesses. Business owners need to use one of a few specific account categories to unlock the same settings. So I get it can be annoying but the fix is one of my favorite hacks.

Another important feature to know is that while both accounts allow users to add their preferred email address and main phone number on the profile, Business accounts have an extra option to add their location—their headquarters, storefront, restaurant location… You get the idea. If you have a brick-and-mortar business, you want that.  But, if you’d prefer to be contacted through DMs, both account types can remove their email address and phone number from their public profile, and simply have a “message” button instead. 

The last difference relates to those fun, call-to-action buttons that sit sandwiched between your profile bio and Story highlights. Business accounts can choose to include buttons that allow followers to order food, book now, or reserve, while Creator accounts don’t include the former. Like most of these features, they aren’t required and can be toggled on and off within your account’s settings. 

The Hack For Business Accounts to Have More Access

Back towards the beginning of this article we include steps to update your account type. During those steps, if you simply add “Entrepreneur” as your Category on step 6. This will allow a business account to have access to the entire music library that the Creator account has.

Conclusion

So, there you have it—the breakdown of business vs. creator accounts. 

The bottom line, it depends on how your business makes money. If you are a brick-and-mortar store – a business account is a must-have. If you are online only, a  creator account could work for you! 

What’s your choice? You really can’t go wrong when you are getting to connect and engage with so many amazing potential customers on Instagram!

Ever feel like Reels are taking up way too much of your time? Or that you’re in the weeds every week trying to come up with posts? We’ve got your back with a simple process that’s not just a time-saver but also cranks up the quality of your content.

Reels are like your secret weapon for growing your business. Reels have great placement on the app, and often have more reach than your regular posts or stories. Today, we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of building a process, specifically for creating Reels for your business.

Getting clear on what your commitment is to Instagram and making a few key decisions about your posting schedule can pay off big time.

As a business owner who has so many roles in your business, without concretely defining what you have to create on social media, you’ll probably end up feeling like you are caught on the social media hamster wheel. Let’s dive into the 3 questions you need to answer to get started on setting up a Reel process.

The First Question to Ask Yourself

With clients in our PRO program and on our training, we always kick this off with this first question – How many Reels can you realistically do each week?

First, your current bandwidth. Assess your resources. Consistency is key in social media, so it’s important to commit to a schedule that you can realistically manage. It’s better to post fewer times a week and show up reliably than to post and then ghost. 

It’s crucial to maintain a balance between the quality and quantity of posts. High-quality, relevant content is more likely to engage your audience than a large quantity of low-quality posts  Now, this doesn’t mean that high production is required for high quality…or that every post should take you hours to create. 

Finally, know that you will eventually want to plan for a variety of content types and themes (educational, promotional, engaging) to keep your audience interested and engaged. There are different types of Reels, AND Reels will probably not be the only posts you are creating. So when determining what you commit to it’s important to consider how much effort or how comfortable you are with the steps. 

Exactly, Often time with clients in our PRO program, we suggest you start with posting just 3x a week if you are brand new to Instagram. If you have more experience on Instagram and have the bandwidth to create more, great! But when you are learning the mechanics and a new process, the important thing is to START.  Go ahead and put in the comments below the number of posts you are going to start with? 2, 3, 4 – I want to see you declare your plan!

Image Popup Example

Question 2: Committing to a Posting Schedule

What days are you posting? Maybe it’s twice a week, like Mondays and Wednesdays, so you can handle comments and engage with your audience. Choose days that work for you, and don’t forget to share those Reels to your stories. 

This is important because you are probably doing a lot of different things in your business…so you control what days make most sense for you.  

We’ve found with our clients who didn’t grow up on social media, that it is best to first decide what schedule is going to work for you. There is so much to learn when you are first trying to understand what to post and how to post and so if we also overcomplicate things, it can often mean you end up quitting before you even start to see results. 

That is why making this commitment reasonable at first is the most important thing…especially if you are just starting out. You can always increase your posting frequency when you are acing it! 

Question 3: What types of Reels will you make? 

There are SO MANY OPTIONS on how to create on Instagram, picking and sticking to something can help decrease decision fatigue. 

We split Reels into two different types for our students. Reels with Original audio, like talking to the camera, and “Reality reels” with Instagram Audio. If you watch us on youtube (link at the top) we show a couple different Reels with the types to help clarify.

An account can get a good amount of traction by starting with these two formats. 

You can mix it up—to present your business in different ways to attract viewers. But deciding briefly on a format can help you get posting faster. If these types are new to you, we’ve got a whole video on Instagram audio dropping soon, so stay tuned!

Once your schedule is set—how many posts, what days, and what type of format—then you are more clear and more organized when you post.  You’ll be able to batch these posts, and make more than one at a time to work smarter. 

Next Steps

Putting together a process that works for you is so important. It will help tremendously with showing up each week, growing those followers and buyers from Instagram. And to do that, your posting plan has to fit into your life and make sense to you!

That’s just the start – if you’re eager to explore more ways to get customers from Instagram in just a few hours per week, check out our free training!

You’ll walk away with 5 features any small business owner can use today to drive traffic and start making sales (even with a small following)… and so much more!

See you there