As one of the fastest growing social networks in the world, everyone wants a piece of Instagram. Newly released features now let you access up to five different handles so you can manage multiple Instagram accounts on a single device.
For several people on Instagram, the easily interchangeable feature allows you to hop back and forth from each account without needing to login. In fact, numerous brands on Instagram have more than one account. Major businesses like like Target, Kraft and Adidas have multiple Instagram accounts for each aspect of their business.
But with the opportunity to manage multiple Instagram accounts, how can brands leverage more handles among their audience? For some businesses, multiple accounts could spread their follower count too thin.
However, there are ways to implement more than one account without taking away engagement opportunities from others. First let’s look at how you actually add multiple Instagram accounts to your mobile device.
How to Add Multiple Instagram Accounts
Multiple Instagram accounts can be managed all within a single device by simply adding another profile. The process is easy and again, users can connect up to five accounts. To get started on your mobile device:
Click on your profile and look for the sun icon (iPhone) or three vertical dots (Android) in the top right.
Once in the settings menu, scroll to the bottom and simply click Add Account.
At the login screen, enter your username and password for the account you’re adding.
Repeat the process if you want to add another account.
When you have your multiple Instagram accounts connected, simply go to your profile to switch between users. There you can tap on the username at the top of the screen to easily switch between your different accounts. For those who have push notifications on, Instagram will notify you with followers and like updates with the account in brackets.
How to Manage Multiple Instagram Accounts
Brands know the power of Instagram and understand how critical it is to engage, monitor and track users. With more than 500 million monthly active users and 95 million photos and videos added each day, Instagram turned into the network of choice for several marketers.
In fact, many businesses found immense success by using Instagram as a marketing tool. Tracking things like hashtags, geolocations, comments and likes can give brands an in-depth view into marketing opportunities.
However, one of the biggest problems still in existence is Instagram’s API, which prevents third-party tools from commenting outside the native platform. Additionally, brands need access to Instagram data to to see what’s working and what needs a boost.
Manual data collection is tiresome and time-consuming and some third-party platforms provide little-to-no data outside of new followers. But with Instagram analytics tools from Sprout Social, your brand can dig deeper into the social data of each account.
Sprout provides follower metrics to show monthly increases (or decreases) by percentage. You can also track important things like publishing behavior to see how many Instagram posts you’ve delivered in a certain time frame. We even break down each metric into photos and videos to give your brand a clearer picture of how your Instagram accounts are performing.
Here are a few other ways you can best manage multiple Instagram accounts:
Have a Clear Buying Channel on Instagram
For those in the ecommerce industry, you certainly need to consider the impact of multiple Instagram accounts. If you split your audience or try to frequently move them to a new account, you’ll lose engagement and interest immediately.
A Shopify report discovered Instagram had the second-highest average order value compared to other social media platforms.
With an average order of $65, Instagram beat out Pinterest ($58.95), Facebook ($55) and Twitter ($46.29). Instagram makes it easier for brands to showcase their product, which means you have to be socially active and engage your audience on all accounts. At the same time, you also need a clear purchasing experience.
You can’t have each account direct to the same landing or buying page. Try to get hyper-focused with your links to get customers where they want to go. Instagram only allows one link in your Instagram bio, so always be ready to update and change across all accounts.
Make time… for enviable wristwear in lavish gold finish.✨Tap the link in bio to shop @gigihadid's look now.
A photo posted by Tommy Hilfiger (@tommyhilfiger) on
Nov 9, 2016 at 6:45am PST
Tommy Hilfiger does a wonderful job at updating links in the bio to their most recent posts. When people see the product, they want an easy way to get to it. With multiple Instagram accounts, you increase the amount of ways users can get to your focused landing pages.
Provide Unique Content to Each Account
Instagram users spend an enormous amount of time on the platform. In 2015, comScore released its annual Digital Future in Focus report stating 12 billion minutes were spent on Instagram. That’s a drastic jump from the 6.6 billion minutes from Twitter.
Users are willing to put in the time to see your different accounts, but you have to provide unique content to each one. It’s smart to leverage your multiple accounts to unique verticals within your business. What that means is you could use multiple accounts to highlight one specific part of your company.
Ready to Fri-YAY? From skirts to shimmer, shop fall's top Friday-night-out looks via the link in our profile. #TargetStyle
A video posted by Target Style (@targetstyle) on
Oct 28, 2016 at 10:55am PDT
For example, Target has an independent Instagram account specifically for home and fashion content. While the company sells much more, Target gets granular with Target Style to showcase the fashion and design aspect of their brand.
This ultimately allows Target to address a certain audience demographic that shops at their stores without running the risk of publishing too much fashion and apparel visuals.
Get a Head Start Against Competitors
Even though Instagram users have surged in the last few years, some businesses are still hesitant. A 2015 American Express report conducted by Ebiquity found less than 10% of small businesses operate on Instagram.
Whether you’re a small or enterprise-level business, Instagram has the power to engage, build brand awareness and push customers further down the marketing funnel. Because so many businesses still hesitate to adopt the app, you have a chance to get ahead in the Instagram marketing game.
As a marketer, your goal should be to exist where your audience is located. More likely than not, you have a large portion of your audience who go to Instagram each day. Additionally, brands are still in the infant stages of adopting multiple Instagram accounts.
Managing one can be a lot of work and stress for single social media or community manager. Instead, use Sprout Social to manage all your Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts in a single Smart Inbox.
Many tools limit you to a single platform, but with Sprout, you can take on your entire social media presence and get ahead of your competition with in-depth analysis and easy-to-use social media tools.
Get Front & Center With Your Followers
Unlike Facebook, content on Instagram is hard to miss. Once you get users to follow your brand, they physically have to scroll through your visuals to get to the next image in their feed. This means your images or videos have higher engagement rates because users’ screens are completely filled with your content and you’re more than likely to at least look at the image before moving on.
Marketers have a huge opportunity to use this screen space in creative ways. We mentioned the importance of unique content, but it’s also critical to provide visuals that stand out. According to our Instagram Best Practices infographic, 93% of buyers agreed visual appearance is the primary reason for their purchase.
Visual data is simply easier to digest. Provide beautiful content that relates to your business or that shows some sort of resolve. For example, if your product saves users time and money, use a beautiful image of an apartment filled with nice things (fancy bike, expensive laptop, art, etc.) and a cup of coffee.
Do it for the ‘Gram #PumpkinSpiceLatte #gramit
A photo posted by McDonald's (@mcdonalds) on
Oct 22, 2016 at 10:00am PDT
This shows the user you can be stylish by saving money on the things you love, but also be relaxed with a cup of coffee in the morning because your product saves people time.
Set Goals for Each Account
Along with managing multiple Instagram accounts, you have to set goals for each handle. Like we mentioned before, your Instagram accounts should provide unique content, which will help you reach your goals.
Luckily with Sprout Social, you can better track and manage your Instagram goals. Some points of attack you could take with Sprout include:
Increase Instagram engagement: When you’re able to put all your incoming Instagram comments in a single inbox, you can measure your engagement more efficiently. It takes just one click to reply to anyone or any of your collective Instagram accounts.
Collaborate on social profiles: If you put effort into your social media team, you likely have more than one person who will access these social accounts. With Sprout, you can easily manage multiple Instagram accounts with your co-workers through the Smart Inbox. Your collaboration efforts allow you to create or assign tasks, mark messages as complete and even alert other users with real-time notifications when someone else is viewing or replying to a message.
Divvy the workload: If your Instagram followers have questions about your product or services, you might want to send their question to your customer support or sales team. Through Sprout, you can assign any message to better work as a team, divvy the workload and ensure every incoming message gets the right attention.
Monitoring Instagram Hashtags & Locations
Keeping a pulse on the social discussion about your brand is essential for marketers. Knowing what customers say about you helps you reach and engage with your audience. That’s why monitoring your Instagram hashtags can play a huge role in your engagement strategies.
With Sprout’s keyword search tool, you can monitor hashtags on Instagram to see what common words are associated with your brand. Additionally, you can monitor geo locations as well so you know where your customers and audience are located. Having this information helps you make better marketing decisions with your social channels. It also can show you how well your social campaigns have paid off.
Using Instagram Effectively
Before social media, marketers wanted to reach their audience and know how people felt about the product or service. With Instagram, you take out a lot of the guesswork and have more confidence with your brand decisions.
If you want or have multiple Instagram accounts, you shouldn’t waste time managing both through the native platform. With Sprout Social, you can change your Instagram efforts into a solid tool for generating leads and building your audience. Try us today for a free 30-day trial!
This post How to Add & Manage Multiple Instagram Accounts for Your Brand originally appeared on Sprout Social.