Last Updated on March 2, 2023
Your name is your brand and your profile is your name, as far as social media is concerned. This will be something unique to you. Your IG account name is who you’ll be known and referred to as in the community. A good name will let you ease the process of building a reputation. A great one will even expedite the entire process for you, to a degree. It’ll be your identity to your followers, and you’d want to put a lot of thought into this decision. You’ve got to ask yourself some questions first – figure out where you want to take your own personalized brand.
What Kind of Account Do You Want?
Are you going to turn it into a business? Will you be using it to highlight other content? Is it just for your personal use and connecting with friends online? Is there really a difference?
Yes, there is. About the only thing they’ve got in common is the potential to help you earn. Beyond that, they’re pretty far removed from each other.
The most common use is the personal account. Personal profiles allow you to link your other social media accounts to it, in contrast to the (1) allowed by business accounts. This type of account is suited for content creators, internet personalities, and entertainment-based accounts. If you want organic engagement with your follower base and constant means for interaction, stick with personal accounts.
An update with Instagram way back in 2016 added professional accounts to the mix. These types of accounts are more in line with business and service models, allowing you access to Instagram analytics and a degree of formal authority that comes with the territory. Your account can now actually include contact information for prospective clients, giving it more legitimacy for users. Professional accounts are directly supported by the platform and have access to a lot of features unavailable to basic personality profiles. One of the most important ones is follower insights, letting you see who checks out your post, when they do it the most, and other unique details that only increase with your profile’s popularity. These exclusive features let you monitor your account’s growth and development. All in all, professional accounts are very solid choices for establishing a brand or entity for your products and services, and you can change your account to fit that in less than five minutes.
Establishing a Business Account:
Step 1: Access your profile’s “Account” tab.
Step 2: Decide on the type of professional account you want.
Step 3: Pick your category
Step 4: Include your email address and ontact information. You can change this at any point.
Step 5: Create your Facebook Page (Business account only)
Another version – sort of a hybrid of the two – is known as the curator account. It’s not a direct account type included as an option, but rather an approach to content providing. It basically turns your profile into an avenue for advertising other profiles – a shout out or hashtag service, basically. As the name would imply, curator accounts are great for product reviews, art displays, and video showcases.
What To Consider For Account Naming?
Keep It Short, Simple, and Original
Profile names need to both stand out and be easy to remember. Avoid unnecessary symbols and punctuation even if you think they’d help your account be memorable: even if it works, you’d lose a few potential followers to their own memory lapses. Rhymes or alliteration would be great for making your profile name out even more against the sea of users. If you’re running short on ideas, using your real name is a great fallback option that’ll be available to you more often than not. On the off chance it isn’t, you could always resort to the adding “I am” to the start of your name like some users have.
While the urge to name your account after an already popular profile might be tempting, you’ll severely stunt your own profile’s growth for some short-term, confusion driven followers. Keep your title simple, memorable, and just plain yours.
Make Sure You Know What You Want To Do With It
Personal accounts are perfectly fine to use real names with. Using it is intuitive for most users, who’d likely look for how they remember you on other social media outlets. You can use your full name, change one part into an upper-case initial, or add a prefix to differentiate you (i.e. “iam” or “official”). You’re allowed to go beyond that, though, and may use puns and other linguistic tricks to stand out.
Business accounts work best when you use their entire formal name. They are also a lot easier to maintain consistent naming schemes with across platforms and devices. You can also indicate your businesses’ time zones or region to better clarify your target demographic.
Curator accounts have a lot more leeway in proceeding than the other two account types. Their name schemes tend to be more obvious for their purpose, and users should know exactly what they’re subscribing to.
Changing Your Profile Name
It’s not the end of the world being saddled with a crap username. Instagram lets you change it – for free! Just follow these steps to nab yourself a second chance on giving your profile the pizzazz it needs.
Step 1: Click on the gear-shaped “Settings” icon in your profile.
Step 2: Open “Edit Profile” in your instagram profile tab. Change your username to what you want. If the username is available, you just straight-up get it.
It really is that easy. Your name is your brand on social media, and as a personality you’ll constantly be marketing something – even if you don’t mean to. You have to make it memorable, impactful, and just plain yours. Your Instagram handle is how people will define you online, and you’ve got to make the best of the decision.
Keep your content reflective and relevant to your profile name. Don’t go with fancy punctuation or extra symbols just to make yourself stand out, because that’ll just plain backfire if people actually do want to check you out. Pick who or what you want to be known as and stick with it but remember that you can always change it up if you find yourself unsatisfied with your old handle.
Once you have your username sorted out, you may want to start increasing your community and engagement on Instagram. We have a number of Instagram marketing services for that.
Sources
https://www.yelloveedub.com/blog/instagram-personal-business-account-pros-cons
https://meetedgar.com/blog/instagram-business-account-whats-the-difference/
