Converting your Instagram account to a business account

Instagram business accounts are optimized for business, so they give you and your audience a range of tools that aren’t available from personal or creator accounts. Your followers get a quick and easy snapshot of your offerings, contact info, business hours and latest news. You get CTA (call-to-action) buttons, direct scheduling and automatic publishing through third-party tools like Buffer, and access to analytics and engagement tools.

This article contains the following sections:

1. Converting your Instagram account to a business account
2. Reconverting your Instagram business account

Converting your Instagram account to a business account

To connect to Buffer, Instagram business accounts are required to have a Facebook Page linked to them. Whilst it's possible to convert to a business account in the Instagram app, we recommend doing this via Facebook to ensure a Page is correctly associated to the account.

Converting via Facebook (recommended)

1. Head over to Facebook and navigate to the list of Pages you have access to (or click this link). Click on the Page that you'll associate with your Instagram account, or create a new Page if you don't already have one.

   📝 You must be an admin on the Page you're associating to your Instagram business account. To check if you have the proper permission, please see this article.

2. Once you're in your Page, click Settings in the left hand sidebar.

   

3. Click Instagram on the left hand side and then click Connect Account towards the top of the screen.

   

4. Enter your Instagram login credentials and click Log In. (If you're already signed into Instagram, or your login credentials are saved within your browser, you'll just need to click Continue.)

   

5. You'll see a pop up window prompting you to set up your Instagram business account. Follow the on-screen instructions, ensuring you enter your contact info, and then click Done.

   

   ⚠️ If you don't see the pop up window as shown in the image above, click Get Started towards the top of the Page. If you don't see the Get Started prompt either, you can try converting via the Instagram app instead, following the steps in the section below.

   Converting via the Instagram mobile app

   1. Open the Instagram app on your mobile device and navigate to Settings.
   2. Tap Account.
   3. Tap Switch to Professional account.
   4. Follow the on-screen prompts, ensuring you choose the business account type, not the creator account type. You'll also need to select a Facebook Page (or create a new one) to link your Instagram business account to. You will see a "Don't Connect to Facebook Now" option, but if you don't connect a Facebook Page to your Instagram account, you won't be able to connect your account to Buffer.
   5. Your Instagram account should now have been converted to a business account.

   Reconverting your Instagram business account

   In certain situations, for example if your Instagram account is currently a business account without a Facebook Page properly connected to it, or if you're experiencing an error when trying to publish posts to Instagram, you will need to convert your Instagram account back to a personal profile and then reconvert it to a business account.

   ⚠️ Please note, your Insights will be lost when converting your Instagram account back to a personal profile. You may wish to read and save your Insights before converting.

   1. Open the Instagram app on your mobile device and navigate to Settings.
   2. Tap Account.
   3. Tap Switch to personal account, and then tap Switch back to confirm.
   4. Your Instagram account should now be a personal profile and you can walk through the steps above to convert to a business account, ensuring you link a Facebook Page to it.