In this episode, we dive in to Instagram’s new creator account and discuss whether or not you should switch!
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Intro: 00:06 You’re listening to motherhood ignited a podcast for mompreneurs creatives and influencers who are rocking the beautiful balance between working passionately and nurturing. Presently I’m your host, Christy Keane, and every week I interview inspiring mom, bosses, brands and industry experts to bring you the knowledge, tools and strategies to grow your influence and business through purposeful online content creation. So come in and cozy up mamas and get ready to ignite your goals.
Christy Keane: 00:36 Oh boy. Okay. Today I am a little bit over 36 weeks pregnant, feeling every single bit of it. So I am trying to batch as many of these mip minis as possible and we talk about batch content a lot and how that can save you time. I’m just so excited to be able to keep brand new content week after week and being able to be home with my baby boy when he comes. It’s just so exciting. And a few of you know, my daughter cammy’s been gone for a little over a week and she gets back today. I’m so excited. I am doing my maternity photos, I have packed my bags and yeah, my parents come and then once they get here he can come any time. So thank you guys for reaching out with so many well wishes. And rest assured the motherhood ignited podcast will still be coming on week after week after this baby gets here.
Christy Keane: 01:34 So you do not miss out on any content or any good tips for all your mompreneurs creatives and influencers out there. So today I want to talk about what the deal is with Instagram’s new creator accounts. So Instagram is making some changes and one of the big buzzworthy items that I keep hearing a lot of mompreneurs and influencers and creatives talk about is the new creator account. And so why these new creator accounts? Okay, so brand sponsorships and collapse have almost replaced traditional advertisements. Right? At this point in time when I’m recording this, it’s 2019 and I know so many more people that are responsive to ads on Instagram or stories and content on Instagram than they are commercials. I don’t even see a lot of commercials right now. I watch Netflix but no commercials or I watch Hulu and I fast forward through them or check my phone during them.
Christy Keane: 02:28 So creator profiles, our Instagram solution to give influencers back a bit more control in this space of advertisement and their value because we all know influencers are invaluable to Instagram, their messaging and their following is why people keep showing up and open their phone as much as they do. That’s why they’re opening their wallets as much as they do these days. So what is a creator account? Cause I know a lot of people are very confused about that and myself included, I am no expert, I’m just sharing my experience and some things that I have found out along the way. But similar to a business account creator accounts are, um, accounts will have access to exclusive stats and analytics, but they’re more reserved for influencers, public figures, bloggers and creatives. So with the extra analytics, the rumor is that Instagram is going to be rolling out in Instagram Creator Studio Dashboard, which is going to help creatives better track their growth and their engagement over time.
Christy Keane: 03:31 They’ll have access to more follower demographics, which is huge because whenever a brand reaches out, they asked for all of these statistics and sometimes what Instagram gives me isn’t necessarily all of the analytics that these brands would like to see. They’d like to be able to narrow down better which city and demographic your audience is. And while Instagram right now does give you some analytics related to that, it’s not as in depth as I know a lot of brands would love to get their hands on when they’re working with brand partnerships. So that will definitely be a great for pitching specific brands and just getting really well aligned partnerships. I had switched to a creator account and one of the statistics that I noticed was a little bit different than the business account is that I was able to see my follow and unfollow statistics.
Christy Keane: 04:25 So not only just seeing how much I have grown over the past seven days or whatever time frame I put in, but I also could see how many people unfollowed me, which was actually like pretty depressing when I looked at it every week. Because, um, as if you listen to my interview with James Nord this week, that’s the trend. People are unfollowing every day. Accounts aren’t growing hand. Yeah. So just to see the trend of how many people unfollow every time you post. It’s pretty eyeopening. But that is one of the analytics that I did notice was different. The other big thing that was different is messaging. So as somebody who is a big brand in Instagram or somebody who is an influencer or a blogger, you get a lot of messages and it can be overwhelming. So with the creator accounts they have um, direct messaging filters.
Christy Keane: 05:19 So you have a primary account that you can filter through unread red and you can flag them, you can even mark them as unread, which is my favorite feature. And then there is a general mailbox as well who are people you have accepted requests from but aren’t maybe in your primary circle of who you communicate with [inaudible]. And then you have your request. And one big difference in the requests folder is that you now have your top request or all requests that you can filter it down to. So top request would be based on following from what I can see from the way did that it filtered my own dms. And so a brand or an influencer who reaches out with the larger reach will show at the top of that folder. So the other thing that is new with creator accounts is that you have a little bit more profile control.
Christy Keane: 06:15 So in general you can aim to control a little bit better who is messaging you, but mostly how they are messaging you. So their goal is to have decreased spam and cold messages and over time you would have more meaningful messages. The other thing that you have control of on your profile with the creator account is being able to show your creator category or your email. So you can, you can block your contact information and you can block what if you’re a public figure, if you’re a blogger, just whatever general category that your Instagram account is. I found that helpful because I’ve listed my account as a public figure sometimes. I felt kind of weird about that because, because I’m not necessarily a blogger because I’m on a podcast host now and then we do have a lot of media inquiries because of Charlie and her journey and my messaging as well.
Christy Keane: 07:12 So when I had a creator account, which I will get into, I don’t anymore. I did, I’m hide that, but he kept my contact information open because for me, I still wanted brands or other families with hearing loss to be able to reach out to me directly. But for somebody who is a celebrity who has millions of followers who does not want them to be able to see their contact information, you can hide that right there. So I thought that was a pretty cool feature. The other thing that’s rolling out a shoppable post, and it’s rumored to be something that creator accounts will have access to. I didn’t notice that when I had started my creator account or even know how to work that, so I can’t get into that right now. But as that grows I would love to get an expert on to share that a little bit more with you guys cause I know there are a lot of awesome brands who really want to take advantage of that and figure out the best ways to use that who tuned into the podcast.
Christy Keane: 08:09 So I will definitely be researching that more for you guys. I guess the big question is is if you are somebody who is, I’m an influencer, a celebrity, a blogger, a public figure who might benefit from these creator accounts, do you switch or do you not switch? So I cannot answer that question for you, but I can share my experience with you because whenever I saw the message pop up that I could get a creator account, I went ahead and switched just because it sounded cool. I want to see the analytics and I’m just like an experiment or I just like to see what the new thing is, how it affects your profile. I’d rather try it on me and let you guys know how it works and I don’t, I just get a kick out of that. So I switched to a creator account.
Christy Keane: 08:58 The first thing I can say for me personally from the day that I was, and I was a business account before, from the day that I switched to creator account, my engagement dropped off a lot and I know that you could argue that it was just something that was going to happen any help. But it is literally the day I switch my account, my likes went down almost 2000 likes or more and my engagement went down. So I was like that’s interesting. I didn’t like it obviously because this, you know, brands look at that, your engagement when they want to work with you and that’s how I make my income is off of brand deals and brand sponsorship. So I was a little bit bummed about that but I still wanted to like keep it going and see. The other thing was the messaging. Like I said, I really thought it was too many filters.
Christy Keane: 09:47 I got a little bit overwhelmed when I went to go check my dms. I liked with the business account, I had my regular folder of dms and then I had my request. I already have a hard time keeping up on top of dms anyhow, but just to have like three different email boxes and so many different filters, it became a little bit overwhelming for me and I understand what they were, what the goal of it is and I appreciate that. But just for me, I already have a hard time managing my inbox and that just made it a little bit overwhelming. Um, what did I like? Oh, I loved again that I could hide the fact that I have my account as public figure and still leave on my contact information. And I think that changed because when they first allowed you to hide things, you had to hide both at the same time.
Christy Keane: 10:33 And I didn’t like that cause I was like, why I want to hide that I’m a public figure, but I want to be people to be able to reach me. But in order to hide the public figure, I had to hide my contact information since then, since they first rolled it out. That has changed where you can hide one or the other. So I had a creator profile for maybe, I want to say about two months and just last week again I was getting really down on the engagement and I wanted to improve my analytics a little bit if I could, if there was anything that I could do just to keep giving brands the best reach and the best engagement they could get when we do work together. So I switched back to business account last week. I’m really actually pleased with the results because my engagement is starting to climb back up again.
Christy Keane: 11:19 So I don’t know what the deal with that is and I don’t know why engagement went down so much when I switched to create her account. It’s something I think whenever Instagram, uh, rolls out these new profiles, they’re awesome and they have great intentions, but they have to work out the kinks a little bit. Right? Like, just like with anything, just like when you get an iPhone before the next generation iPhone, they work out the kinks. So I’m super interested to try creator account again in the near future, but right now I think I’m just going to hang tight the business. That’s just what working a little bit better for me and my account. There was something else I was going to say about the Creator Council. Let me think here for a second. Oh, I know what it is. So if you are an influencer who uses, um, platforms like aspire IQ or popular pays that require you to link your account in order to, for the brands to see your analytics and in order to get accepted to for jobs creator accounts, we’re not linkable on those platforms.
Christy Keane: 12:27 Um, so that was really hard for me because that was where I would get along to my brand deals. So to not be able to link to them and not be able to share those analytics, I lost out on some opportunities that I love to do every month with brands that I love to work with. So that’s just a little bit of food for thought there too. So I don’t know if I helped you or confused you more on Creator Account, but I hope you have a better idea of at least what they are. Um, in terms of whether or not you should switch. If you are somebody in this space, I will leave that entirely up to you. I have nothing to base it on except for my personal experience and I’m just gonna wait it out a little bit longer to switch back to creator account.
Christy Keane: 13:10 I’d like to see when Instagram releases that dashboard. That sounds really great. And you know, once a few of the kinks are worked out, I know a lot of people who love the idea of getting these analytics sooner than later and aren’t effected at all with their engagement. So it’s really just up to you. Like I said, I love when Instagram releases something new. I just, I can’t help myself. I like to try it out. Um, oh, the other thing I can say too, but, sorry, this is just one last point I want to bring up. When I got a verified blue check mark. It was when I switched to a crater account, so I don’t know if that played a role or not. I mean that is just totally me just telling you. It could just be a coincidence of timing, but I wanted to put that out there because I don’t know, maybe they will start to verify accounts creator accounts a little bit more easily that way.
Christy Keane: 14:03 That is me starting a rumor. Don’t take that as professional advice. I’m just telling you I got a blue check mark verified account after I switched to creator, so whew, I’m out of breath doing these podcasts. Just talking gets me out of breath when I’m nine months pregnant, but I’m so glad you guys continue to tune in with me week after week and I appreciate you guys. If you’d like the podcast, please subscribe, leave a rating and review screenshot when you’re listening and tag me on Instagram. My Instagram is Christi Keen, can C H R I s t y k e a n e c a n. And I just love to repost that and share that you guys are enjoying things. So thank you so much for tuning in and I hope you guys have an awesome week.