How to Run Two Instagram Accounts at the Same Time
One of the ways to enhance your business through Instagram is to make use of multiple accounts. For businesses, this could mean having the main business page and other accounts or pages for products, services, or customer support. While creating multiple accounts on Instagram is easy, managing them at the same time is not or was not.
For a very long time, Instagram users were looking for a way to switch between accounts from the same device. Before Instagram finally launched this feature in early 2017, users were required to log out from one account and login to the other or rely on 3rd party apps to use multiple accounts. Needless to say, the whole process of switching between Instagram accounts was difficult and confusing. In the current age where instant gratification is the key to increase your Instagram followers, this was getting highly inefficient for businesses.
Instagram made a note of this rising demand and released an update in 2017 with which users can now manage multiple accounts very easily right through their Instagram app without the need to log out and log in again. Users are allowed to add up to 5 accounts, making it an excellent way for businesses to further improve their reach on the platform.
While it has been more than a year since Instagram launched the update, a lot of users and businesses are yet to try this feature. If you want to run two or even more Instagram accounts at the same time, here are the detailed steps that you need to follow.
Adding multiple Instagram accounts in the app
Instagram has ensured that the whole process of adding accounts and switching between them is easy and quick as a large number of individual users and businesses have multiple accounts to gain more followers and improve their presence on the platform. To add an account, launch the Instagram app and go to your profile by tapping the profile icon at the bottom right of your screen. Now, select the three dots or the gear in the upper right of the screen.
Scroll down all the way and you’ll find the “Add Account” option. Here, you can add the username and password of the Instagram account that you’d like to add. You can follow the same steps to add up to a total of 5 different Instagram accounts. But know that you can only access the notifications of the account that you are currently switched in. However, you can change the notification settings for every account.
Switching between accounts
Once you’ve added the accounts, you’ll now be looking for a way to switch between them. For this, simply tap the username located at the top of the screen. This will open a drop-down menu with all the accounts you are currently logged in. Simply tap the account you’d like to switch to and the account would open.
Removing added accounts
Now that you know how to add multiple accounts in your Instagram app and how to switch between them, it is also important to know how you can delete an added account. Follow these steps.
Launch the Instagram app and tap on the three dots or gear icon in the upper right of the screen. Keep scrolling down and you’ll see the “Log out of [username]” button. Tap this button and you’ll be logged out of this account. Now if you tap on the username at the top of the screen, you’ll see that the account from which you’ve logged out is no longer available.
But know that this will only log you out from the account and not delete the account. For deleting an account, you’ll have to visit the online website of Instagram.
3rd party apps
Apart from this built-in feature in the Instagram app, a lot of people also use 3rd party apps to manage multiple Instagram accounts. There are actually a few great apps which make the process super smooth and efficient. However, Instagram does not allow any 3rd party app to upload any content through them to their platform.
As a result, the 3rd party apps would only allow you view, comment and like the pictures and videos. Some of the top options include,
● sproutsocial
● Circleboom Publish
● Hootsuite
With these apps, you can link multiple Instagram accounts and access the feeds from them at a single place. However, as mentioned above, the apps cannot be used to post anything directly on Instagram. If you just want to browse through the content posted by other users or see how people are engaging with your posts, these apps are a great solution.
Conclusion
The feature was long overdue as a large number of Instagram users have multiple accounts for a number of reasons. Logging out of one and then logging in into the other one was very time-consuming and difficult. While there are 3rd party apps available too, their functionality is limited and they won’t let you post content from multiple accounts.
But with the help of this new built-in feature, one can now easily manage multiple accounts with only a few taps. Now that you know how you can run two or more Instagram accounts at the same time, rework your Instagram marketing strategy and create new pages to improve your presence on the platform and attract more Instagram comments, followers, views, and likes.
