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To keep one Instagram account or split it?

I could answer this question in one to two sentences so I assume this will be a shorter episode. But one I can refer people to over time becaaaauuussse….

This is one of the most common questions that I get, specifically in regards to Instagram. Often times people have a personal Instagram account to begin with and then they transition into wanting to build a brand or business, and it’s only normal to wonder if you should start a separate account, or keep your personal account as you transition into that business.

I can’t give you a finite answer. Because with most things it depends. But more often than not I lean towards keeping one account. If you really feel that your personal account has nothing to do with your business, and you aren’t going to continue growing your personal account, then you can totally start a business account and go all in with that. Letting your personal account know that if people would like to follow you for whatever it is you’re Brand is going to be they can go follow the new account. That’s certainly one approach that you can take.

I find that most people created a personal account that is still mostly in line with their brand. So keeping it as one makes sense.

I am for one platform as long as you can:

Managing two social media accounts consistently is a massive task. It’s hard enough to be consistent with just one, which is why I really encourage people to keep it as one as long as you possibly can.

When splitting your Instagram account makes sense:

Splitting makes the most sense to me when you are in fact going to post a lot more personal stuff on your personal page than what you would like to post on your brand’s page. You saw me do this with me Meandering Miller’s during our world travels. I would still post about the world travels on my business page, but I wanted a place where I could really dump all of the travel experiences and more life based stuff that was not specific to my business.

You see people often times do this once they start a family or maybe they want to post about their kids a lot more on their personal page, so they create a page specific to that. Versus sharing all of that on their business page. And this really does encapsulate the nuance and give and take that is building a personal brand. The personal part of a personal brand is actually far less than what people think. Building a personal brand does not mean that your entire life needs to be on the Internet. It simply means that you are the face of the business, and people need to feel that they can relate to you. The barrier for that is actually quite low. And boundaries can be very helpful with this process.

Having two separate accounts can definitely be one of those boundaries. And you don’t need to link your personal account to your business account if you don’t want to. Depending on what it’s named, it may still be very easy for people to find. I know this sounds a bit all over the place, but these are very personal decisions.

I find that there is commonly resistance with people wanting to share or be vulnerable on the internet. And again I think there’s a misconception with what needs to be shared in order to establish a relatable personal brand. It’s much more about you being yourself than it is about sharing pieces of your life that you don’t see a need to share for your business. My boundaries have gotten stricter and stricter with this as I have grown, and I don’t even have a massive audience. So if that is you, please know the power of building a personal brand. And that you can’t be a robot and do it successfully.

The power of a personal brand

There are things that make you view, and that is why people will work with you. Absolutely, your business needs to solve a problem, and clearly communicate what it is you do and how you help people. But if people don’t connect to you or have an emotional response of any kind, be it humor, joy, or some thing a bit more serious in response to your content and how you show up on social media, something needs to change.

Rather than sharing your children online, or really anything about your personal life, you can share other general relatable scenarios. You can still relate to people in the drop off line at school, without revealing your children. You can still share your morning cup of coffee or routine, without showing your entire house. Don’t let the excuse of boundaries stop you from connecting to your audience. We still need your personality, and perspective on things in order for people to connect and relate with you. To value what you have to say. If people feel like they don’t know the human behind the business at all, again, I will repeat myself – then we are not going to build a successful personal brand. Share the hobbies that you like to do, share a little quirks about yourself, share some thing that you were working on personally.

I know that that veered off from whether or not you should split your personal and business account, but really, in conclusion if you are building out a team and you want a specific page for your business where different coaches can post and that would be a time to split and create an actual business page but still keep your own as a business account as well. More often than not a vote keeping them the same, and more so spending time determining what pieces of your personal life you are going to post via your personal brand, and which ones aren’t going to make it to the gram. 

The last scenario is if you’ve built a massive audience on your personal page that has literally nothing to do with your business, then it probably won’t behoove you to post about your business on that page because that’s not likely why you’ve built the large audience. If it is aligned then that’s amazing and now you have a huge lead pool to pull from who are already interested in what you were doing before you started your business. I hope that wasn’t too all over the place, and provided some level of perspective and things to think about if you were considering splitting your personal account and your brand account. If you can keep them as one I would.

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