I see these questions a LOT: How do I share my personal life on my Instagram business account? Should I keep my business account strictly “business” and make a separate personal account, or should I keep the two combined?

Here are my thoughts: For most people, I don’t think it’s a good idea to split your accounts into two accounts (one business and one personal). Let me explain!

Your followers are not following you for what you provide. Maybe like 1% of them are… but the rest are going to follow you for YOU. You want to build a brand, not just a business. If only people who were interested in what I offer followed me, I would have a lot less followers. Because the majority of my followers are not brides looking for a wedding photographer!

If we consider this, we want to be sharing about ourselves personally on our social media accounts. In fact, that should be the majority of what we’re sharing! We should share a lot about our lives, who we are, what we stand for, what we value, what we love. This is what makes people fall in love with us as PEOPLE (because people can relate to people, but people can’t relate to businesses).

Okay, so how do you actually go about doing this? You do want to do it in a professional way! Here are a few quick tips I have for how to share your personal life on your business Instagram account:

• Edit your Instagram photos like you would your professional photos. I use the Lightroom mobile app to edit my photos! It has all the same settings options as Lightroom at a computer does, which is AMAZING. Sometimes if that’s not cutting it, I’ll drag my photo into Lightroom on my computer to edit it but it usually does the job well! If you don’t want to be fancy, you can edit directly in Instagram to easily match your professional work.
• Have plenty of headshots to choose from, and frequently post them! I’m kind of the queen of getting new headshots (haha) and it seems like I’m always getting them done. But y’know what? It’s AMAZING because I can literally post a few every week, choosing a different outfit every time… and no one will know if one was actually taken one year ago! It allows ME and my face to show up in my follower’s feeds and for them to see me as a person, not just a business. If you’re a photographer, swap headshots with different photographers! If you’re not a photographer, exchange services or give them something in return for getting headshots done. Or pay them for a full session and get a variety (wear 5+ different outfits, just grabbing a few in each for a variety).
• Share more of your personal life on Insta-stories. Stories are somewhere you can get more REAL with people and share the behind the scenes of your life. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, I think when it’s less perfect, people like that and relate to that more! Some of my favorite photographers I follow post videos of their cute baby and obsess over their dog on their insta-stories DAILY. I feel like I know their family because I see them all the time, as weird as that sounds!
• Chose 5 things about yourself that you want to consistently share in your posts. Choose five things that you want to be “known” for and post about them a lot! What I mean by this is either something you love (that has nothing to do with your business), something you stand for, a value you have, the why in your business, etc. and share about that often! For example, I am “known” for loving chai lattes and people tend to think of me when they see chai lattes. I have people emailing me asking me if I will, not grab coffee with them, but a CHAI LATTE with them (because they know I love them). It’s seriously the best!! Other things I love that I share about often are marriage, my hubby, chocolate, and puppies (I don’t have my own yet, but oh, wait until I do! It’s gonna get crazy haha).

Okay, so the one exception to this whole thinking of keeping your accounts together and not separate is if you are the kind of person who wants to make a ton of Instagram POSTS (not just stories) about your daughter/dog/family/etc. Basically, if you want to excessively post about them alllll the time, then my advice is you should probably make a separate account for that. But please, do not stop posting about it on your business account too, because it’s still super important to post there!

Do you have one Instagram account for both personal + business, or do you have two? I’d love to know your thoughts below!