Instagram is testing business profile pages and Later.com  has found some examples, so it says. TechCrunch also reported on it based on what it found on the Later website. Both websites seemed to miss the fact that the screenshot supposedly found “in the wild” is not of a business website at all, but is more reminiscent of a Linkedin profile of a small business founder. It is clear however, that ultimately Instagram will have business profile pages and will also have profile pages for individuals that want to feature their businesses, similar to what Later.com discovered.

The main benefit for businesses on these pages is the contact button next to the follow button. Businesses are after more business and a contact button right on their page will motivate them to more actively promote their Instagram page, and I’m sure Facebook is hoping that promotion comes from increased paid Facebook advertising.

Businesses which bought paid advertising on Facebook in the early days to gain followers to their business Facebook pages might think twice about doing the same to gain Instagram followers because of how Facebook double-crossed them in the past. Just think about it, when Facebook launched business pages it actively encouraged businesses to buy advertising in order to gain followers and then just two years later added algorithms which made their pages only show up occasionally to their OWN followers… and then encouraged those same businesses to buy advertising on Facebook to promote their posts to the followers they paid to get. Crazy!

Very disingenuous of Facebook in my opinion and all businesses should realize that Instagram which is owned by Facebook will likely do something similar. So the moral of the story is, don’t buy ads on Facebook or Instagram to promote getting followers to your business Instagram page because you can’t trust what Facebook/Instagram will do next.