Instagram’s business profiles are proving to be good for businesses.

The social media network recently announced that 25 million merchants have changed their personal Instagram accounts into business profiles. That’s a huge leap from the 15 million business accounts that were active on the app as of July of this year. What’s more, most of these accounts are from small businesses.

Instagram Reaches 25 Million Active Business Profiles, Shares New Business Tips https://t.co/kl2izx3q4H pic.twitter.com/6IjP12RKIb

— Pantoo (@pantoo) December 1, 2017

The Facebook-owned app introduced business profiles in May 2016 in order to give businesses better commercial representation on its video and photo network. By changing one’s account to a business profile – which is similar to a Facebook page – companies can add a “contact us” button and examine detailed analytics about Stories and organic posts that they have published, like the number of impressions and the reach the posts accumulated.

Graphic via modernsoapmaking.com

Instagram is hoping that the more tools they provide merchants, the more they’ll use the app to expand their business, first organically and then through ads. And it seems Instagram’s strategy is working. Since business profiles were introduced, Instagram’s advertiser base has grown from 200,000 in February 2016 to 2 million by September 2017.

Those numbers clearly show that Instagram’s ratio of business accounts to advertisers is almost the same as its parent company. Facebook boasts of more than 6 million advertisers and 70 million companies using Pages.

About 80% of Instagram’s roughly 800 million users per month follow a business, and about 40% of 500 million daily users check out at least one business profile. Interestingly, two-thirds of the 200 million people who check out a company’s business profile on any day do not follow the brand or company. That is something businesses should consider closely.

Merchants might want Instagram users to tap on the follow button, but they would probably be just as happy if people tap the button to contact the company. After all, this would allow them to develop a customer base that goes beyond Instagram.

[Featured image via Pixabay.com]