How to Manage Multiple Instagram Accounts for Clients at the Same Time

Do you have to manage multiple Instagram accounts and keep your sanity intact amidst a sea of content? I’m here to lend a helping hand and guide you through the choppy waters of juggling several Instagram accounts at the same time.

Between Instagram app limitations on the number of accounts, constant post scheduling, and creating tons of different content, it’s only natural for social media marketers to wish for a magic trick up their sleeve.

I’ll talk about who might need multiple Instagram profiles, the wins and woes of managing more than one IG account, and how the right social media tool can make it all a breeze.

How many Instagram accounts can you have?

You can create and manage multiple Instagram profiles.

The native Instagram app allows users to have up to 5 accounts, no matter if they’re personal or business accounts. You can switch between multiple Instagram accounts with no login and logout as long as you keep the number under 5. Keep in mind that you will need separate email addresses for each of your Instagram accounts.

But what if you need to manage more than five accounts at once? Logging out every time is going to drive you mad eventually. To stay safe and sane, turn to dedicated social media management platforms for help (like Planable).

How to manage multiple Instagram accounts for clients – 4 steps

When you manage several Instagram accounts, things can easily spiral out of control. However, for social media marketers, it’s standard business. How many of us have our own personal Instagram account and brand account on our phone? I know I do.

Here are 4 pro tips on how to manage multiple accounts and never fall behind on deadlines.

1. Establish your purpose for each account

If you’re a brand or a freelancer handling multiple accounts, map out the future system and give each profile page a purpose.

Ask yourself three questions:

• What is the goal? Decide why you or your brand need to create multiple accounts, to better understand the final goal you’re pursuing with each new profile.
• What is the target audience for each account? If your followers need separate IG accounts to cater to their interests, they’re probably quite different, so lay each persona out.
• What content do your audiences crave? Based on your audience’s preferences, you can post content that is relevant and engaging for each, and it will differ from account to account.

Having a clear strategy and understanding of the audience will help you personalize the communication and keep your content efforts aimed at particular Instagram users.

2. Create a content calendar for each account

Social media managers have only so much operational memory: keeping all your content plans in mind is positively impossible.

An Instagram content calendar helps you to easily manage the content strategy for multiple IG accounts and keeps your posting consistent, relevant, and engaging.

Think of a transparent way to organize your posts. I personally like to mark all my posts with labels as it helps me identify holes in the content plan faster.

Find a way to represent your ideas that would also allow you to easily switch between accounts. For instance, Planable offers a very visual calendar view to tie ideas to days and times and get a general idea of what’s ahead of you in just a quick glance.

3. Develop content ideas to fill your calendars

It’s now time to fill in the content grid. Brainstorm content ideas for your Instagram accounts, taking these things into consideration:

• Your overall marketing goals: should this business account generate sales or serve employer brand purposes? The initial objective will define the topics.
• Your target audience: this will help you determine the preferred format, relevant topics, and tone of voice.
• Your capacity: if you have five Instagram accounts to manage and can’t handle ten daily stories for each, slow down and plan as much content as you can provide regularly.

Tip: see if any of your several accounts intersect in any way and create content that can be featured in multiple profiles. Instagram allows for collaborations, giving you just the tool to mash two potatoes with one fork — like @nike did, collabing with its second account, @nikefootball.

4. Use a social media management tool to schedule posts

Back when I was managing three very different Instagram business accounts, I took on a rule that helped me a lot: create and schedule content in advance. Easy but life-changing. One day dedicated to simply laying out a week ahead saved me a lot of nerves and “did I post it to the right account?” obsessions.

There’s always going to be a last-minute request from the PR team, a very urgent communication, or a change of plan at one of your brands. But if you have most of your content planned and scheduled, you have a cool mind and enough resources to deal with the unexpected incoming task.

Juggling several Instagram accounts in one day is tough — unless you have the right tools. Many social media management tools offer an Instagram post scheduler feature. You just need to find the right one for you!

Multi Instagram account management with Planable

As a social media manager, I’ve tried over a dozen of apps to manage multiple instagram accounts, and Planable remains the leader in terms of visuals, collaboration features, and user experience.

Although you can use Planable for any type of content (neat, right?), there are some features that are especially useful for marketers who manage multiple Instagram accounts.

Log in with an unlimited number of accounts

One of the hottest features, especially for marketing agencies. While Instagram itself limits you to five accounts only, in Planable, you can add as many Instagram accounts as you need and easily switch between them without entering the login information every time.

You can include multiple Instagram pages in one common workspace or assign them to several workspaces to offer dedicated viewing rights to multiple clients or teams.

Use the content calendar

A highly visual social media content calendar has four different views: calendar, list, feed, and grid. The grid view is especially useful for Instagrammers — it gives you a very comprehensive look at your profile to make sure it’s all neat and on-brand. And you can rearrange your posts with a simple drag-and-drop to make everything look perfect.

 

Manage any type of content

You can collaborate with your team using a dedicated workspace. Create, edit, and approve any type of content you like and get things done ten times faster — no spreadsheets, Google Docs, or approval emails to other users required.

Planable also allows you to schedule and directly publish any sort of content on Instagram: photos, carousels, videos, and first comments. You can even schedule Instagram stories and Reels! Saves you tons of time.

Leverage the AI writing wingman

Planable also comes packed with an AI feature that helps social media managers polish their texts. The right AI prompts help you generate new ideas when you’re out of creative juice or rephrase your existing text to make it punchier.

Rephrasing also helps a lot when you manage multiple social media accounts: you can reuse one post across all your accounts. Nobody’s going to know (provided all accounts share similar topics).

Planable has a flexible pricing system: you can balance the price out depending on the number of workspaces, pages, and users. Tailor the platform to your needs and liking for as little as $11/month and scale up on demand.

The only significant drawback is that Planable doesn’t provide reports and analytics. However, you can always check important metrics using built-in Instagram analytics tools.

Who needs to manage multiple Instagram accounts?

Most people have one Instagram account. But marketers are not most people. Fellow marketing colleagues often have to manage multiple Instagram accounts as a part of their work duty. Let’s consider a couple of examples.

Marketing teams

Even with Instagram alone, a company might have two or more accounts to manage: for instance, if it hosts more than one brand under its roof or has separate profiles dedicated to employees and clients. In this case, a social media manager needs to manage multiple accounts and keep the grid layouts in order, preferably with ease and a breeze.

Social media agencies

Agencies are a classic exhibit of managing multiple Instagram accounts. With 2 billion monthly active users, Instagram is a viral platform; chances are, most of the social media agency’s clients have at least an account to handle. The more clients you have, the more Instagram profiles you have to take care of.

Freelance social media marketers

Like agencies, freelancers usually have several clients and, therefore, have to manage multiple Instagram accounts: one of their own and one for each client. Some freelance marketers also divide personal and professional accounts and have to handle both from one device.

Why run multiple Instagram accounts, and how it helps fine-tune content

It’s obvious why you need to manage multiple Instagram accounts when you’re a freelancer or an agency. But why would brands or creators run several accounts? Only to make it harder on the social media manager?

Multi-account Instagram management works the same way as audience segmentation in email marketing. Here are 4 core reasons brands and influencers create separate accounts.

Tap into regional audiences

Global brands find it more efficient to have different accounts for each region. Their target audience is scattered across time zones, has distinct content preferences, and probably speaks different languages. Creating multiple accounts for one company helps deliver more personalized content and respond promptly to DMs.

For instance, Spotify has global and regional accounts that post content specific to that region. It allows them to reach out to their target audience and catch their active users in each particular location.

Segment content and target audiences

People tend to be interested in more than one thing, and brands that cater to more than one interest can utilize it. In this case, dividing core interests and, therefore, target audiences between multiple Instagram accounts makes total sense, both in terms of content quality and monetization.

Influencer Lydia Rose can serve as an excellent example. Her main specialization is fashion, so she runs her Instagram profile @fashioninflux with fashion tips, styling hacks, and haul videos.

But she’s also a fan of interior design — and that’s what her @interiorsinflux account is about. Two Instagram accounts allow her to tailor content and keep the audiences equally engaged.

Specific messaging for each product or service

Some bigger brands have multiple sub-brands or different products, and their content strategy can benefit from not mixing apples and oranges. Dividing brands or products into different Instagram accounts helps create more targeted and relevant content that hits the audience just right.

Like Adidas is doing. They have multiple accounts for their brands and specific activities: Adidas Original, Adidas Football, Adidas Running, etc. It allows them to craft more personalized Instagram content for each of their audiences and build communities rather than sending mixed signals to skateboarders and football players alike. Niche marketing at its finest.

Differentiate the brand from its owner

In the world of social media advocacy, people in the company leadership often choose to separate from the brand and advocate for it on their own behalf. In this case, a marketing manager might have to take care of the social interactions on both personal and brand accounts. The same goes for influencers who run their own businesses: they create separate Instagram accounts for their products.

Cassey Ho, a fitness influencer, has separated Instagram accounts for each of her brands. And although she still creates engaging posts about her brands, Blogilates and Popflex, on her personal page, she puts some distance between her as a CEO and her as an influencer, hitting both audiences.

Wrap up

Managing multiple Instagram accounts can be a total nightmare — but it doesn’t have to be one. Equipped with the right tool, you may juggle as many Instagram accounts as you need. Let’s start today: grab 50 free posts from Planable and give them a test drive!