Set up a brand new Instagram for your Small Business

Brand new small business and wondering how to get started on Instagram?
Setting up a fresh account and want to do it right from day one?
Staring at a blank profile and thinking… where do I even start?

This episode is for you.

I’m walking you through exactly how I’d set up a brand new Instagram business account in 2026 from choosing the right username and profile name, to writing a bio that actually helps you get seen, and planning your first posts with intention.

This isn’t a step-by-step button-click tutorial (because Instagram changes constantly) Instead, you’ll learn the why behind every decision so your account is set up to attract the right people and turn followers into customers based on what's working well on Instagram right now.

If you’re at the exciting “blank page” stage of business, press play.

If you want help implementing all of this and having support while you grow, you can join my small business mentorship community, Get Seen Get Sales here

Find out more about your ideal client in this episode of Small Business Growth Addicts here

• Social Media Strategy and Support: Join Get Seen Get Sales and get the tools, support, strategies & accountability you need to grow your small business (product or service) on social media with confidence Learn more
• Connect with Amanda on Instagram: @amandahughes.uk
• Growth Addicts Show Notes: Read the blog + grab freebies + guest links
• Free Small Business Downloads: Access all of Amanda’s freebies in one place → Get them here
• Exclusive Discounts: Exclusive discounts on Amanda’s favourite small business tools & services → See discounts

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of GoFadics. How are you? Thank you for joining me today. Really excited with what I'm talking about today. It's about how to set up a brand new Instagram account for your small business. Like, honestly, how exciting if you're at this stage that you've decided to start a business and you are now at the stage of setting up socials. Brand new, fresh start, blank page. I'm really excited for you. I'm really excited to help you with this. And please, if you're doing this, let me know how you get on. Come and say hi on Instagram, AmandaHughes.uk, so that I can follow along and see how you're getting on. Because I would really love to see the sort of progression of a new Instagram account. Because it's not very often that I come across them. If you know me by now, you'll know that I love social media. It's how I've grown my businesses, and now I want to help you do the same. That's why I created Get Seen Get Sales, my mentor group for small business owners who want to get seen online and actually attract followers that convert to customers. Inside you'll get weekly content prompts, live workshops, and support on everything you need to grow confidently on social media. If you're feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or just ready to do things differently, I've got you. Head to smallbusinessgrowthadicts.com to join us. Okay, so going to get right into it. This is how I would set up a new Instagram business account from start. I'm not going to get into the complete technicalities of it today. The main reason for that being is that things change. This could date really easily if I'm like click here, press that, choose that because menu options and where the menu is and whatever changes often. But as it stands just down, if you already have a personal Instagram account, you can go in and add an account or just open up the app and start from fresh if this is your very first account. And as it stands just down in January 2026 for a business account, you want to choose a business or a creator account. There's not an awful lot of difference between the two, but look into that before you start to make sure it's the right type of account for you. What I'm going to more go into today is how to actually set up your profile and make sure that you can get seen and leading to getting sales. Okay, so your username. Mines, as I mentioned, there is amandahughes.uk. That is my entire business now, apart from the podcast is growth addicts, obviously, but it's still under my name. Not very inventive, but it was the best choice for me just to go with my name. So my username on Instagram is AmandaHughes.uk. Now Amanda Hughes on its own was taken. And it's very frustrating if you're looking for this, you know, if your business name is The Candle Company and that's taken already. And what you might see is that it's taken. It's on a page, but that page has not been used for like 10 years, and there's just nothing you can do but that, you know, aside from contacting them and ask if they want to close it down so that you can use it. You never know. Don't ask, you don't get, but that's really your only option there. If it's taken, it's taken. My name is Taken. Tried a few variations, but I went with amandahughes.uk because that actually mirrors my website. So that was quite good that that was available. What I will see here is keep it as close to your business name as humanly possible, keep it uncomplicated, like we don't want zeros for O's. Limit the amount of you know special characters and dots and whatnot in it. Have it as close to your business name as possible, have it written in plain English as much as humanly possible with really limited characters and whatnot in there. So the reason for that is to make it memorable and make it easy to search. You know, someone might see you pop up and then go to type for you again, and they've not realized that you've used a zero for an O, and then they won't be able to find you again. So make it memorable and easy to search for. Then you've got your profile name. Now, this is the bold sort of description as it stands just now, January 2026. I'm gonna keep caveating this because it changes a lot. Your profile name is underneath your username, just to the right hand side of your profile picture, which we'll talk about in a second. So your profile name is searchable, and this is often what a lot of people miss. Some people just miss this altogether, or they write their own name. You know, I might just have Amanda Hughes or Amanda in there, or whatever your business name, you know, you might just have the candle company in there. What you need to know about the profile name section is that it is searchable. It is directly linked to the explore page. So you know the little magnifying glass at the bottom of the Instagram app, you can open that up and you can search for Pilates Glasgow, and then that's going to show you everything to the best of its ability. It includes Pilates Glasgow on Instagram, and one of those search places will be the profile name, which is this bold area here. So I've got a small business social media mentor, Amanda Hughes, because my business is my name, they might be searching for my name, so I like having that in there. But also social media mentor, small business mentor, you know, there's a few keywords and phrases there. So when it comes to this, please don't just put your name or your business name because it means the only way you'll be found is if someone's specifically searching for those names. You want to put in here ideal client keywords and phrases. Now I'm going to presume if you've got to this stage that you already know who your ideal client is, if you're at the stage of setting up social media accounts for your business. If not, pause and do the work on that. I have another episode all about ideal client. I will link to that in today's show notes and description. So if that's something that you're not quite sure on, or you've not started yet, or you know, could be doing with a little help with, then head over to that episode and listen to that. You will enjoy it, you'll get a lot out of it. We want to put in here keywords and phrases that our ideal client would open up Instagram and search for and therefore lead to us, like the Pilates Glasgow. You know, they might not be looking for Amanda's Pilates studio, but they might be searching for Pilates in Glasgow. So that kind of thing. So make sure your profile name is searchable. Next to your profile name, you've got your profile picture. I've got a photo of me with my headphones on. This was part of a professional brand shoot, but it doesn't have to be, especially right now, as I speak. Instagram is kind of going back to its roots of just casual pictures, blurry pictures, real life pictures, real life messy pictures, you know. So I wouldn't suggest a messy picture, blurry picture for your profile picture right enough. I just wanted to highlight that it doesn't have to be a professional brand shoot, as long as it's a nice clear image. Now, if you are a big face, a big part of your brand, like I am, it's me who everyone deals with, and that you know, I I am the business, then I would suggest a nice clear head-shoulder shot of you that fits nicely in the circle space for Instagram profile pack. There's no black lines at the top or bottom, you know, your head's not cut off or whatever, that's nice and clear, and we can see your face. That builds instant trust and likability and visibility for you as well. It's just a really good thing if you're a big part of the business to have your face there nice and clear. If it's more logo, maybe a product-based business you've got, and you're more reliant on your logo, then make sure your logo's there nice, clear again, nothing cut off at the top or bottoms, no like black lines, top or bottom or anything. Make sure it's sized to fit. You can easily resize images on Canva now. So do that if need be. But whether it's yourself or a team photo or a logo photo, whatever is right for your business, make sure it's nice, clear, can be easily seen. No one's having to squint their eyes or having to want to zoom in or anything like that to be able to see or read it or anything. Make sure it's size to fit. Then we're moving on to your bio. So that's the 150 characters you've got here. Now, if you think of your ideal client's journey, say they see one of your reels, it's been shown to them, they don't follow you, they think, well, this is interesting, this is this is a bit of me. So they see the reel and then they go to your profile page to decide whether to follow or not. Then this is where your bio has to do a fair bit of the heavy lifting. It's also searchable, like just like I spoke about with your profile name. People can search for keywords and phrases, and your bio is part of the place that Instagram will search to pull that information to therefore recommend your account. So we want it to be SEO, search engine optimization rich, keywords and phrases that your ideal client will use. We want to let it know what you do, but also what to expect from following you. And that's a bit of a shift that I've seen recently. The first line of your bio traditionally would be what you do and who you do it for. You know, I help small business owners grow on social media. But now I'm seeing a bit of a shift where the top line is more about tell us what we'll get out from actually following you. It's less about what you do as the business, what we can get from you as a business, but what can I expect from following you? So just now my top line is daily Instagram tips for small business owners. So the straight away, that's what you're going to get from following me. You know, it's not about what you're going to get from working from me. That's what you're going to get by hitting follow because that's really what in the first instance I want the bio to do, the first line of the bio to do. So bear that in mind and think outside the box there. You know, if at the minute you can't, well, you're just starting from fresh, actually, Speph. You're planning your content, which we'll get into next. You're like, I don't know what they can expect from follow me. You know, I'm just going to be sharing my products or my service or what I offer. Then think outside the box a bit there. Is there a sort of series that you can do that say you sell organic cotton baby clothes, which one of our gets and get sales members do in my community? So say that's what you sell, then maybe you'll be sharing weekly skincare tips for a baby, that kind of thing. Just think outside the box there, but on the sort of edge of your niche. So your niche for that, your ideal client would be perhaps a parent of a newborn three to six months child with sensitive skin or shown signs of eczema or dry skin or whatever it might be. And so therefore, just on you know, they're not coming to you for skincare, they're coming to you for the clothing. But skincare is on their mind. So if you think of just skirting around the edge of your niche of your ideal client there, you could be sharing weekly skin tips for babies with sensitive skin. And perhaps you could even collaborate with someone who is specializes in that as well. And at the end of the day, all roads lead to Rome. It still leads into what you do, it still leads into your sensitive clothing, your organic cotton clothing range for babies with sensitive skin or any sort of skin issues. So have a think about that. The rest of your bio, you do want it to be more about what you do. You have a call to action on it as well. So you know 150 characters here, generally broken into three or four lines. I would say the second and third line a little bit more about what you do. And then make sure your last line is a clear call to action. Now, bearing in mind you can change your bio at any time, like you could change this daily if you wanted, you know, wouldn't necessarily suggest that, but you will change your bio based on what's you know important in your business right now. So right now, my call to action is join us, and it points down to my links, as in join my small business mentorship community is what my call to action is there. If you've got a new freebie out, it might be download the guide here. Again, pointing to the links, get to links in a second. It might be follow along, it might be shocker sale, whatever's on your priority just now, make sure that's in your call to action. So next we have a space for links, which is awesome. You can add up to five links here, external links, which is great. For all social media platforms, they don't like external links because they want to keep you on the platform. But it is great that as small business owners, we have these platforms that we can use for free to reach thousands, millions, billions of users. And there's also a space for us to put our external links. So it really is a fantastic feature. Please do use it. Top tip for links: make sure they work, make sure they're clearly labelled. Don't just put your links so that when someone opens up your links, but it's just www.blah blah blah. You can name your link once you open your links up. Mine's, for example, there's one that says a growth addicts podcast. You know, it's not just got the actual mechanical link there. I've named it. So make sure your links are named so that your ideal clients can easily click on them. And please, for the love of all that's holy, make sure the link works. We don't want any broken links, we don't want any redirects, nothing like that. It's a high, high chance if someone clicks on that link and it's not working, they think, oh, come back to it later. They won't come back. Okay. You know, you've already done such hard work to get them to that stage, to actually be at looking at your links. Like that's really close to doing whatever it is you want them to do. Don't lose them at this point. Number one rule of business: do not make it hard for your customer to buy, and broken links do. So please make sure your links are working and test them regularly. Quick pause from our conversation because I'm wondering how you'd feel if I told you I could give you a free£50 today. Yep, if you've been thinking about moving your business bank account or perhaps you don't have a business bank account yet, I can highly recommend Monzo. And if you open an account with them via the link in today's show notes, you get a free£50. Monzo are free to bank with. I bank with them personally. It's so easy to use, and also they won Best Business Banking Provider in the UK in 2024. So if you don't have a business bank account yet or you're looking to change from where you are just now to free business banking and£50 in your account, head over to spawbusinessgrowthadicts.com for the link and enjoy. Okay, so underneath that then we'll come to our highlights. Now, Instagram over the last year or so have talked about removing highlights and integrating them into the main grid and whatever, and I'm sure that Adam Massery, the head of Instagram, announced just at the end of last year that they're thinking of actually just leaving them where they are. So again, this might change, you know. I could record this episode and tomorrow Instagram updates the app and it looks completely different, and I need to redo this altogether. But as it stands right now, highlights are the little circular bubbles that sit just above our main grid, our main profile grid, and underneath where our links are. And something I want you to bear in mind about the highlight bubbles is that when a user opens up the app, they can only ever see the first four. Now you can have more than that. I think you can have up to ten, but bear in mind that the user can only see the first four without having to actually swipe and scroll along. So I would make sure that your first four are either your only four or certainly your most important four. And if you're only going to set up a couple of highlights to start with, I would say one about you, about your services and client reviews, client words, client feedback. Now, if you're just starting from brand new, you might not have that yet. And also bear in mind that highlights are created from posts that are shared to stories and then save to highlights. If you're brand new to Instagram, this might sound a bit confusing, but it becomes very, very easy as you go along and start to use it. So say you make a post on Instagram, whether it's a real or a carousel or whatever it might be, you might then choose that to share that to stories so that more of your existing followers see it. And from stories, there's an option to save to highlight. So that's how highlights are created. So bearing in mind if you're just getting started, you might not actually have any to add just now, but that will come. You can still set them up or just wait until you have actually started actively posting on your page and your profile, and you have some bits to save, and then you can easily save them to a new highlight at that stage. Something I've missed there actually, between highlight bubbles and your links, you can also link to other social accounts that are part of Meta like Facebook and Threads. Now, generally I would say in your bio and in this area, don't link to anything else unless you're totally comfortable that you might lose your potential new follower at this stage. So if they've come to find you on Instagram and then they see your Facebook link and they think, oh, I use Facebook more often, so I'm going to click on that and go over there and follow over there instead. If you're fine with that, then that's great. But if you're not, and Instagram is brand new and you really want to grow that, I wouldn't have any other external links there. So only have any external links to other social media profiles if you're happy to lose them to those profiles. Bear that in mind. Okay, now we're getting started with posting on our grid. Now there's a little structure, a little strategy I want to talk you through. But first off, I'll let you know that you can pin three posts to the front of your main grid. So once you do start posting, you might want to think about posting these three types of posts. Similar to what I said about your highlights, you want to have a sort of about me introduction post to you, one about what you offer, your products, your services, how to work with you, how to buy from you, and one about client review, client feedbacks, testimonials, click DMs, screenshots, you know, whatever it might be. That's the sort of three pinned posts I think you would want to see, especially as a new business, so that people can get to know you better. But in general, if you're just going to start posting, then this is so exciting. And what I want you to bear in mind is attract, nurture, convert. So, as part of my online community that I run, it's a social media mentorship community for awesome small business owners. There's like just over 40 of us in there just now. They are just good eggs who are there to just learn and grow and support and just cheer each other on. Honestly, it's an absolute joy to watch that group just grow and thrive every single day. One of my members actually said recently, it's like it's just a group of people who just want good things for you. Like, is there anywhere better in the world to be? I just don't think there is. So that's uh Get Seen Get Sales, it's appropriately called because that is what we do in there. At its core, we are learning to grow our small business on social media, but it's so much more than that. It's a whole small business community covering all sorts of subjects. We have monthly masterclasses that cover all different things. This year we're going to have masterclasses on things like bookkeeping. Of course, we're going to introduce a bit of woo-oo as well, a bit of tarot in business, as well as much more practical things. We're going to have a masterclass this year on systems and processes, particularly as your business gets busier, how to manage all that at the back end. We're having a book writing masterclass this year, speaking opportunities, about SEO, search engine optimization for websites. So, yeah, at its core social media, but we cover so much more in there. But at its core, we follow what my get seen, get sales method. There are five steps to that. One is know your ideal client. Two is optimize your profile so that you can get seen, get sales. That's everything I've just spoken about. There is all of that section. Three is planning your content. There's no point in just winging it and posting content as and when. You have to plan your content to make sure it's aligned with your business goals, to make sure that it's doing what it should be doing. We're using this for marketing. So we need to make sure that we know what it is we want the content to do before we do it, and that comes in the planning stage. And then we want to create content that attracts, nurture, convert. And that's what I want to talk about today. You want to make sure you are sharing and planning, creating and sharing a range of content that's going to grow your business for the long term. You know, reels that are trending and whatnot will come and go, yes, but you want this is a solid strategy that you can build a business on for years to come. So you want to create content that attracts new ideal client followers. As it stands just now, that's primarily reels that are shown to ideal clients who don't already follow you. So you want to make sure you put attraction content out there in order to grow your account, especially if this is a brand new Instagram account. You want to make sure that you're getting in front of new people, new ideal clients' eyes who want to follow along, because that then gives you the opportunity to nurture the connection with them. So nurture and build relationships, build trust with existing followers. So once we've attracted them, they follow along, and then we do nurturing content, which is sort of educational content, opinion pieces. It's about you, about the business that you do, why you offer a particular service, client reviews, what it's like working with you, and also just chatty things as well. Like, you know, getting to know people, where are you from? Tell me why you're here, all sorts of things. It's the juicy middle where it's fun content to make and it's important content to make because sales are made in the nurture post. Nurture posts are all about building relationships. You're not directly saying buy now, book now, but this is where sales decisions are made. This is where people get to know you. And then when it does come to the conversion content, where you are saying book now, buy now, sign up, etc. etc., they've already made the decision whether they're going to buy from you or not in the nurturing post because that's where they've really got to know you and got to know your business, and they feel like you've got to know them as well. So do not skip the nurturing post. And then, like I say, your conversion posted, your direct sales post, come in and buy this product just now because there's a special offer on, or this is a great time, or whatever it might be. We need our nice mix of attract, nurture, and convert. If you need more help on any of these points, then the last part of my getseen get sales method is community. And that's really the glue that brings all of this together. Within my online mentorship community, get seen, get sales, we call it GSGS. Like I say, there's over 40 hours in just now. It's growing daily, it's thriving. It's a community of small business owners who want nothing but good things for each other, but also you will learn how to implement everything I've just mentioned there, how to make sure that your profile is optimized fully, you can ask questions, get feedback, make tweaks. You will learn how to plan and create content, you'll learn exactly who your ideal client is. You will get a content pack every week that's based on what is working right now on Instagram, not last week, not last month, certainly not last year. I study and research these platforms to make sure you know exactly what is working right now. I see platforms there because we don't just cover Instagram, we cover Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok. I'm going to introduce Stead shortly. And what we do in there is all about repurposing content. So we kind of start with Instagram as our main platform because it's the one that 100% of us use. And if you're listening to this today, you're setting up brand new on Instagram, then it's the one you're using too. But all the content we talk about can be repurposed for any other platform, you know, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. etc. So if you want to grow your business on social media, GSGS is the place to be. It really is. You will get the tools, the resources, and most importantly, the support that you need to grow your business on social media. So I really hope this has helped you get set up today. If you're starting out your Instagram brand new, this helps you get A profile up and running that is going to get seen. And then we've talked about types of content to start sharing to help you attract and nurture convert. If you want to go deeper in that, please come and join us in Get Seen Get Sales. It is only£40 per month. There is no tie-ins whatsoever. We're not in the habit of keeping hostages. If you join us, we will love you instantly and welcome you in with open arms. But if you decide for any reason it's not for you, you can leave at any time. We will miss you, but we will not keep you against your will. Like I say,£40 a month, no tie-ins, leave anytime. I'm sure you'll love it. The value is something like£800 a month at the last time I checked on it, but you get all for£40 a month, monthly masterclasses, weekly content packs, group chats, promotion opportunities like our members regularly buy from each other, recommend each other. There's just a couple of travel agents in there, they book holidays with each other. You know, everybody's bought from everybody at some point in there. A weekly promo thread. We have a virtual office party every Friday. It's just a drop-in, drop-out text thread. Something to note is we don't have any live calls. We used to have them. People just couldn't make them. You know what it's like. I've been in groups myself that the only way to really get the benefit from them is to show up on live calls with young kids and a busy life. It's really hard to be able to do that. So we decided to scrap live calls and have more text-based threads. That's just like one big group chat. And we did that on a trial basis, and it's what everybody's loving it. So our masterclasses are video, but they're pre-recorded, so you can watch it anytime. Some of them are sort of private podcast styles, some of them are sit down for half an hour at your desk, make some notes style. Yeah. So there's just something for everything. There's weekly social media guides as well on all platforms about how to use certain features. You know, we just covered using video and on LinkedIn and how to do that. And honestly, it's amazing. The link is below for more information. I will not keep you any longer, and I hope to see you in Gets and Get Sales. I also hope to see you on Instagram. If you are listening to this episode to set up a new account, please come and find me at mandacuse.uk. Tell me your new account, say hi from it so that I can come and follow along and watch you absolutely smash it. Take care.