Instagram Launches Professional Dashboard For Creators Building Businesses

Instagram has launched a new dashboard for business owners and entrepreneurial creators that centralizes access to all its business-related tools and educational content.

“At Instagram, we’re committed to helping creators turn their passions into a living and supporting small businesses,” the platform said in a blog post. The new Professional Dashboard is a “central destination to help you turn your passion into a living on Instagram,” it added.

To be clear, the dashboard isn’t rolling out with any brand-new features. Instead, it’s pulling together Instagram’s current roster of business offerings, including tools, expanded stats about accounts and monetization, and educational content meant to help users grow their companies digitally.

Instagram says it hopes that “by bringing them together into one central place we can make it easier for professionals to discover and access the tools best-suited for them.”

The dashboard builds on several other business-related features Instagram launched over the last year, largely in response to the traffic surge caused by COVID. In 2020, it debuted: Badges

, its first-ever (yes, really) creator monetization tool; ecommerce tools Instagram Shop and Checkout; revamped growth insights that show which posts are generating the most followers; and special creator/brand partnership tags that are part of an in-development “suite of monetization tools that support creators’ various needs and ambitions,” per COO Justin Osofsky.

In November, it launched a professional resources hub with information about these tools and about using the platform as a whole for business. The hub has since been visited by more than 82 million accounts, it says, and will receive updates throughout 2021.

Professional Dashboard can be used by any creator or business account. According to screenshots from Instagram (above), it directs users to tools like the aforementioned Badges and branded content tags, and also allows them to see data about monetization and set up/manage IGTV ads. Available educational content includes “tips and best practices from the Instagram team.”

More content will be added to the dashboard “over time,” Instagram says.