Instagram is the sexiest social media platform you can use to carve how you want your customers and clients to identify with your brand. Yes, Pinterest is visually sexy, but Instagram is faster and exists to quickly show images and connect with others. It can help drive foot traffic to a destination, and visually share announcements. One of its stumbling points, however, was the inability to log in and out of accounts quickly. Why is this an issue? Three reasons:

1. The marketer you hired to do your social media posting and engagement has other clients. It's a pain to log in and out of accounts and break the rhythm of working in Instagram.
2. You have a personal Instagram account where you post pictures of your kids, vacations, and food. You also have an account for your brand where you only show brand-focused images.
3. You own more than one business. Reasons 1 and 2 apply here.

After years of lagging behind other social networks like Twitter, Facebook (its parent company), and most recently Periscope (owned by Twitter), Instagram released the ability to log into multiple accounts without logging out. Directions on how to do that are at the bottom of this article. Meanwhile, I am going to explore the implications of this feature:

What is Toggling?

When you are switching from account to account in social media or on your computer, you are "toggling" between accounts. A toggle has an original definition that describes a small piece of wood, metal or something else that goes through a loop in order to connect something. In social media, it means switching between accounts with one tap of your finger. When Instagram announced its new feature, marketers all over this planet were rejoicing and texting to each other: "I CAN'T STOP TOGGLING!"

When Instagram announced it's new feature, graphic designer Leigh Baumann texted to her friend Tara Tornello, a  baker and Internet marketer: "I CAN'T STOP TOGGLING!" It's a safe bet that marketers all over this planet were rejoicing and texting to each other the same statement. Says Tara about the feature: "I manage two business accounts as well as my personal account. Signing in and out of them multiple times a day was becoming tiresome, especially considering there’s never been an option to save passwords. The new toggle switch is such a tiny enhancement, but comes with seriously life-changing benefits if your work revolves around managing social media for more than one brand. I think we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when we saw the “add account” button."

@cath619 @instagram Breaking news!!! Thanks for the tip!!!

— A Little Beacon Blog (@alittlebeacon) February 8, 2016

What Does Toggling, or Multi-Accounts Look Like?

Tara shared with us her Instagram multi-account view. Tara, based in New York's Hudson Valley, is an avid photographer and a baker who "has a healthy obsession with edible flowers" for her business The Darling Kitchen. She is also the full time Internet marketer for a large, local food and garden market, Adams Fairacre Farms. She does a lot of Instagramming. Toggling liberates her from pressing the Log Out button from one account, and then having to remember the login for the next account she needs to log into. And you know how typing in passwords goes - type the wrong letter or a lowercase in the wrong place is easy to do, and doing it too many times can lock you out of your account. Annoying! Take a look at what Toggling Liberation looks like for Tara:

Operating from the Wrong Account (OFTWA)

As a digital marketer, I have serviced clients by writing blog posts for their businesses, as well as their Facebook and Twitter accounts. I have also always maintained more than one business. I am a Gemini, so this is how I operate and is my "normal." Creating in this way means that I am slipping into personalities of different brands on a daily basis. When several social media accounts are literally at my fingertips, one must remember to take a pause to ask yourself: "Who am I right now?" Because your social media accounts are all connected, and your Twitter is logged in as one account, Periscope another, and who did you leave off with in Instagram? Much like a DWI, there can be negative repercussions from Operating from the Wrong Account. You could spend 15 minutes "Liking" a bunch of pictures, and 20 more minutes "Following" new accounts that you spent time looking into to see if you wanted them in your feed. And let's not forget about generating Tweets or posting Instagram pictures to the wrong account! You can delete, but stuff published on the Internet leaves prints behind.

Finally, I Will Use My Personal Instagram Account!

One regret I constantly lived with as a digital marketer was that I neglected my personal Instagram account. My Twitter account is lightly fed, as the Twitter app always had the toggle feature and made moving between accounts very easy. My personal Twitter account still baffles me as to how I want present it, because I do so many different things, that Twitter content would constantly shift gears and not flow as a story.

Instagram, however, I can dig in terms of how I want to color it with my personal story. I want to connect with my family and friends there and see their pictures. But the logging and and out issue had me skipping my account most of the time. Until now...

How to Get Mutli-Login Account Switching in Your Instagram

Getting the multi-account feature on your Instagram is easy. You're going to go to your App Store or Google Play on your phone and download the latest Instagram update. This update is in 7.15. If you haven't done this in a few updates, then you're in for a few surprises, like the layout feature that allows you to create a collage of photos in one photo.

Once you suck down the update, you can go to whatever account you want to be a home-base, and click on the gear icon. Scroll to the bottom of that and see the "Add Account" link. Once you do that, you will be able to click on your name at the top of the Instagram screen when you are viewing your own stream, and you'll see a downward-pointing arrow. Click that, and you'll be able to add a different account that you have credentials (aka a username and password) to. Like this:

Have fun!

PS: Fun Fact: The title of this article was lifted/inspired by Leigh Baumann's text to Tara Tornello and shared with me. It perfectly sums up what makes digital marketers giddy, and what puts brands on the map even more than before.