Brands posting at least once a week are still adding followers
A report by market research firm L2 that measures the impact and use of Instagram was released this week, confirming the growing popularity of the social networking juggernaut with teens and 20-somethings. Some key takeaways from the study:
- Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, and it’s now worth $35 billion. Clearly, it was the wisest move Facebook’s ever made—over 3 million teens abandoned Facebook between 2011 and 2014; users over 54 years old are Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic. So Instagram may be the lifeboat that ultimately keeps Facebook alive.
- Those same teens called Instagram their “most important social network.”
- “Enamored by 100 percent organic reach,” brands have embraced the platform, “enjoying a window of opportunity that will likely close.” Facebook, meanwhile, has turned off marketers because of its paywall between “brands and their communities.”
- The categories with the largest followings on Instagram are, in order, sportswear (spearheaded by Nike and Adidas, who’ve built massive communities on the network), fashion, auto, drinks, consumer electronics, and travel—which leads in community growth on Instagram, followed by beauty.
- The ratio of video to overall post frequency has stayed relatively flat quarter-over-quarter, “hovering between 5 and 6 percent.” Categories most likely to post video are consumer electronics, sportswear, and drinks—with sportswear videos enjoying the most engagement, averaging 1.37 percent engagement.
- Fashion and retail videos generate the weakest engagement of all videos on Instagram, with around a half a percent open rate for each.
- One-third of brands posting at least once a week to Instagram are still seeing an upward trajectory in followers.
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