For big brands, the difference can be staggering. When Mercedes-Benz shared a post on Facebook recently about the premiere of its new A-Class, the update quickly garnered more than 10,000 Likes. Impressive … until you consider that the very same image on Instagram generated more than 150,000 Likes—15 times the response!
Granted, Mercedes is a visual brand and Instagram is a visual platform. (And engagement isn’t everything—Facebook, the world’s most popular social network, still enjoys an important edge in overall reach.) But the luxury automaker isn’t the only company seeing eye-popping results on Instagram.
The photo-based network added 100 million users in just five months last year—rivaling Facebook’s growth numbers—and now boasts 800 million monthly users. With an audience that skews young (a majority of users are reported to be under 30) and is also fiercely brand conscious (53 percent of users follow brands), Instagram is quietly emerging as the new home for companies seeking an impact on social media.
The dust has yet to settle on the impact of Facebook’s big decision in January to revamp its news feed—prioritizing “meaningful interactions,” especially updates from friends and family, while limiting content from brands and publishers. But, for companies, it’s likely to only accelerate a shift of resources and awareness to Facebook’s younger sibling. For businesses seeking to stay ahead of the social curve, here’s why doubling down on Instagram makes sense this year.
Instagram is a skilled omnivore when it comes to devouring other networks’ features. A social network with nearly a billion users isn’t supposed to be innovative and turn-on-a-dime adaptable. But Instagram has shown itself to be just that. The “Stories” concept, a daily disappearing montage of users’ photos and videos, may have originated with Snapchat, but Instagram has taken it mainstream since copying it 2016—adding more than 300 million users in the process.
Instagram has also been quick to embrace everything from live video and private messaging functionality to Snapchat-inspired “filters” for creative selfies. Plus, despite some initial user resistance, the network has pivoted in recent years from a chronological stream to an algorithmic news feed—a la Facebook—giving developers and advertisers more fine-grained control over what users see. What does all of this mean for companies? Instagram’s ability to continually reinvent itself promises to pay off in the form of sustained user growth going forward.
Engagement for brands on Instagram is unparalleled. Facebook, with its 2 billion-plus users, is obviously the undisputed champion of “reach” in the social media universe. But Instagram holds the title for an arguably more critical metric—”engagement.” While definitions vary, engagement embraces the degree to which users actually interact with content—liking, sharing and commenting, rather than just passively looking. A recent study showed that brands are getting three times more engagement on Instagram, when compared apples-to-apples with Facebook. On Twitter, meanwhile, engagement rates can be less than 1/30th what they are on Instagram.
The differential comes down to Instagram’s DNA: The network is and has…
