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Simply Measured's Instagram study looks at what the Interbrand Top 100 brands are doing to engage consumers using Instagram. It includes the brands and industries leading the charge, how they’re interacting with followers, and where there’s room to develop. The data and analysis comes from Simply Measured’s new Instagram analytics tool, which helps marketers report on their Instagram engagement, analyze competitiors, and measure Instagram performance in context with all analytics from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+.
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Top Brands Recognize Instagram as a Consumer’s Paradise A Study of the Interbrand Top 100 Brands on Instagram
When we rang in 2012, Instagram had 15 million users and was only available on the iPhone. Seven months later, the simple image-sharing app has over 80 million users, has been bought by Facebook for a cool billion, is now available on Android phones (to the dismay of iPhone users everywhere) and has over 4 billion photos posted to date. This aggressive growth has provided a massive marketing opportunity, and top brands are taking that seriously.
The following study takes a look at what the Interbrand Top 100 brands are doing to engage consumers using Instagram. It includes the brands and industries leading the charge, how they’re interacting with followers, and where there’s room to develop. The data and analysis comes from Simply Measured’s new Instagram analytics tool, which helps marketers report on both their Instagram engagement and that of their competitors.
Early Adoption Adds to Engagement
Today, 40 percent of the Interbrand 100 has an Instagram account. Considering Instagram’s relative youth, it’s strictly photo-posting focus and the fact that it’s a mobile-only network, this is very impressive. While nowhere close to Facebook’s 98-percent adoption rate or Twitter’s 94 percent, its growth has happened much more quickly. Instagram is expected to reach 100 million users by early fall; a benchmark that took Facebook four years to reach, and Twitter five years. The collection of active Interbrand 100 companies already has an Instagram audience of 3 million and growing, but the top 10 brands have 96% of the engagement. The fact that this many top brands are already engaging customers successfully shows how socially savvy top brands are becoming, but also speaks to the relevance of Instagram as a network and a market, and how far behind late arrivals will find themselves.
Top Brands Recognize Instagram as a Consumer’s Paradise A Study of the Interbrand Top 100 Brands on Instagram
Big Brands Are Making Big Waves
Not surprisingly, some of the earliest adopters and brands with the highest number of followers are also brands that are extremely active on other social channels. MTV and Starbucks have a commanding share of the Instagram market, each with 750,000-plus followers. At number four, Nike has fewer but more passionate followers who click the like button more than any other brand’s followers.
The majority of brands that have Instagram accounts are actively using them: more than 25-percent post at least one photo per week and 17 of the brands on the list have 10,000+ followers.
Top Brands Recognize Instagram as a Consumer’s Paradise A Study of the Interbrand Top 100 Brands on Instagram
The most active category on the list is luxury brands: with strong showings from top-performers such as Burberry, Tiffany & Co., Audi, Hermes, Gucci, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Armani (all of which are in the top 15 for total engagement). While no particular vertical stands out, it’s notable that the active users are almost exclusively B2C companies. Financial service and B2B brands haven’t found a reason to get involved in an image-sharing network. The “earlybird” filter apparently doesn’t add noticeable value to financial charts.
Favorite Filters: The Most Engaging and Most Used
Of the photos posted by these brands, 60 percent have filters applied to them. While the “Valencia” filter has the highest engagement, it’s only used 7 percent of the time. “Lo-Fi” has the highest usage across the board, but a slightly lower engagement. This could mean that Valencia is under-utilized, but most likely, it highlights the fact that there is no “cure-all” filter on Instagram. There’s a lot of room for trial-and-error as brands use the filter analytics to determine and optimize their individual strategies.
Quality Control
As might be expected, there is a strong correlation between the number of followers and engagement per photo. However, there is a low correlation between number of followers and engagement as a percentage of followers, suggesting that the network effect on a brand-by-brand basis may be limited. This is possibly due to the fact that Instagram doesn’t have a built in “share” action, instead relying on users cross-posting to Facebook and Twitter to drive viral sharing of content. Additionally, simply posting more photos does not drive engagement. The correlation between total photos and engagement per photo is relatively weak.
Top Brands Recognize Instagram as a Consumer’s Paradise A Study of the Interbrand Top 100 Brands on Instagram
Brand Highlight: How Audi Is Making the Most of Their Instagram Audience
Can you measure the success of a brand’s Instagram efforts without taking into consideration their cross-channel promotion and overall integration throughout the digital space? Maybe not. But certain companies have successfully used the platform without making it a driving tool for their other networks, and as a result, they’ve gained significant footing in the race for Instagram’s 80-million plus users. Instagram has quickly become its own valid community in the social arena, and several major brands are taking advantage of that opportunity.
Audi is a prime example of a company that has taken Instagram seriously and seen it pay off. While they don’t have the audience of some other top Instagram players (like MTV’s 813k followers and Starbucks’ 758k), they engage the audience they do have – which, at 104,511 and growing, is nothing to scoff at – much more effectively.
Since June 20th, has 4.5 engagements per follower on Instagram. How does that look on a large scale? They average 1,423 “likes” and 34 comments per photo. Paired with a relatively high frequency of posts (normally one a day), this adds up quickly.
Top Brands Recognize Instagram as a Consumer’s Paradise A Study of the Interbrand Top 100 Brands on Instagram
This success could be more about what the folks at Audi aren’t doing, rather than what they are. Instead of using Instagram to announce promotions and deals or drive that audience to sale pages and Facebook contests (of which they have plenty), Audi simply uses the image-sharing space to share…well…images.
Does it help that Audi makes a visually appealing product? Absolutely. But they don’t post random snapshots either. Each photo seems to be a hand-picked, well-edited shot, either submitted by a fan or borrowed from Audi’s own marketing material. Combined with a generous use of Instagram’s filters, focused tags, and captions conveying their excitement (their most-used tag isn’t a type of vehicle, it’s “awesome”), Audi seems to have found a forum that both engages and excites their fans without driving them elsewhere.
Conclusion
As we approach Instagram’s 2-year anniversary and they creep closer to 100 million users, the network will become harder and harder for brands to ignore. While building a strategy around a mobile-only, exclusively image-based platform can seem daunting, the growing audience is engaged, and top brands are taking advantage of this. For brands that continue to hold out and watch as their competition is engaging users and measuring results, 80 million potential customers are being ignored.
Simply Measured’s new Instagram report helps brands measure and analyze their Instagram presence, including total engagement, shares, likes and comments. To see how Simply Measured can help you analyze your Instagram engagement, try our Free Instagram User Report.
