Dive Brief:
- About 50% of Fortune 500 companies have a presence on Instagram, according to TrackMaven research reported by ClickZ.
- 98.9% of interactions with Fortune 500 brands on the platform are "likes," with only 1.1% being comments.
- The research found that Thursday and Friday are the days where brands post the most, while Sunday and Monday are the days with the most engagement. Posts between 10 pm and 3 am appear to have the most engagement.
Dive Insight:
As a marketing platform, Instagram is very much following in the footsteps of its parent company, Facebook. Instagram is quickly becoming more of a pay-to-play advertising platform rather than a place for organic audience outreach. TrackMaven’s results make it clear that people will see brands on Instagram, but there is a low level of engagement with those brands.
However, as ClickZ pointed out, some brands are more successful than others on Instagram. Starbucks, Nike and Disney are examples of brands successfully driving user-generated content and posting content that those audiences wanted to see. Nike stands out as the top brand, with 53.9 million followers, five times the number of Starbucks, which came in second.
Instagram recently rolled out a new “picked for you” video feature that delivers video content algorithmically in an effort to curate users’ “explore” tab. According to Instagram, video views on the social media platform have increased 150% in the last six months.