Instagram has more than 500 million daily users, and as its presence continues to grow, brands are acknowledging that this social media platform will increase their reach amongst target demographics.
- Once popular for simply sharing holiday photos, this platform has now taken appeal to influencers, brands and marketers.
- It is safe to assume that most brands audiences’ are on Instagram as well as your competitors, so these ten must know stats are imperative in forming a basic knowledge of the app and its users, and hopefully convince you to start using Instagram in your marketing strategy.
1. 1 billion people use Instagram.
June 2018 marks the month that Instagram reached 1 billion monthly active users, which is a huge milestone for an app that started as only a photo sharing platform.
Instagram has become one of the most popular social media platforms available and the numbers prove it - in June 2013, Instagram had 130 million monthly active users, and in just under 6 years it has grown 10 times.
2. 34% of Instagram users are millennials.
Millennials form part of the target audience that marketers are still trying to understand and engage, and their presence on Instagram is only going to increase with time.
Learn everything you can about this 34% so that when their demographic increases its presence on Instagram, your brand will be ready and equipped to engage the rest.
3. 38% of users check Instagram multiple times each day.
This is important to marketers because the more time people send on the app each day, the more opportunity there is for the users to see advertisements and start to recognise your brand.
Instagram announced that after introducing the Instagram Story feature, the amount of time users spend on the app every day increased. This gives brands longer to reach their audiences and another medium through which to reach them.
4. 25% of smartphone owners use Instagram.
With smartphones comes the ability for users to consume content anywhere. Your brand does not need to rely on users accessing your site through a desktop or laptop, it is always right at their fingertips.
With upcoming trends, make sure you consider creating your content to suit vertical frames, as not only can users see your content anytime, but they are also more likely to consume your content if they do not have to turn their phone to its side - think Instagram stories and IGTV.
5. 80% of users follow at least one business.
With 80% of users following at least one business, it is pretty clear that there is a great opportunity for businesses here to increase reach via Instagram.
Instagram provides a Business profile for brands, where you can share additional contact information, like a phone number, email address and website, that is not an option for personal accounts. Plus, with a Business account, you are also able to look into your Instagram analytics which provide data about reach, impressions, and audience per post or regarding your profile in general. This will help you plan your social content calendar around what your audience seem to be responding to the most so that you can deliver users exactly what they want.
6. 60% of users discover products on Instagram.
If this percentage of users are discovering products on Instagram, it means they are not only using Instagram to look at ‘pretty’ pictures, but also looking to this platform for inspiration. This same study also revealed that if brands are promoting via Instagram, they are more likely to make a positive impact on potential buyers.
The new feature, Instagram checkout, means that the gap between buyers and sellers has decreased, making the discovery of new products for users, that much easier.
7. 75% of users take action and click through brand promotions.
Instagram plays host to a multitude of influencers who promote products and brands through pictures, videos, stories and affiliate links. Their power to influence users is something to take note of, as Instagram is the social media platform to show off your products and services.
8. 90% of Instagram users are younger than 35.
The most popular age range for Instagram users is between the ages of 25-34, and second are users between 18-24 years-old. If your target audience falls in this demographic and you are not using Instagram, you are losing out on an extra platform to reach your audience!
Understanding these social platforms demographics will help when deciding which platforms will be most useful to your brand, in the future it will save investment and time, to ensure you are not creating content for a platform where you audience does not have a presence.
9. Instagram clocks up 3.5 billion likes everyday.
For brands, Instagram engagement is crucial, and it has increased by 29% from October 2017 to May 2018. Engagement on Instagram is measured by the way followers react with your content, whether this is through likes, comments or shares. It is generally a visual content based platform but offers different methods to showcase this visual content, for example through photos, videos, stories and IGTV.
Brands should make full use of the variety of methods to promote content as this range of content is more likely to continue growing your engagement.
10. When Instagram introduced videos, more than 5 million were shared in 24 hours.
Following this, in order to keep up with other social media platforms like Snapchat, in the summer of 2016 Instagram launched Instagram stories.
This transformed the premise of Instagram as a platform for users solely to post their most important moments. They no longer had to wait for a grid worthy moment, thanks to the story’s 24 hour feature, users had the freedom to share more of their everyday moments.
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