Report: What marketers can learn from the biggest brands on Instagram

What insights can you learn from Fortune 500 brands using Instagram? TrackMaven has your answer. After analyzing over 40,000 unique social posts on the image sharing network, they’ve released The Fortune 500 Instagram Report: 2016 Edition, sharing data on what marketers can learn from these big brands.

Looking at both B2B and B2C companies from May 2015 through April 2016, the key takeaways we can glean from the report are as follows:

• Instagram usage is increasing among the F500. Exactly 50% of the F500 are using Instagram, up from 24.6% in 2013 when TrackMaven released their first report. It is also interesting to note that Instagram is the preferred network over Google+ and Pinterest combined, according to a study by the University of Dartmouth.
  
• Engagement is key on Instagram, and conversation isn’t even top of mind. Only 1.1% of interactions across these brands’ posts are in the form of comments. The remainder of engagements are in the form of likes.
  
• Posts are usually made on weekdays, because we assume that’s when the social media managers are mostly working–between 9am and 9pm Eastern Time (9am Eastern Time and 6pm Pacific Time, working hours, more precisely). Interestingly enough, the highest Instagram engagement levels are on Sundays, and the best time to post is between 10pm and 3am, probably because no one else is around so visibility is highest among those perusing Instagram for something to like.
  
• Most images are not post processed and there’s no filter on them. Perhaps that’s because images are processed elsewhere and then uploaded to the feed, though it is possible that post processing is more of an afterthought. It would have been interesting to see how TrackMaven’s data compares to the average Instagram user.

For more interesting findings and to read more, check out the report.

About The Author

Tamar Weinberg

Tamar Weinberg is a professional hustler and author of The New Community Rules: Marketing on The Social Web. She blogs about all things tech, productivity, and social media customer success at Techipedia. She can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, among other sites.