It was only little over a year ago that Instagram raised the maximum length on a video from 15 seconds to one minute, however in a short space of time, video has rapidly become the most favoured visual media for consumers engaging with social media content.
By 2020, Cisco predicts that global internet traffic from videos will make up 80% of all internet traffic. And social media will no doubt account for a huge chunk of all this.
Although Instagram was a little late to the party to introduce video, it’s now at the centre of the user experience. From its Snapchat-killing Stories function, to its recommended videos at the centre top of the search area, Instagram is riding the video high!
Commercially, this is worth noting of, as it is reported that the average level of brand engagement on Instagram is 4.3% – substantially higher than its social media sister sites. And for the rising number brands looking to be “self-publishers”, offering followers engaging information and education with the subtlety of brand awareness, video content is core.
And it’s not just brands. Twitter was once king of breaking news, but video is making Instagram creep up the ranks here too. Which makes sense given that of its 600+ million users, over 400 million are active every day. And nearly half of these users access their feed multiple times a day.
“BuzzFeed News, which published just two Instagram videos in May 2016, published 57 the following May. More than half of Time’s monthly Instagram output is now video, up from just 11 percent last March. ABC News’ output went from 4 percent to 87 percent; BBC News’ is now over 90 percent. The newfound emphasis is helping publishers deliver on many different kinds of goals, not just broadening reach but driving traffic, revenue and engagement both on and off the platform.” Digiday.com
And for individuals hoping to become the next internet sensation, Instagram appears to be the strongest hybrid social platform to publicise yourself on – offering solutions to post pictures, videos, “stories”, and even what could be described as blog posts with the lengthy text allocation in a picture post. Plus, video is much better at quashing all the Instafakes, as it’s much harder to hide reality behind the rolling camera…!
So if you’re a brand or individual just starting up on Instagram, here’s some quick facts* to help you get to grips with what’s popular when it comes to content creation!
- 100 million users use the “stories” feature daily
- Instagram posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement than those without
- The best time to post on Instagram for the most engagement is at 5 PM on Wednesdays
- As of December 2016, there were over 282 million selfies on Instagram
- The most used emoji is the heart <3
- Pizza is the most widely Instagrammed food, directly ahead of steak and sushi
- The most popular filters are Clarendon, Gingham and Juno/Lark
… And on that note we’ll leave you with a clip from one of favourite Instagrammers Lucy Mountain, who we worked with on some video content with for our client POM Wonderful!
Our consumer PR agency specialises in connecting everyday brands with everyday people across four core sectors; Consumer PR, Food & Drink PR, Consumer Technology PR and Sport, Health & Wellbeing PR.
* www.wordstream.com
