I increasingly find myself scrolling through my Insta feed rather than Facebook these days. There are so many “famous” Instagrammers out there today from all over the world, but their following on other social channels may be a third of the size, or they might not even have a presence at all on the most common channels – Facebook and Twitter. There’s no doubt about it – Instagram is our go-to social hub for inspiration and more and more of our clients want to increase their presence on the platform as part of their social media pr.
Every day, over 75 million people use Instagram. Although certainly no longer exclusive to teenagers and foodies, over 90% of Instagram users are younger than 35 years old. The social media channel has over 14 million monthly active users in the UK and 39% of these are aged 16-24 years old, compared to 16% of UK Facebook users. So what have brands been doing on Instagram to reach these millennials?
Channel 4’s ‘Gogglebox’ saw Instagram as a great opportunity to try a new way of creatively interacting with their target audience of 18-34 year olds. Using images to celebrate the personality of the show’s stars, the channel encouraged their audience to guess which Gogglebox character they represented and in doing so successfully reached over 750k 18-34 year olds during the campaign – some great social media pr! Now in its seventh series and still going strong, I’d say it was a huge success!
Some of the most successful brands that I love on Instagram right now include Frank Bod, Etsy UK and ASOS. Frank Bod, an Australian skin care brand, are doing Instagram right with their signature images of people covered in the coffee-based product and witty hashtag #letsbefrank encouraging fans to post photos of themselves – a great way for them to interact with the brand.
Speaking of hashtags, the Instagram community have created some brilliant ones to connect with one another. #fromwhereistand is hugely popular being used in well over 2 million posts and an obligatory moment to capture for any lifestyle blogger. It’s surprising how a photo of your feet can tell such a story! Another recent discovery for me on the hashtag front was #emojisinthewild. With emojis being a fully integrated part of how we communicate online these days, this one is pretty self -explanatory but so fun. Don’t forget to add the actual emoji of what you’ve discovered to your caption!
Most recently, Instagram announced that the maximum video length will be changing to 60 seconds, as opposed to just 13 seconds that we’ve all been trying to cut our videos down to until now. Although this is likely to change the nature of the videos popping up on our Instagram feed as they won’t be quite as short and sweet…it does reflect how viewing video online is definitely on the rise and something to be aware of if you’re involved in social media pr. Similar to Twitter’s new ‘First View’ video offering for brands, which launched in the UK last month. These developments are likely to be a response to the fact that 1 in 3 of us in the UK view at least one video online per week – although with my current Facebook feed and the number of videos shared on a daily basis I definitely exceed this! With that in mind, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to hear that by 2019, 80% of the global internet consumption will be video content. So if you’re not a whizz at creating video content yet…it may be time to think about getting to know social video a little better!
