This post is one last look at the Instagram growth and engagement trends from the year 2015. We're also releasing the data from December.
We've been doing Instagram studies on over 2,500 accounts since April 2015 and we've seen some interesting trends in this period.
Instagram growth 88.21% down, engagement 61.43% down in 2015
As seen from our data, there's only one trend on Instagram, and it's downward. In our nine months of studies, the follower growth on Instagram has declined 88.21%. From the high of 1.95% in April to the low of 0.23% in December.
Engagement rate has decreased as well, from the 2.8% engagement high in April to the 1.08% engagement low in December. This is a 61.43% decrease.
Post reach of 7.39% has seen a bit of a recovery in December. This is the highest reach we've seen since September.
Instagram's gone from one of the most "viral" social networks to a pay-to-play platform during the year. If you want to achieve a great growth on Instagram you need to consider alternative tactics. Organic growth will not get you far.
Advertising is now open to all. Influencer outreach (just like on Twitter) is another powerful tactic worth considering.
You'll need to work harder to achieve great numbers in the year 2016.
Instagram is still ahead of Facebook and Twitter
Instagram had a 0.23% follower growth in December - this makes it a stronger platform on this front than Facebook and Twitter. Twitter follower growth in December was at 0.09%. Facebook page likes growth was 0.14%.
Instagram also leads in engagement rate of the total audience. In December, an average post engaged 1.08% of the total followers. On Twitter this number was 0.1% of all followers. On Facebook you could expect 0.37% of your page likes to engage with a post.
Instagram is dominated by images and likes
The 2,500 profiles we looked at posted 2.74 times per day on average in December. Images continue being the dominant post format - in December 91.87% of all the posts were images.
Images also get higher engagement on the platform. Image posts engaged 1.1% of all the followers, while videos engaged 0.83%.
Instagram is looking to get its users to watch and engage with more video - they're currently expanding "Spotlight Compilations". The hope is to get more people introduced to interesting videos.
And Instagram users continue to be less sociable - 97.4% of all the engagements in December were likes.
5 action points for a better start in the year 2016
- Review the timeless principles of good social media marketing. Do you ignore any of these in your work?
- Go through the list of New Year's Resolutions for social media marketers. How can you implement these into your plans?
- Compare your own Instagram profile to 2,500 profiles we looked at in our studies. How's your current performance?
- Get into the habit of asking yourself these eight questions before publishing a new post on Instagram.
- Consider how your brand can get onto these ten key social media trends in 2016.
The post Instagram Growth And Engagement: 2015 Year In Review appeared first on Locowise Blog.