Instagram will boast more than 100 million US users by 2018, eMarketer estimates, and this year, the social network’s audience will rise by nearly 21% to 77.6 million users. Data released by Yesmail in March 2015 suggests there’s plenty of room for adoption among brands looking to reach this appealing audience.
The source monitored client activity on its platform and found that just 23% of US brands had an account on Instagram—lower than every other social network studied including Twitter (82%), Facebook (80%), YouTube (60%) and Google+ (37%).
Restaurants were the most likely to be camera-happy, with 31.1% of Yesmail clients in that brand category saying they had an Instagram account. Besides appetizing pictures of food, Instagrammers should also expect to see plenty of photos of dream destinations, as hotels landed in a close second. Retailers and consumer packaged goods brands trailed behind.
Instagram also presents brands with an audience that’s enthusiastic about engagement. According to Yesmail, brands on the social network saw their number of followers grow 278% on average last year—more than any of the other platforms studied.
However, brands taking advantage of Instagram’s eager audience shouldn’t overwhelm followers with too many posts, as data released in March 2015 by L2 Think Tank suggests quality matters more than quantity. Brands tracked by the source worldwide shared an average of 121 posts during Q4 2014 and saw an engagement rate of 1.03%—the lowest last year. Meanwhile, Q1 2014 had the lowest average number of posts, at 110, but boasted the highest engagement rate, at 1.15%.
- See more at: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Which-Brands-Taking-Advantage-of-Instagram/1012311/3#sthash.BbjONSlk.dpuf
