Instagram, the online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service, is simple and intuitive. It seems like yesterday that the social network was small and still putting all of its wits to grow. In December 18th, 2014, Citogroup raised a conclusion that the social network is valued from $19 billion to $35 billion.
The news came short after Instagram announced that it has 300 million active users. If compared to Twitter, the microblogging site has 284 million active users. The signal marks a shift in the social media hierarchy.
Instagram has go well and beyond Twitter's performance. Its app was downloaded over a million times on the day the Android version came to Google Play, and kept growing since then. Its user has grew to about 50 percent since the last nine months while Twitter could only managed in increasing 4.8 percent of its active user in the last quarter.
The social media industry is unpredictable because the market is always fluctuating. When some services rose in popularity, others can halt, or may even fall. Instagram beating Twitter is a prove that people's taste changes rapidly.
In April 2012, Instagram, when it was two years old, the social network was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion. At that time, It only served around 30 million people and it had only recently extended its service beyond the iPhone. So what makes Instagram so popular that it can be par with Twitter's phenomenal achievement?
Instagram is growing fast because of its role in the social networking sphere. It's one of a kind, and it's offering a feed of photos as a content that is much simpler that Twitter's more fast-moving timeline. Twitter had overcome the complex problem by introducing hashtags, that isn't quite simplify things. Instagram on the other hand, had a different approach that is both visual and more straightforward.
From Numbers to Engagement
High numbers and massive user base can be a great initial pitch to investors. But for marketers, those numbers alone next to meaningless if compared to engagement. It was in 2013 that Instagram launched its first ads. Since then, the demands for it is increasing.
A social marketing analysis company Socialbakers decided to go deeper behind those numbers. The firm concluded that Instagram doesn't only have more users than Twitter, but tends to give more engagement for brands.
Socialbakers observed the top 25 most engaging brands on Twitter and on Instagram between September 9 and December 9. The list, which included Victoria's Secret, Starbucks, GoPro, Forever21, and AERO, is analyzed for number of likes, comments, favorites, and other interactions. And the results were clear:
On Instagram, brands received an average of 19,355,774 total interactions on the content they posted, while on Twitter, they received an average of 502,102. The research also showed that the average post engagement rate of the brands on Instagram was 3.31 percent, compared with 0.07 percent on Twitter.
For marketers, Instagram was representing a new way of marketing. Visual contents are usually more appealing that text, and Instagram uses that strategy to distinguish itself from other notable social networks. Another strategy Instagram has that is distinguishable is that the social network brought a feature that is less commitment that others: double-tapping on a picture is more favorable that favoriting a tweet which can lead to more engagement.
The once small social network has grown, and now it's playing with the big boys. Instagram may not replace Twitter, or any social network for that matter. But it's completing the ecosystem. There is a lot that Instagram can't do that others can, and Instagram is just giving additional seasoning to flavor the social media industry.
As Instagram's popularity rises, marketers should tailored their contents specifically for it. The same thing that they did with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and all other channels.
