#after a lot of reflection and serious bank account inspection though I decided it's probably not the mature choice to make

[imwritesometimes]

my stupid dumb fucking ass on local rescue shelter websites after I disappointed my family announced to my family the news that I felt the responsible choice was actually not to adopt a kitten

[jess-dw-sherman]

Media Switch-Up: Instagram

Why I picked Instagram, and how it is new for me:

To preface this analysis – I have had an Instagram account for over 9 years. However, I very rarely post and stopped using it regularly at least 7 years ago. I’ve posted maybe one or two photos per year and am following essentially only my friends. Since this week’s topic of study was video, I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the newer functions of Instagram. When I got an account, it was a photo-only platform, and I don’t use the Story or IGTV functionalities. Additionally, I’ve never made an effort to look at what companies use Instagram or followed any that inspire me, so I wanted to analyze the platform’s users and the corporate presences that are the most successful.

In terms of usage, I maybe look at Instagram a couple of times a week. I am also notoriously bad at answering Direct Messages from friends (to be honest, I really don’t look at them at all and currently have 17 unread messages…). I thought it would be interesting to see how it is used by people outside of my group of friends, contacts, and occasional content I see from companies and public figures.

Wide range of content and some interesting functionalities

I thought I’d look at the discover section to see what would come up. It seemed mostly influenced by what I follow or have watched already, like a lot of cat videos or LGBTQ-related topics). There was also a selection of very random videos that I don’t completely understand, including one I forgot to screenshot but it seemed like a guy pretending to be a column in the NYC subway. 

Author’s note: I do love cats and seeing people be confident in who they are, so I enjoyed these adorable posts.

Looking further into the different functionalities on the platform, I liked that Instagram has new options for content. 

Shopping

I had no idea there was an entire shopping section, as it hadn’t occurred to me that that was a regular thing people do, other than the sponsored content you can see on your newsfeed. Looking at it, it is actually well organized and easy to use. This is a really interesting option for companies that sell products that appeal to a large range of consumers, especially since the headlining content on the Shopping homepage is titled “Buy on Instagram: shop without using a website.” It’s convenient that companies can link products to their account, so it would be easy for users to find them either through the shopping page or if they follow the company page. 

IGTV

Instagram TV looks like it’s similar to YouTube. You can post videos that are up to 10 minutes long, and many of them seemed to be from companies or public figures and less personal content. It looks to me like a way for users to post longer videos (rather than the short ones available in regular posts).

Reels

I also had no idea what Instagram Reels were. Upon further inspection, it is a new functionality that was released only a couple of months ago and allows users to post shorter videos than IGTV. Honestly, this seems like a way for Instagram to compete with TikTok but it hasn’t been around long enough to see if it really makes an impact, although it is nice to have so many content format options (photo, clips, full videos, shopping, and more) all contained in one platform.

Who is using Instagram?

While I knew it would be interesting to do what - I hope - is insightful and useful analysis of Instagram since it is so widely used and has been around for a long time, one positive was that it was really easy to find clear statistics on many different demographics (much easier than for my previous Media Switch-Up on Medium!).

By Country

One thing I found interesting was the number of people who use Instagram by country. According to statistica.com, the U.S. is by far the country that uses Instagram the most at 130 million accounts, followed by India at 100 million. Considering the difference in population size between those two countries, a much larger percentage of Americans use Instagram than Indians. Europe also seems significantly less interested in Instagram, with the top EU country (at least until December of this year) being the U.K. at 27 million users, Germany with 25 million, Italy with 23 million, and France with 21 million.

Leading countries based on Instagram audience size as of July 2020

By Age

The age breakdown of users was less surprising. The largest categories of users are between the ages of 25-34 (33.3%) and 18-24 (29.3%), and the smallest group are users over the age of 65 (2.2%). On a personal note, I was a little bit happy to see that only 6.9% of users are ages 13-17 because I am still on the fence about how I feel in terms of young kids posting photos and videos of themselves without a full understanding of the permanence of their posts.

By Gender and Race

In terms of gender, usage seemed essentially equal for men and women, varying only by a few percentage points for each age category (see chart above). However, I think that in terms of the racial breakdown of users, it’s important to note that the Black and Latinx communities are more likely to use Instagram versus White people

On demographics

All of these factors would be important for a company to consider when developing their strategy and their content. Usage by country was most surprising for me – I thought the app was much more popular around the world. When considering Instagram in a corporate digital media strategy, it would be important to know that your reach with content on this platform may be very effective in the U.S., but much less so outside of America. 

Most popular accounts on Instagram

Instagram’s account is the most popular on their site. While this may seem unsurprising – I thought that it was some sort of automatic follow situation, an easy account for new users to follow, or one of the first suggestions that new users see when they create their account – the company has actually marketed their account in an interesting way, by using it is a platform to promote for interesting accounts. A lot of the topics in their Story sections are social/cultural topics, such as Share Black Stories, Latinx Heritage, Pride 2020, Juneteenth, and their 2020 vision. There was also an assortment of positivity topics, such as Made us Smile, Guides (on a variety of subjects), Try This at Home, and Self-Care Tips.  

The most popular accounts after Instagram are all celebrities, with the top five being Christiano Renaldo, Ariana Grande, The Rock, Kylie Jenner, and Selena Gomez. I’m not sure what I expected, but I did find it interesting that there are no other companies or organizations that fall in the top 20. While those 5 are all celebrities and these are their individual accounts, the variety in those 5 personas was also remarkable, and I feel reflects the diversity of users and interest that the platform includes.

Companies on Instagram

I don’t use Instagram to follow companies, although I have bought a couple of spontaneous (possibly ill-advised and unnecessary) products through sponsored content. Statistically, companies in the fashion industry are the most successful Instagram. Considering the style of a lot of photos that users post on Instagram, and the popularity of style influencers, this was not surprising. The top 5 companies on Instagram are Nike (by a large margin), Victoria’s Secret, Huda Beauty, Chanel, and Gucci.

From my research online, it looks like Lego is one of the most popular corporate accounts. I do love Lego, so I decided to follow them and was excited to look at their content.

Lego account contains mostly fun content (though I’m not sure what serious content people would be expecting in relation to Lego) and posts at least once a day, if not more. Their content is mostly video content and they have really taken advantage of the longer video format that IGTV offers. I am a big fan of Lego (and am now following them) because I found some of their content to be delightful, like how they stress test their Duplo products and a cute video on sustainability encouraging users to pass on their Lego sets to others.

I work in finance and banking and I was not surprised to see that my industry is not even included in the graph above, probably because these are not topics that people think of when they’re using Instagram. Most banks and large financial services companies do have an account, although they vary in the degree to which they take advantage of the platform’s different features. One account that I do like is Goldman Sachs and I discovered a new feature when I looked at one of their stories: apparently, you can link content directly to Spotify! This is a great feature if you want to promote things like podcasts or music, and it did make me wonder if you can do the same things with other platforms like linking things to YouTube (Answer: not yet, but maybe soon?).

Final thoughts

Overall, this analysis has changed the way I view Instagram. I thought it was mostly photo-based, but they’ve adapted to changing interests from consumers and seem to be focusing on promoting videos, making it very easy to edit them and post your content in multiple formats. I know that companies that I’ve worked for in the past tend to only post photos, but I think they need to expand into video content if they truly want to engage their followers. Videos of these things would be much more engaging. I also think that the videos seem much more real – you only post the best photo you have, but a video shows your followers feel like they are at the actual event. Clips of people speaking lets viewers feel closer to the person, rather than just reading something they said and seeing a headshot. I’m actually really excited to start thinking of ways that I can make videos for my current job (Employer Branding) because it seems like a great way to showcase things like events, speeches, and our employees.