Study: Brand Engagement Growing on Instagram

Social media measurement and analytics firm Simply Measured has released its third “quarterly” study on brand engagement on Instagram, finding 59% of brand consultancy Interbrand’s Top 100 brands are on the photo-sharing network, which is up slightly from 54% in November.

In addition, Simply Measured found engagement has increased 35% with the average brand photo receiving 4,800 likes, comments, tweets and Facebook shares.

Instagram says it has 90 million monthly active users.

Interbrand’s Top 100 brands include Coca-Cola, Apple, IBM and Google. According to Simply Measured, these brands gained more than 1.6 million Instagram followers from November to January.

Per Simply Measured, brand adoption for Instagram and Pinterest grew at the fastest rates compared to other networks — at 9% and 10% respectively. Since August 2012, 19 Interbrand Top 100 brands have created Instagram accounts; 18 have created Pinterest accounts.

As of February 1, Simply Measured says Instagram accounts that post at least once a week are up to 41%, which is up from 34% in November 2012.

In that time period, two additional brands have also joined the 100,000+ Instagram follower club — Ralph Lauren and Adidas — and Volkswagen and Gap are getting close. According to Simply Measured, MTV has the most Instagram followers. As of Monday, MTV has 1.2 million.

Gucci and Tiffany & Co. have seen large growth in their audiences in the last three months, growing by 65% and 75% respectively. As of Monday, Gucci has 423,000 Instagram followers; Tiffany & Co. has 424,000.

The number of photos posted by brands has grown slightly since November, but engagement has grown significantly thanks to Facebook, Simply Measured says. 98% of Instagram photos posted by brands are shared to Facebook, resulting in 274 engagements per photo, which is a 30% increase since November.

“As we addressed in November, integration between Facebook and Instagram has allowed users to have photos they ‘like’ appear in their Facebook feeds,” Simply Measured says. “The result has been a continued increase in per post engagement and a greater share of brand photos posted to Facebook.”

Engagement with photos shared on Twitter, however, has been in decline since November. Simply Measured says this is because Instagram dropped Twitter cards integration. Twitter cards make it possible for brands to attach media experiences to tweets that link to their content.

Brands have also decreased their use of filters, Simply Measured says. Since August 2012, the number of brand photos with filters applied has dropped from 60% to 40%.