Things are getting interesting with Instagram announcing its jump onto the social media marketing bandwagon late last year. Traditional social media powerhouses like Facebook and Twitter have been the all-time favoured platforms for marketers with many companies devoting large budgets to pages of paid advertisements online. Previously unheard of, sponsored posts will now be made available on Instagram.

Instagram is taking things slowly and carefully, limiting sponsored posts to only a small number and subjecting them to strict quality checks to ensure beautiful, high-quality pictures and videos. Despite mixed reactions from users, Instagram advertisements are here to stay as they recently cement their first major advertisement deal with Omnicom worth up to $100 million.

This exciting development reshapes the playing field for social media marketing presenting new potentials and big opportunities that should definitely not be ignored by marketers. Below, we have compiled a list of important facts to tell you why Instagram should matter to you too.

Important Instagram Statistics You Must Know About

Company

Launched in October 2010, the Instagram community grew to 1 million users in just three months- This ballooned ten-fold to 10 million users in 2011. (Instagram)

Instagram for Android launched in 2012 saw a whopping 1 million downloads in its first day. It later skyrocketed to 5 million Android downloads in the first 6 days. (Instagram)

Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion, 2012. (Facebook)

Today, Instagram stands at 200 million monthly active users, 20 billion photos shared, 1.6 billion likes daily and 60 million average photos per day. (Instagram)

43% of 18-29-year-olds cell phone users use Instagram. (Marketing Charts)

Still relatively young at 3 years after launching, Instagram ranks second most important social network to teenagers after Twitter, rivalling Facebook. (Marketing Charts)

Engagement

For engagement, Instagram far surpasses other major social media networks including Facebook and Twitter. (Forrester)

Instagram drove 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook. (Forrester)

Instagram had 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter. (Forrester)

Instagram is the only platform that defies Forrester’s initial finding that people do not engage with branded social content often. (Forrester)

http://blogs.forrester.com/nate_elliott/14-04-29-instagram_is_the_king_of_social_engagement

In fact, brand engagement grew 350% year over year in 2013. (Forrester)

Photos drive 26% percent more engagement than videos (Social Fresh)

Regular posting increases brand exposure, but there is a point of oversaturation if you post more than once a day (Marketing Charts)

Lo-fi is the most used filter on Instagram (Simply Measured)

Hashtags drive engagement if not overused

83% of Instagram posts by top brands include at least one hashtag

However, top brands use lesser hashtags than other brands- Hashtags are useful to tie conversations across all social platforms but it can turn users off if overused (Social Fresh)

Where does Instagram measure up to in 2014?

68% of the Interbrand 100 companies are on Instagram  (Simply Measured)

Each of the Top 10 Interbrand companies has grown to over 1 million followers  (Simply Measured)

Top 10 brands include large household names like Nike, Starbucks and BMW  (Simply Measured)

Top 10 brands average 28 posts per month – Indicative of the value these brands place on the network, investing time and resources to regular posting.  (Simply Measured)

Heavyweights MTV and BMW posted a whopping 22 835 666 and 20 285 548 posts respectively.  (Simply Measured)

The entire Interbrand average is 18 posts per month  (Simply Measured)

The top ten brands averaged just over 11 million engagements on their Instagram posts over the last year:

(Engagement includes sharing on both Facebook and Twitter)

2.7 million Average engagements for entire Interband list (Simply Measured) Instagram topples social media giants Facebook and Twitter to be the most used among teens (Social News Daily)

 Ads

First sponsored post by Michael Kors on April 1, 2013, saw 218, 000 likes within 18 hours. (Nitrogram)

There was almost 4 times the usual number of likes. (Nitrogram)

Estimation of 6.15 million global audiences reached (Nitrogram)

Michael Kors saw 33, 000 new followers gained- almost 16 times more than the usual (Nitrogram)

Over 5% of Instagram advertisement views led to likes (TechCrunch)

 Instagram will matter to you

Will Instagram be one of the most powerful social media tools in time? With such statistics, things are definitely looking promising. Standing at 200 million active users per month, Instagram is not a far cry from Twitter’s 255 million monthly actives (Twitter).

It is also possible that Instagram may overtake Twitter. On Google trends, we can observe declining search interest for Twitter while Instagram climbs a steady rise. At this rate, it will be no surprise that Instagram surpasses Twitter by the end of this year.

Keeping in mind that Instagram has achieved such comparable success while they are still relatively young compared to older rivals, it reminds us how the social media world is in the state of flux- ever changing.

Though paid marketing on Instagram still is in its earlier stages, one thing rings clear- the opportunity on Instagram is too large for marketers to ignore. Backed by such powerful statistics, Instagram is definitely on the rise and its powers should not be reckoned with.

Will Instagram revolutionize social media marketing? Do you think Instagram will be one of the most powerful marketing platforms in future? Give us a shout out and leave a comment below!