What is Instagram
Launched in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram is a Photo and Video sharing social media network platform, which is now known as Meta Platform, after its acquaintance with Facebook in 2012.
The reason behind its popularity is the unique media sharing concept followed by it which allows the users to share a photo and video content and also enables them to edit the post with pre-defined filters, and features to add, which can make the post look outstanding.
It even allows the post to be shared publicly or to a particular group of people, with extensive use of Hashtags and geo-tagging to increase the reach of the post organically.
Initially, when the platform was launched, it only allowed square-sized posts with an aspect ratio of 1:1 and a maximum of 640 pixels and was only available for iOS devices. But as it grew in popularity, it continued to evolve itself, by adding multiple features to the platform and making it more user-friendly.
In 2015 numerous changes can be witnessed on the platform like the post size was enhanced to 1080 pixels and features like direct messaging, multiple images or video posts, and stories were added too. The addition of the stories features proved to be a boon for the platform and bring it a massive success, crossing the bar of 500 million daily stories.
In October 2010, Instagram rose into popularity crossing 10 million users in a year, which make Facebook, hostile and resulted in the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook in 2012 after paying a huge sum of $1 billion.
As you continue your journey to the 10 key Instagram statistics you need to track, we have to understand the reasons behind this mammoth acquisition, which is hard to ignore.
The story behind Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram
It’s been almost ten years since Facebook acquainted with Instagram in 2012 by paying $1 billion just for a photo-sharing app and at that time people believed Mark Zuckerberg getting insane to do so because at that time Instagram was only having 30 million users and zero revenue.
But the rest is only a success story of Instagram which everyone has witnessed as it crossed more than 1.3 billion users worldwide wide which is only inferior to Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp only.
At present, the acquisition can be called a master stroke coming from the brilliancy of Mark Zuckerberg, as he has far-sighted the capabilities of the platform and before it can be converted into a top-level rival for Facebook, he acquired the ownership of Instagram.
One of the former Facebook executives, former director, Mike Hoefflinger described yet another reason for this acquisition in his book, “Becoming Facebook” where he explained that Facebook wants to prove to other entrepreneurs that it is the best place to be in Silicon Valley to drive massive growth.
An amazing story to cover when you are checking out 10 key Instagram statistics you need to track, it’s time to find some amazing uses of Instagram which has played a leading role in its success.
Uses of Instagram
1. Create a Personal Space with Tags
Instagram allows you to tag your favourite connections to be tagged whenever you are posting something and you feel that a few of your connections must not miss them at any cost.
Another thing that you can do with the post is to add captions to them as every single post will speak about itself, enabling the viewer to look deep into the post and eradicate all sorts of confusion.
Apart from tagging and captions, the biggest force to uplift the posts comes from hashtags, as it enables you to link the posts to a few of the biggest communities sharing a similar idea. With Instagram, the hashtags are far more effective compared to any other social media platform and you can create your own space of hashtags as well.
2. Share Your Photos to other Social Networks
Though Instagram is a fully functional social media platform, its features are not exclusive to use within the platform only as it allows you to synchronise and share to many other platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.
This feature is a real time saver, especially for those who are having a professional presence on social media and have to maintain their account on numerous platforms, with posts centralised to Instagram, they can be shared to other platforms at ease.
3. Share Your Products
Sharing your products and selling them through advertisement is never easy on another platform as it is on Instagram.
You can carry on advertising and selling your products on Instagram through Facebook Ads Manager or even directly through the dashboard of Instagram if you have access to a business account.
To improve the quality of the ads you can use a variety of multimedia tools like images, GIFs, videos, audios, etc so that your ads can catch the attraction of the viewers, and you can improve the ROI.
To make ad creative some pre-defined templates are also available and they also give you access to the latest music which is trending.
Being such a vast tool to use as an entrepreneur, and giving you so much of sales, all statistics related to the platforms are important and for the same reason, we are discussing the 10 key Instagram statistics you need to track if you want your business to do well on the Instagram platform.
10 Key Instagram Statistics You Need to Track
#1 How Many People Use Instagram?
As an entrepreneur, if you are willing to promote your business on Instagram, the first thing that you, must take care of is to know the number of active users on the Instagram platform.
As per data published on one of the best websites for statistical data, Statista, Instagram has crossed 1.4 billion users worldwide, which is inferior to only Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp. Among the 10 key Instagram Statistics, you need to track, this is going to have the top priority as it matters the most.
Why the popularity of Instagram is growing, can be understood with this data if you analyse it just a little bit, as only three social media apps are ahead of it and out of them, one is its parent application and another is a sister concern application.
From 2019 to 2021, there is a huge growth in the number of users for Instagram, acquiring more than 380 million users in two years only. To complement the massive growth of Instagram, analysts comment that the coronavirus has played a leading role when people become more active on the digital platform.
#2 What Is the Average Time Spent on Instagram on Daily Basis?
Another important lookout in the top 10 key Instagram statistics you need to track is the amount of time, people like to spend on the Platform or the capability of the platform to keep the audience connected.
In data taken in June 2018, Facebook users spent an average of 58 minutes per day whereas Instagram users averaged 53 minutes per day which is not too far, showing the importance of the platform.
Why this data is important, can be understood with the fact that the more the user spent time, the more will the chances for your brand to reach them and more will be the chances for you to be successful.
The time spent on Instagram matters because the more time people spend on the app, the more advertisements they see, and the more opportunities they have to notice your brand. Instagram also exposed that introducing the Instagram Story feature amplified the number of time people was spending on the app every day. But not only does the time expended on Instagram matter, but also the time of day during which users are most active on the platform. That’s how you’ll get to know the best time to post on Instagram for your brand and do justice to every penny spent.
#3 Instagram Hashtags Usage
The use of HASHTAGS has become revolutionary for the present generation of youth as every post of theirs’ is loaded with relevant hashtags to make it reach the concerned community.
Though the concept of using hashtags was innovated by Twitter, it has exploded on other social media sites as well and Instagram is one of the best platforms to utilize the concept. All the users of Instagram are extensively using hashtags as it helps them to reach people beyond their own follower’s list and give worth to the campaign.
With a hashtag, it is not that you can use any hashtag as per your choice, but you have to be selective while choosing the hashtag. You have to deep analyse which hashtags are performing better and, must put your money on the leading horse in the race.
According to data released by HubSpot in 2020, on average there are 10.7 hashtags used in every post on Instagram, which shows how important it is to know the correct hashtags for your post.
#4 Instagram Is the Sweetheart of Youths
Youths are the key to success for any business and especially when we are studying the top 10 key Instagram statistics you need to track for the success of your business, youth catch utmost attraction.
As clear as the water flowing from the Gangotri glacier, the above graph from Statista shows that among the total users of Instagram, 30.2% are between 18-20 years and 31.7% are between 25-34 years, which makes the total above 60% is enough to show how important it is.
If we have some product concerned with the youth it is one of the best platforms to target and spend for product promotion. Over digital media, this range of the age group makes the maximum shopping and they spend the most time on the internet, so none of the entrepreneurs can afford to miss them.
#5 Most Businesses are Using Instagram
Here is data once again from Statista showing the list of platforms used by marketers all around the world for promoting their products and Instagram is only inferior to its parent company Facebook.
The data above clearly shows that 93% of the marketers prefer Facebook and 78% prefer Instagram, making a huge point of attraction for marketers worldwide and more than 200 million businesses do their marketing over Instagram.
The reason behind the success of Instagram is the fact that users spend hours on Instagram and don’t like to leave early, and whenever they come across any ad, they give serious attention to it.
Another interesting data coming from the platform Instagram is that among all the different kinds of posts that can be made on Instagram, Carousel has the highest 0.85 per cent of engagement whereas are as overall engagement percentage is 0.68, which shows that the users love to go through a story containing many chapters.
With the help of the carousel posts, the product can be defined in an elaborated manner and more features concerning the product can be showcased in front of the viewers.
#6 Instagram Impacts Buyer’s Shopping Journey
Most of the users are loyal to Instagram and whenever they decide to buy something on the internet it is mostly influenced by Instagram and Facebook. According to data released by Facebook, nearly 80% of the users decide to buy after being influenced by Instagram.
Instagram targets the audience to receive the ads in a well-planned and optimised manner, which is a reason the ROI of the ad is comparatively low and the rate of success is very high.
For businesses, Instagram provides a variety of options for a post like single post, carousel, video, GIFs, etc making it a whole lot increased and attractive. So when we are studying the top 10 key Instagram statistics you need to track, understanding the buyer’s journey is important and useful.
#7 Instagram Sponsors Content Growth
Another interesting statistic to note down is that you can promote your content with Instagram almost free just by using #ad as the data also supports this statement as all posts from February 2018 to February 2019 using #ad have shown gigantic growth of 133%.
The facility to use #ad is available free of cost without any additional payment, and Instagram promotes such content on its shows how much Instagram promotes content growth.
#8 Instagrammers Like to Follow Brands
More than 50% of Instagram users are following at least one brand, providing all businesses with a higher chance of being successful on this platform.
It is important to track all the information related to people following different brands as it can be used to optimise the ads in a better manner.
#9 Instagram Stories Usage
People like stories and the data which every entrepreneur feels pleasure to see is how keen the Instagrammers are to follow stories.
The story option was introduced by Instagram in August 2016 allowing the users to make a post which will be highlighted for 24 hours and proved to be a decisive move for the success of the platform.
Just after 2 years after launching the option of stories, Instagram published data in 2018, stating that over 500 million Instagram users use stories every day.
The success of the stories is an interesting stat to track, as it gives an idea to the entrepreneurs, which kind of post they should focus on more.
#10 High Engagement Rate
According to the data published by Mention, the average engagement rate for all kinds of posts on Instagram is around 5.86% which is relatively high and an attraction point for all entrepreneurs.
Whenever someone wants to spend money on any platform, the engagement rate as a part of the top 10 key Instagram statistics you need to track, matters a lot as the higher the engagement rate better the chances of success.
Conclusion
If you are a business organizer and willing to promote your post on Instagram, it is important to know all the tricks that you can play with Instagram and for that, you have to professionally learn it.
I know many will think that they know everything about Instagram but take my words, there are many things you don’t know and you will be surprised when you learn about them.
If you want to join a professional course where you get the chance to learn every detail related to Instagram including how you can create amazing and effective videos, you can join the Instagram Reels Mastery Course, offered by Digital Scholar at a price of Just ₹699.
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