The Rise of Online Marketing
These days online marketing is a priority for many brands. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more websites are laden with ads which users are supposed to interact with but more often than not they prove to be a nuisance and users want to get rid of them as soon as they can. This defeats the purpose of these ads which is to engage with their audience and pique their interest.
Instagram is not considered as a serious contender for marketers to choose as a platform to advertise their products or services because it is largely a phone based application. People use it on their phones mostly and thus marketers assume they will not take the advertisements and paid posts on the website seriously. Other than that Instagram is considered as a low tier app with not as many users. However this is a major misconception. A look at some Instagram Statistics will open your eyes to just how incredibly valuable advertising on Instagram can be.
Instagram Statistics: How Many Users Does Instagram Have?
Instagram has a user count which goes into the high millions. And there are thousands of people joining the platform every single day. Instagram has over 600 million monthly users who use the app frequently. And daily users for Instagram go well over the 400 million user mark! These Instagram Statistics should shock you. Think of all the people you could reach and engage with if you advertised your brand on this website. The impact for your advertising on Instagram will be phenomenal!
From these more than 400 million daily users, more than 150 million people use the Instagram story feature. The Instagram story is a feature which allows users to upload photos or videos to their profile. These photos or videos can be edited with text, you can add the location, you can add filters and what not. These images and videos disappear after 24 hours of staying online on your profile.
About 33% people worldwide who have access to the internet use Instagram and have an account on the social media platform. About 80% of the people who use Instagram are currently living outside the United States. This is one of those Instagram Statistics which surprises a lot of people mostly because of the fact most people assume that most of Instagram’s user base is American. However a lot of Americans do use Instagram since about 80 million Instagram users are Americans! But there is a huge chunk of the user base which is not American and hence marketers globally need to get on the Instagram trend according to the Instagram Statistics we are citing.
Instagram Statistics: How Much Engagement Does Instagram Get Every Day?
While having daily users who peruse Instagram just scrolling through their feed is well above 400 million per day, the people who actually actively use the app and engage with it varies. Per day, there are almost 4.2 billion likes on post on Instagram! This is an amazing Instagram Statistics, imagine the number of people liking post and how many people must like multiple posts. Thus it is clear that people actually engage with the content they see on their feeds.
There are daily about a 100 million picture or video uploads on Instagram. Hence it is clear that a lot of people use it. Another thing which gets you more likes and engagement on Instagram is when you post regularly. Posting daily is a great idea but even posting every alternate day will ensure you get more followers and subsequently higher engagement.
The popularity of this application can be demonstrated very easily with one major item from the many Instagram Statistics we will see; how many uploads has the website had till date? The answer is enormous; 40 billion picture or video items have been uploaded on Instagram till date!
According to Instagram Statistics, about every user on average that logs in to Instagram daily spends 25 minutes on the application. This is a significant amount of time to spend in one place. And again, according to Instagram Statistics, about 60% of Instagram users login to Instagram daily!
On average an Instagram post will get about 4.3% engagement. This does not seem a lot but when you consider the amount of posts being posted on the website daily, this is quite significant. While all of this is amazing, one must remember due to Instagram’s new algorithm, a lot of people have been in the position where they miss seeing items on their feed as it is no longer chronological. Thus users now report that they miss almost 70% of the items shared on their feed. This is one of the concerning Instagram Statistics.
Instagram Statistics: User Demographics
It is assumed that it is mostly women who use Instagram and this is not true! 51% of Instagram’s users according to Instagram Statistics are male while only 49% of their users are female. This is a particularly evenly distributed ratio of male and female users. Hence most marketers can utilize Instagram. No matter whether their product is aimed at men or women; there are plenty of users from both the genders!
It is no secret that Instagram is mostly used by the younger generation. This is why 90% of Instagram users are under 35 years of age. Like most social media platforms Instagram is also preferred by young people who have been using technology and applications such as Instagram from a young age. Since the culture of taking pictures and uploading them on the internet has developed in recent years only, the younger generation was more accepting of this change hence it is no surprise that they comprise over 90% of Instagram’s user base.
Instagram Statistics: Growth Rate for Instagram
Instagram is one of the fastest growing social media platforms. It is growing at the rate of 5 times more than any other social media platform in the United States. On average an Instagram users account grows by 16% per month! This is phenomenal growth for a single account on average!
It is estimated by as soon as 2018, Instagram will have 100 million users from the United States alone.
Instagram Statistics: How Many Brands Use Instagram
We have established that there are millions of private individuals using Instagram but as of late even brands joined the social media platform to post about their products and services and join in the conversation with adding pictures and videos of their products to keep themselves relevant and in the consumers eye.
About 50% of the world’s major brands use Instagram while it has been predicted that by 2018, this figure will increase to 71%! Top brands which have joined Instagram are now seeing an increase in engagement by the rate of 53% per year according to their Instagram Statistics.
Most of these brands post content daily, according to Instagram Statistics about 80% is the exact number of brands that post daily. This is not in vain since 53% of Instagram users follow their favorite brands and thus are likely to see the content the brand posts.
Instagram has 10 times more engagement on its post than Facebook does, 54 times more than Pinterest does and 84 times more than Twitter does. These are incredible Instagram Statistics and tells you just how successful the social media platform really is.
This is one of the reasons why 36% of business to consumer brands think Instagram is crucial for marketing their company.
Instagram Statistics: Increase Engagement on your Posts
There are certain tips and tricks which will give you the most engagement for your Instagram posts. Monday and Thursday are the best days to post on Instagram at any time except for the hour between 3-4 PM. If you post images with faces in them, you get 38% more likes on average.
If you add several hashtags to your posts, you get more likes and your post does well in terms of engagement according to Instagram Statistics. If you add a location tag on your post, you get 79% more engagement on your post.
Instagram Statistics: Why Instagram is a Great Marketing Tool
These Instagram Statistics make marketing on Instagram sound great and it is! But why is marketing on Instagram so effective? The answer is simple and purely based on science and proper research. According to research the human brain processes an image 60,000 times faster than it process any text! Sixty thousand times faster; that is an incredible difference.
When people see information, they are 40% more likely to engage with and respond to information which is visual in nature.
Other than that, humans remember 80% of what they see visually, 20% of what they read and only 10% of what they hear. And since Instagram is mostly a visual medium where you can share pictures and videos; you have a greater chance of getting people to remember your product or service.
These Instagram Statistics prove that Instagram is an amazing place to market your product and is currently being underutilized by more brands. You need to make your brand’s presence more prominent on this social media platform since these Instagram Statistics just prove that the future is very much Instagram!
Cybil 
Emma