Instagram Leads Social Media Sites For User Engagement

In the world of social media, size appears to have nothing to do with engagement – at least according to research from L2 Think Tank, which revealed that posts on Instagram could be generating the highest levels of communication amongst users.

Instagram currently boasts a monthly user base of 150 million, well below the size of Facebook’s community, which stands at 1.2 billion, and even that of Twitter at 218 million. However, it appears that the photo-sharing service has much more to brag about, as according to research from the digital marketing organisation, interaction levels for posts from 249 leading brands were monitored to be roughly 15 times higher than those on Facebook, eMarketer reports.

More specifically, the results suggest that Instagram posts deliver a brand interaction rate of 1.53%, compared to just 0.10% for Facebook and far above the 0.09% rate measured for Google+ and 0.04% for Twitter.

Brands, led by Instagram’s increasing momentum and slow realisation of the site’s potential, are now flocking to the network. Some 89% of the prestigious brands polled by L2 Think Tank said they have built a presence on both Instagram and Facebook. This is a significant percentage given the size of Instagram’s user base compared to that of other more popular channels, eMarketer commented.

The research also revealed that 54% of brands have added Instagram custom tabs to their Facebook page, seamlessly integrating the two social networking sites now that Facebook owns Instagram. A small but growing number of brands – 12% – have also promoted the service in the past month.