#FridayFunFact: How To Put Your Best Face Forward On Instagram
Did you know that Instagram is the fastest growing social media channel, with 15X more user engagement than Facebook and 40X more user engagement than Twitter?
Given its growing popularity and engagement-inclined user-base, the Facebook-owned photo and video-sharing network has major potential for marketers looking to captivate their audience with a creative take on digital window-shopping.
That’s why we’re bringing you some of the latest Instagram research in this Friday Fun Fact!
FACT: Corgis like looking at faces…
Our mascot, Maven the Corgi, admiring himself.
…and it turns out, so do Instagram users!
In a recent study, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Yahoo Labs used face-detection software to analyze 1.1 million Instagram posts.
The results indicate a self-fulfilling impetus behind our cultural selfie-obsession: Instagram photos with human faces in them are 38% more likely to receive likes and 32% more likely to receive comments than photos without faces.
What’s more, while Instagram’s user demographics are predominantly young and female, the Georgia Tech/Yahoo Labs study found that neither the number, age, or gender of the faces featured in an Instagram photo had any affect on engagement. All it takes, it seems, is a face — any face.
Read the full results in the report, titled, “Faces Engage Us: Photos with Faces Attract More Likes and Comments on Instagram.” Quick Sprout has also aggregated even more engagement-increasing Instagram tips into this handy infographic. Some of the standout statistics include:
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Light images receive 24% more engagement than dark images
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Posts on Sundays see 6% more engagement than posts on Wednesdays
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Photo posts receive 26% more engagement than video posts
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Blue-dominant images see 24% more engagement than red-dominant images
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Using ≤ 5 hashtags boosts engagement 2%, with engagement decreasing for posts including 6 or more hashtags
Curious to test this research on your own Instagram account?
If you do find yourself posting a light, blue-hued, face-filled photo with 5 hashtags this Sunday… bark at us with the results!
For more Instagram tips, get your copy of The Fortune 500 Instagram Report to see how the biggest brands are leveraging this fast-growing visual platform!
Kara Burney is the Content Marketing Maven at TrackMaven, the Competitive Intelligence platform for Digital Marketers. Have content marketing questions or topics you'd like covered on the TrackMaven blog? Tweet her your ideas! See more of Kara's posts
