As the March Madness tournament heads into the Sweet Sixteen today, the competition among teams is heating up on social media. In the competitive spirit of the tournament, we decided to put the teams head-to-head on Instagram to see who is really dominating on the growing social network.

First, here’s how the Sweet Sixteen teams stack up by total audience size on Instagram:

At almost 224,000 followers, Duke truly dominates on Instagram with the pure size of its audience. Duke has over five times the audience size of the two closest runner-ups, UNC and Arizona, which both sit above 38,000 followers on the network. A majority of the teams were under 20,000, making Duke’s numbers even more impressive.

Thanks to the sheer size of its Instagram audience, Duke also takes the top spot in a ranking of total Instagram interactions among the Sweet 16 teams across March 2015. Duke has racked in one million Instagram interactions during March Madness 2015 to date, by far the highest absolute engagement of the Sweet Sixteen teams.

Second and third place in total Instagram engagement went to Wisconsin and UNC, the former netting over double UNC‘s 150,000 interactions to date in March 2015.

While Duke appears to be dominating the Sweet Sixteen on Instagram, we get a very different story when we normalize Instagram engagement by follower size. The graph below ranks the teams by their average interactions per Instagram picture per 1,000 followers. This metric accounts for the differences in audience size among the Sweet Sixteen teams, and shows us which team’s Instagram audience is the most engaged.

When we look at Instagram interactions as a function of audience size, Duke actually comes in last. In fact, Utah is leading the pack here with over 158 interactions per picture per 1,000 followers. Notre Dame comes in second with 137, while NC State is third with 129.

These numbers indicate that despite having smaller Instagram audiences, Utah, Notre Dame, and NC State have highly-engaged core Instagram followings.

Tips From The Best Sweet Sixteen Instagram Content

Now that we’ve looked at how the Sweet Sixteen teams compare on Instagram, let’s take a closer look at the top teams’ Instagram content strategies. Here are the topics and tactics that have the greatest impact on this channel.

Stoke Team Rivalries

Many NCAA fans follow their favorite team on Instagram just to indulge in the hype of the tournament’s competition, and the top-performing Instagram content from the Sweet Sixteen teams stokes this competitive fire. Fans respond well to both graphics alerting them to upcoming matchups, as well as those recounting the latest score.

One of Utah‘s top posts, for example, was this one showing off their most recent win over Georgetown.

This announcement coupled with a vivid action shot resulted in over 1,300 interactions, twice Utah’s team’s Instagram average.

Similarly, the following Instagram post made for Wisconsin’s Instagram page highlighted their latest win and netted twice their average engagement. Note that both of these posts used three hashtags, fitting within the optimal 3-5 hashtags per Instagram post noted in our Fortune 500 Instagram Report.

Graphics depicting matchups ahead of big games were also quite popular, like this successful post from Notre Dame’s feed that fetched twice the brand’s average at 1,300 interactions.

Offer Fans A Behind-The-Scenes Look

Beyond following big wins, fans love getting an exclusive look at their favorite teams off the court as well. Teams posting photos from locker rooms, practices, and tournament were able to win big on Instagram. This team locked room photo from Utah, for example, reaped three times their average Instagram interactions!

Duke similarly struck Instagram success with these post-game #winstagram photos. Both posts reaped over 18K interactions, double Duke’s average Instagram engagement.

Another effective trend among behind-the-scenes Instagram photos is the popularity of travel photos. When Arizona and Wisconsin gave their fans a peek into their transit plans, both posts reaped double their average Instagram engagement (6,800 and 5,500, respectively).

For more analysis of the digital marketing madness from this year’s tournament, find out which NCAA team is winning Twitter! And for more content marketing tips, get your copy of our Content Marketing Paradox report below!