Instagram Content Spotlight

Instagram Content Spotlight The main lessons, techniques, and strategies we learned from the world’s best marketing teams around the world

Introduction As Instagram reaches new heights each day, it's become mandatory for any brand to join in. Instagram’s popularity amongst brands, however, is not due to usage alone, but to the per-post engagement rate which is higher than any other social platform. Awareness. Engagement. Sales… Instagram As of June 2018, there are nearly 1 billion monthly active users which, again, makes Instagram one of the most important and powerful marketing channels of our time. That is why we decided to help marketers out by showcasing what tactics and strategies get ROI from Instagram. To that end, we chose the 9 most popular industries and dug deep to find the top 10 brands that have a remarkable presence on Instagram. Through this report we want to provide insights into the ways big brands succeed in digital marketing. We put each successful brand and piece of content in the spotlight and extracted valuable and actionable lessons that marketers can take away. We didn’t want to leave anything out which is why we went beyond content. We looked at the teams behind brands and analysed the behaviour, interactions, approval workflow, and the way marketing teams collaborate on content creation. Because for any Instagram post, there’s an army of professionals who created, contributed, collaborated.

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A Collaboration Between...

Planable is a collaboration platform for brand content. With Planable, social media teams work better together and save time on coordinating content. The product makes it easy to visualize, approve, and publish social content from one shared space.

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ProductLead is an innovative one-stopshop SaaS marketing-tech ecosystem helping brands understand and harness the power of Social-Media through: Big Data Analytics, Visual Commerce, One2One communication at scale, and Omnichannel integrations.

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Table of Contents

Industries

05

Instagram Main Stats & Best Practices

07

Most Used Type of Content

15

Top 5 posts per industry & Lessons Learnt

19

User generated content

35

Collaboration

38

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Industries & Content Our team has analysed over 100 brands succeeding on Instagram with followers between 1681 and 101M from all over the world. We have evaluated more than one thousand posts in total to draw the following results.

Industries

Automotive

Fashion

Beauty

FMCG

Home & Deco

IT&C

Media

Pharma

Travel

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Average Likes/Post per Industry

Automotive

132.7K

Fashion

77.8K

Beauty

45.5K

FMCG

23.1K

Home&Deco

9.4K

IT & C

50.3K 94.2K

Media Pharma Travel

611 7.6K

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Most Liked Post per Industry

Automotive Lamborghini | 548K likes

Fashion Nike | 1.12M likes

“Light embracing speed. It’s Lamborghini Aventador SVJ.”

“Just a small-town kid with big-city dreams. #justdoit“

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Beauty Anastasia Beverly Hills | 267K likes Beautiful #AnastasiaBrows @makeupbyriquelle

Total likes: 2.9M likes overall

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Instagram Main Stats & Best Practices From over 100 brands, we looked at the main stats in terms of likes, comments, shares, and types of content. And then we dug deeper to understand what it is that these top brands do to get such results.

Most Liked Post per Industry

FMCG Starbucks | 226K likes

Home & Deco H&M Home | 45.4K likes

IT & C Apple | 366K likes

“❤ Some mo-mints are made for sharing. ❤ #PeppermintMocha”

“...love you more @vicfrid! ❤☕ #HMHome #coffeelove“

“As soon as I was ready to give up, the fog lifted.” Commissioned By Apple. #ShotoniPhone by Vivien L. @vdubl

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Total likes: 2.9M likes overall

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Most Liked Post per Industry

Media National Geographic | 538K likes

Pharma La Roche-Posay | 11.6K likes

Travel Airbnb | 49.2K likes

“Photo by Stephen Alvarez @salvarezphoto…”

“Between the toes… #tobecontinued #saveyourskin“

“There’s no such thing as a bad view of Lake Como…”

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Total likes: 2.9M likes overall

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Average Comments/Post per Industry

Automotive

480

Fashion

572

Beauty

2275

FMCG

414

Home&Deco

78

IT & C

424

Media Pharma Travel

481 10 105

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Posts With Most Comments per Industry

Automotive Tesla Motors | 2.7K comments

Fashion Aerie | 21.2K comments

Beauty Benefit | 71.4K comments

“Track Mode rolling out today”

“Happy holiday sweeps! Tag a friend below to enter for your chance to win 2 undie bundles & $50 gift cards.”

“🚨MAKEUP YOUR VANITY #GIVEAWAY! 🚨 Two winners will receive $1,000 in #Benefit product…”

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Total comments: 138K comments overall

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Posts With Most Comments per Industry

FMCG Starbucks | 11.4K comments

Home & Deco Target | 753 comments

IT & C Netflix | 11.7K comments

“It’s heeere! Get the limited-edition #Reusable #RedCup, free today, when you buy a holiday beverage!⁣⁣ ⁣”

“When milk gets in the holiday spirit. 🎄 😋 #OnlyAtTarget #MarketPantry“

“Puberty is getting messier. @bigmouthnetflix Season 3 is coming soon.”

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Total comments: 138K comments overall

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Posts With Most Comments per Industry

Media Disney Channel | 5.5K comments

Pharma La Roche-Posay | 127 comments

Travel Visit Dubai | 8.6K comments

“Light embracing speed. It’s Lamborghini Aventador SVJ.”

“Even between the buttocks! Prevent skin cancer, become a #SkinChecker“

“Would you try this? Tag a friend who would dare 😄 “

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Total comments: 138K comments overall

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948K

56.9K

3.6M

3.1M

3M

9.77M

11.5M

12.8M

19.4M

Average Followers/Account per Industry

Most followed account

@natgeo with 100M followers

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Most Followers | National Geographic

Experience the world through the eyes of National Geographic photographers. Authenticity in every picture. On Instagram they’re sharing photos by photographers who have spent months and months living and photographing on the remote islands, frozen seas, or documenting village life.

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Cultural encounters of generations and the planet. Take a look at these young men who posed for a portrait in South Sudan, perhaps best known for years of conflict and war. Its people are also brimming with talent and resilience. NatGeo Instagram presents the reality around the world.

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Average Engagement Rate/Post per Industry

Automotive

1.37%

Fashion

0.5%

Beauty FMCG Home&Deco IT & C Media

0.4% 0.7% 1.19% 0.94% 0.51%

Pharma Travel

3.02%

Highest engagement rate

@target 12.47%

0.71%

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Highest Engagement Rate | Target

The Christmas Fever We’re not surprised to see a retail brand the category winner of engagement rate. And when we say retail, Target naturally comes to mind as it is one of the top retail brands in the United States. Ecommerce sales were expected to increase 15.3% in 2018 during the Christmas season. This post simply captioned “Joy to the world, new #homedecor is here” has brought the attention of more than 40K people who double tapped. Target has a 12.47% ER as most users are asking directly about the products in the image - size, colours, stock availability and if this will fit their room. And people asking questions directly about the product is the dream, isn’t it?

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Most Used Type of Content on Instagram Total: 1200 posts

Based on likes Image 864 46.6M likes

Carousel 116 2.77M likes

Video 220 7.90M likes

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The Three Types of Posts on Instagram

Image. Carousel. Video. When analysing the best type of performing content we were not surprised to see single images as the main winner of the category. It outweighed its two competitors with 70% on the most used type of content, most performing when it came to likes, and most engaging when it came to comments. Most commonly, brands use carousels to showcase multiple products or for additional details about what is pictured in the first image of the carousel post (like product or a service). On the other side, brands are trying to get creative with carousels using different scenarios and landscape images split into multiple assets. With the increase in video popularity, individuals and brands are quickly learning the ins and outs of video and video optimization on Instagram. They’re all looking to improve their posts, engagement, and diversify their content on the page.

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Most Popular Types of Content Based on Comments

554.9M comments

Image

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15K comments

Carousels

158.5K comments

Videos

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How to Create Top Performing Posts

High-Quality Visuals. Quality counts a lot more than most marketers imagine.No matter the gear, whether it’s an old iPhone or a high-end professional photographer, you have to carefully select the content you’re publishing. Make sure only the best assets make their way to your page. A Great Caption. It’s no surprise that storytelling is the main tactic in marketing. Your caption should use the basics of good copywriting, the needed clarity, engaging-style, interesting-topic, and required call-to-actions. #Hashtags. Adding relevant hashtags will significantly improve your chances to be discovered organically by the Instagram community. It gives you a better chance of attracting new followers and getting more engagement. Community building. The experts on Instagram already know that the key to building their account is engaging with their audience all the time. You should be replying to all the comments as much as you can.

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Top 5 Posts in Automotive

Lamborghini

Lamborghini

Porche

527K likes Neutral sentiment

426K likes Positive sentiment

281K likes Positive sentiment

Audi

Lamborghini

256K likes Neutral sentiment

219K likes Positive sentiment

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Automotive Best Performing Post | Lamborghini

Bold. That’s exactly what we see in the picture. Lamborghini Aventador screams power, speed, engineering talent and a very strong performance. Lamborghini has won this category because they’re smartly using the Instagram’s Algorithm to their own benefit. The Instagram post is strong, has a very eye-catching image, uses all the hashtags like #Supercars #Instacars #CarsWithoutLimits #Lamborghini to characterise what’s in the image and make it easily discoverable to car enthusiasts not following the brand on Instagram. Lamborghini overall keeps the same style in all of their Instagram posts. If we look at the grid, it builds up a personality with highly powerful names, like Huracan, Aventador, Daytona, Performante and many others. If you take a look, Lamborghini uses a strict color palette to make sure they keep the branding similar all over Instagram. Also, they’re making the most out of all types of content, from single images to a lot of videos.

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Top 5 Posts in Fashion

Nike

Nike

Nike

1.12M likes Neutral sentiment

553K likes Neutral sentiment

529K likes Neutral sentiment

Adidas

Nike

529K likes Neutral sentiment

367K likes Neutral sentiment

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Fashion Best Performing Post - Nike

Boom! We witnessed that again. Nike, what an iconic brand. Nike’s marketing is not just about selling shoes or apparel - it’s a lifestyle that they’re pitching to their fans all the time. A lifestyle that everyone feels they need to have. It’s the main goal of Nike’s branding strategy. Nike is the largest sports brand in the world, worth close to $16 billion. So, how does one of the world’s most recognisable brands cut through the clutter on social? They have the most performing post in the Fashion Industry that our report showed. Nike’s highly engaging video got almost 10M views on Instagram. It’s an inspirational & motivational video that simply encourages viewers to keep going. It connects with individuals universally, allowing anyone and everyone to come up with their interpretation. It creates a relationship between the brand and its fans. Nike is rocking the social world. It has mastered the art of creating amazing content that reflects its empowering brand.

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Top 5 Posts in Beauty

Anastasia Beverly Hills

Anastasia Beverly Hills

Anastasia Beverly Hills

267K likes Positive sentiment

189K likes Positive sentiment

184K likes Positive sentiment

Anastasia Beverly Hills 169K likes Neutral sentiment

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Benefit 183K likes Positive sentiment

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Beauty Best Performing Post | Anastasia Beverly Hills

Anastasia Beverly Hills has built a powerful beauty brand on Instagram by implementing efficient strategies. ABH offered products at scale to micro-influencers in exchange for reviews. Giving products to influencers on Instagram is a very effective and cheap way for brands to reach a young and engaged audience outside of their own. They leveraged User Generated Content by promoting their hashtag all the time, adding it in the bio and all the posts. As you can see in the top posts, ABH emphasises femininity all over Instagram. As a beauty queen brand on Instagram they’re promoting the products with makeup lessons, pictures, and results. Also their audience love all the content they’re publishing and constantly asking for more. ABH doesn’t hesitate to regram their audience’s best content and promote it.

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Top 5 Posts in FMCG

Starbucks

Starbucks

Starbucks

226K likes Positive sentiment

185K likes Positive sentiment

173K likes Positive sentiment

Starbucks

Starbucks

179K likes Positive sentiment

146K likes Positive sentiment

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FMCG Most Performing Post - Starbucks

Starbucks shares love, equality, humanity, and coffee - things they’re definitely known for. Besides coffee, friendly hipster baristas, and almost a complete takeover of every street corner in US, Starbucks is known for a great social media strategy dominating the digital space. A big part of their digital culture is about decorating coffee and cups in their wood spaces. Starbucks really shines on the visually oriented platform assorted with the community and culture. No matter the social platform you visit, Starbucks’ look is consistent and their branding recognisable. The company’s social channels almost look & feel the same. The content is consistently unified around the company’s mission, messages, and goals.

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Top 5 Posts in Home & Deco

H&M Home

Target

Target

45.4K likes Positive sentiment

40.9K likes Positive sentiment

39.5K likes Positive sentiment

Zara Home

Zara Home

30.8K likes Neutral sentiment

28.5K likes Positive sentiment

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Home & Deco Best Performing Post | H&M Home

As always, sweet & cute! That’s the branding of H&M Home. Their audience loves them back, you can see it in all the comments. They have definitely established a personal touch and comfort with the people they’re interacting with. Instagram is frequently ranked as the top social media platform for influencer marketing. H&M is taking advantage of that not only to build brand awareness, but also inform the actual designs of its clothing in a fairly novel fashion. As you can see in H&M’s top post was directly targeted to @vicfrid, an influencer and owner of an influencer marketing agency. Bulls eye! H&M Home is targeting not only customers, but partners to work with and that’s how they will succeed in the long run.

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Top 5 Posts in IT&C

Apple

Netflix

Netflix

366K likes Positive sentiment

330K likes Neutral sentiment

335K likes Positive sentiment

Netflix

Apple

389K likes Positive sentiment

302K likes Positive sentiment

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IT&C Best Performing Post - Apple

In many ways, the #shotoniphone campaign feels like the natural extension of the billboard ad campaign. Without showing the iPhone, Apple is promoting the iPhone’s camera as the perfect tool if you want to up your game on Instagram. It’s clear that the company wants to encourage people to use the hashtag so that it becomes a pop culture symbol. Many popular Instagram accounts use this method to resurface popular posts as well, such as Vivien’s (@vdubl) that won our category of most performing posts. The architecture, lines, and fog lifted above the city make this post one that you can’t miss on your feed. Apple’s Instagram page shows very high level engagement - posting new pictures using the campaign hashtag, asking questions, sharing posts with their friends, and making Apple visible on social.

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Top 5 Posts in Media

National Geographic

National Geographic

National Geographic

538K likes Positive sentiment

632K likes Neutral sentiment

417K likes Positive sentiment

National Geographic

National Geographic

360K likes Positive sentiment

215K likes Neutral sentiment

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Media Best Performing Post | NatGeo

National Geographic is one of the top non-celebrity brands in the social sphere. If you’re following Nat Geo on any of their channels, you already know why. A stunning storytelling combined with beautiful photos and videos make this brand top notch. Same as Apple, NatGeo uses UGC to maintain a powerful presence on social media by publishing photos of some of the best photographers in the world and the story behind it. In a crowded social space, your photos and videos need to be simply stunning. What does stunning look like? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll find on their profile - nature, people, architecture, wild animals, and stories more than millions of years old. Using rich visual assets, the brand has leveraged Instagram to give viewers unique experiences.

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Top 5 Posts in Travel

Airbnb

Airbnb

Burj Khalifa

49.2K likes Positive sentiment

40.9K likes Positive sentiment

30.8K likes Neutral sentiment

Turkish Airlines

Turkish Airlines

26.2K likes Positive sentiment

25K likes Neutral sentiment

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Travel Best Performing Post | Airbnb

Ah, the essence of Instagram - locations at the seaside, with a small table, chairs, and beautiful background. It’s almost a cliché to share this kind of photos but they perform really well. Airbnb is the king of user-generated content as they’re constantly sharing the photos associated with “millennial cool”. With a lot of strategic marketing efforts, Airbnb’s constantly generating content from their own fans. Also, there are currently almost 3 million photos using #airbnb on Instagram — and counting.

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User Generated Content User Generated Content is any type of content that has been created and put out by unpaid contributors or fans. It can refer to pictures, videos, testimonials, tweets, blog posts etc. UGC gives genuine data about the brand's items and services from their clients, sparing assets, and boosting brand credibility. In a nutshell, it’s the act of users promoting a brand rather than the brand itself.

Why UGC is so Successful

A few years ago, when Coca-Cola started their famous campaign “Share a Coke” where people all over the world were sharing pictures of their names on soda bottles, marketing has changed. The result? Coca Cola’s customers stepped into the role of advertiser. It was one of the best examples of user generated content so far created. It’s Authentic. In a study run by Cohn & Wolfe, 63% of consumers said they would rather buy from a company they consider to be authentic over a competitor. It Creates a Community. UGC brings audiences together. Instead of it being an “us” against “them” situation, where brands are constantly trying to win consumers over. It’s Cost Effective. UGC is all about the users creating content. They’re unpaid and do it for a number of reasons, whether it’s to share their experience, build a connection with like-minded people, or to have the chance to win something. The ROI is High. According to ComScore, brand engagement rise by 28% when consumers are exposed to a mixture of professional marketing content and user-generated content.

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Behind the Scenes of Content Creation The entire team needs to be on the same page.

Why the Current State Collaboration Is Broken

Content creation and approvals now happen across borders and time zones with remote teams and agencies. Marketers are spending two hours every day gathering information as a result of being isolated. All the while, the marketing channels are expanding and brands are creating more content than ever before which leads to an overwhelmed industry. By 2020 content will become marketer’s biggest bottleneck. The tools and processes they’re currently using are not going to help make it easier. Today, production of content happens across a mishmash of spreadsheets, powerpoints, and endless email threads. This process is slow and frustrating for those on the frontlines. It is also very expensive for those who are paying the extra hours of tedious work. Collaboration is the key to solving this problem.

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Collaboration in Numbers & Stats

How many people are involved in content collaboration? Only 15.8% of Instagram pages connected on Planable have 1 single team member working on content. And that’s usually the case for individuals trying to build their own brand. On the other side, over 60% have medium sized teams of 2-4 people in the team and more than 18% of teams have more than 5 people involved. And when there are so many people working in one single team, many mistakes can happen. If you don’t have the right collaboration tool in use, content gets lost under multiple layers of approval, feedback goes missing or is misinterpreted, time is lost, and innovation is killed. Overall average? 3 people/Instagram page. What can we say, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

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Collaboration in Numbers & Stats

How many comments are they usually exchanging? Effective feedback, both positive and negative is highly important for any brand, no matter the size. It’s a valuable piece of information used to make better decisions, products, services, and teams. There are many performing companies consistently searching for ways to make their best even better. Efficient brands not only accept feedback, but constantly ask for it. Our studies showed an average of 2 rounds of feedback per each Instagram post. Our most debated piece of content had over 27 rounds of feedback (comments within the team). But so much feedback can lead to chaotic processes, bottlenecks, and wasted time on miscommunication. Teams have to ensure one single space for communication and feedback.

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Put all this data to good use Start with establishing efficient processes and workflows that ensure visibility, team alignment, and brand clarity. Turn chaotic Instagram management into easy creative flows with Planable. We help brands work better together, preview their content real time, plan their grid to perfection, and avoid the much-dreaded PR crisis. Learn how at ProductLead we help brands increase conversion rates using social content, understand their competitors’ or influencers’ social presence with big data analytics. We generate creatives at scale for ads and create unique activations in offline using online content.

Brands Analysed Automotive

Beauty

Fashion

Tesla BMW Honda Ford Audi Mercedes Benz Ferrari Toyota Porsche Lamborghini

Anastasia Beverly Hills Mac Cosmetics Sephora NYX Too Faced Urban Decay Benefit Maybelline Loreal Huda Beauty

Adidas Madewell Vans Nike Zara Fossil Asos Aerie Chanel Louis Vuitton

Home & Deco

IT & C

Media

Pharma

Travel

Playdoh Zara Home Ikea H&M Home Walmart Wayfair Target Pier1 Crate and Barrel

Adobe Samsung Mobile Apple Huawei Amazon Philips Nokia Google Microsoft Uber Netflix

National Geographic TripAdvisor BBC Travel CBS E News Fox News Disney Time The Economist Guardian

Novartis Pfizer GlaxoSmithKline Amgen Abbvie Johnson & Johnson Sanofi La Roche Posay Vichy

Airbnb Booking Turkish Airlines Jet Blue Expedia American Express Hotel Marriot Hotel Four Seasons Visit Dubai Burj Khalifa

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FMCG Gucci Dior Dolce & Gabbana Prada Calvin Klein Versace Michael Kors Puma H&M Bershka

Starbucks McDonalds Oreo KFC Pizza Hut Taco Bell Burger King Coca Cola Sprite Fanta Pepsi

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