Exactly half of the Fortune 500 has an Instagram account, double the share from 2013, says TrackMaven in releasing its latest Fortune 500 Instagram Report. The study looks at various aspects of these companies’ post engagement rates, noting that virtually all (98.9% of) engagement comes in the forms of likes or “double taps.”
Earlier this year, TrackMaven studies revealed that Instagram provides the highest post engagement rates of any platform for both B2C and B2B companies. (The B2B analysis can be found here.)
Fortune 500 companies’ Instagram activity is highly concentrated during week days, per this latest report. These companies are most active towards the end of the traditional work week, with Thursday and Friday each seeing 17.1% share of total posts, double Sunday’s share (8.5%).
That competition has its consequences, though. Post engagement rates are below-average on Thursday (index of 96) and Friday (index of 96.6), while they’re relatively highest on the days where post volume is lowest: Sunday (index of 110); Saturday (index of 99.2) and Monday (index of 99).
The same pattern plays out with respect to post times: while the fewest posts are made in the overnight and early morning hours, those posts see the highest relative engagement rates. Meanwhile, although post activity is highest between 11AM and 1PM, those hours see the lowest engagement rates.
It’s worth remembering that TrackMaven has based its analyses on a year’s Instagram content posted from May 1, 2015 to May 1, 2016. Towards the end of that time period the platform announced that it would be changing its feed from a chronological one to to an algorithm that more closely resembles Facebook’s. That change may have an impact on the volume versus engagement pattern seen in TrackMaven’s data.
Nevertheless, that same pattern has appeared in other analyses, too: email timing data, for example, suggests that off-peak emails see the best response rates.
In other results from the TrackMaven study:
- Posts that include question marks and hashtags see slightly above-average engagement rates, while those with exclamation points are slightly below-average on that metric;
- Juno and Lark are the filters most commonly used by Fortune 500 brands, although the vast majority (89%) of posts don’t use a filter; although
- Posts using Mayfair (the 8th most popular filter) see the highest engagement rates.
About the Data: The report is based on an analysis of 41,071 unique Instagram posts from Fortune 500 brands.
