Instagram is Facebook’s next Facebook (?).

The Future of Instagram: What Marketers Need to Know for 2018 and Beyond.

Don't miss the Instagram opportunity. As I consult all my clients establish presence as early as possible so you can have the benefit of early engagement and community building. Technology and user trends can change overnight, be social active to shape the change with your customers.

Engagement for brands on Instagram is unparalleled.

Facebook, with its 2 billion-plus users, is obviously the undisputed champion of “reach” in the social media universe. But Instagram holds the title for an arguably more critical metric—”engagement.” While definitions vary, engagement embraces the degree to which users actually interact with content—liking, sharing and commenting, rather than just passively looking. A recent study by Social Bakers showed that brands are getting three times more engagement on Instagram, when compared apples-to-apples with Facebook. On Twitter, meanwhile, engagement rates can be less than 1/30th what they are on Instagram.

The differential comes down to Instagram’s DNA: The network is and has always been a visual-first platform. And that’s an undeniable advantage: At a biological level, visual content can be processed faster and more efficiently by the human brain, is retained longer, elicits stronger emotions and is engaged with more often. On Instagram, users scroll through reams of photos, liking and commenting rapid-fire as they go. This generates levels of engagement that older, text-based social networks simply can’t compete with. Importantly, for brands, this engagement is overwhelmingly positive (after all, there’s no “dislike” button on Instagram), whereas posts on Facebook often generate a broader gamut of reactions and comments.

It’s important to note here that Facebook will remain a critical tool for brands hoping to connect with their audiences for the foreseeable future. Nearly a third of the planet logs onto Facebook, after all, and Instagram currently generates just a fraction of Facebook’s overall ad revenue. But for companies seeking to deepen and sustain connections with their customers, a complementary approach is increasingly critical. Facebook’s little sibling has grown up, and its knack for innovation and engagement promise to make it ever more important in the years ahead.