1. Instagram has over 800 million monthly active users
Twice as many as Twitter, Three times more than Snapchat.
Action: Get on it, understand it and utalise it fully.
2. Over 70% of businesses are using Instagram
That has doubled since 2016 and is still growing
Action: Drive sales by getting in on Instagram advertisingin its infancy.
3. 59% of 18- to 29-year-olds use Instagram
Under 25’s spend 32 minutes on Instagram daily, 59% of the users are aged 18-29, if they are your target audience, get on it now.
What to do about it: Millennial’s, incidentally, are huge fans of events. Dubbed the “experience generation,” they like to spend their money on creating memories and making friends. Learn how to design an event that appeals to millennial’s in how to craft the ultimate event experience.
4. Instagram video views increased by 80% in 2017
4 times the amount of videos created in 2016 in 2017, live video and Instagram stories are big
What to do about it: Learn how to use video as part of your event marketing strategy in this post. Then, take advantage of the various ways you can use video on Instagram Stories, regular posts, and paid ads.
5. Instagram Stories has more than 300M active daily users
(instagram stories user stats)
Snapchat only counts 173M — and that’s the entire app, not just stories. For event brands, Instagram stories are a great way to engage your audience: one in five organic stories from a business gets a direct message (DM). Since you can’t comment on a story, those DMs signify strong engagement.
What to do about it: Make your stories more effective by embedding links to drive people to your ticketing page (which you can’t do in traditional Instagram posts). Stories can also be converted into paid ads for even more reach.
6. Posts that feature faces get 38% more likes than those without
Personality sells tickets — bland photos of a large crowd don’t.
What to do about it: Given a choice between posting a far-off crowd shot or a close-up of smiling faces showing emotion, go with the latter. Get more engaging event photography tips here.
7. 77% of people value user-generated photos over commercial photos when making a purchasing decision
You probably post plenty of pro brand-building shots on your Instagram feed. But equally important are the photos that your attendees post.
Instagram is such a powerful platform for event brands because it’s easy for other users to tag you in their own snapshots. Viewers browsing on Instagram then easily find all of these event-related posts through @ mentions, hashtags, and geotags.
What to do about it: Encourage attendee sharing by always using hashtags and geotags in your own posts, which connects you to the greater Instagram ecosystem. Then, you can screenshot attendee posts and share them in your feed or in an Instagram Story — always crediting the original poster, of course.
8. 7 out of 10 hashtags on Instagram were made by a brand
(hashtag instagram statistics)
Hashtags are much more than a way to be cute in a caption. They can organize your posts into topical feeds and increase the trajectory of reach — posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% higher engagement. And now, users can follow hashtags so they see every post that uses a particular one.
What to do about it: Hashtags are one of the main tactics brands use to get their posts and Stories in front of new followers. But don’t go overboard with the hashtagging. Five to ten is best practice, according to recent research.
9. 30% of Instagram users have made a purchase from a brand they first heard about on Instagram
Even when users don’t click right on your Instagram page to your event’s ticketing page, Instagram is an important touch point. It’s a step on their “customer journey,” where they develop curiosity about your event before buying.
But Instagram recognizes that measurable return on investment (ROI) is important. So the company is developing ways to turn user views into tangible conversions. For example, business pages with over 10,000 followers can now embed links directly to ticketing pages in Stories.
What to do about it: Choose a ticketing platform that makes it easy to track purchases made from each social network, so you can measure impact.
10. Over a third of Instagram users have made a mobile purchase
Even more remarkable? That number is 70% higher than the mobile-purchase number of non-Instagrammers. The Instagram crowd is mobile-savvy, and that’s fantastic news for event brands — if they have mobile ticket-buying options.
An equally impressive number: 75% of Instagram users take an action after looking at an Instagram advertising post. That action might be to click through to your web page… or it might be to buy a ticket on the spot.
What to do about it: Make sure your ticketing platform is built to work flawlessly on phones, so you don’t lose a single sale from Instagram.
These Instagram stats prove that the platform is a necessity in every event marketer’s toolkit. But attracting thousands of Instagram followers is not your ultimate objective. Your goal is to sell tickets — and that won’t happen unless you’re strategic about how you use the platform.
(Full post) Post by Rachel Grate of Eventbrite
