A study on Instagram engagement discovered that video posts receive 2x engagement of other post types.
The study also reveals how many followers most Instagram users have, and how many likes the average posts receive.
Data was compiled by HubSpot and Mention after analyzing 48,065,694 Instagram posts from 306,278 top users.
More than 80 percent of businesses consider engagement the most important metric, which makes this study particularly relevant to marketers.
Here are some key highlights from the study.
Engagement on Instagram
Likes and Comments
The average Instagram post receives 5,963 likes, which is admittedly skewed by the number of likes received by highly influential users.
The median number of likes is closer to 100, which suggests 50% of users receive less than 100 likes for the average post.
Video posts received on average
the highest number of likes and have increased in overall engagement year-over-year.
The average Instagram post receives 100.34 comments.
Video posts, in particular, receive an average of 150 comments, although that’s skewed by the average number of comments on viral videos.
The median number of comments per video is 4, which means more than 50% of total users receive less than 4 comments per video post.
Hashtags
The average Instagram post contains at least 1 hashtag. Using more hashtags actually decreases the average engagement rate.
It’s likely better to use fewer hashtags (no more than 5) than to use too many.
Ultimately, when it comes to hashtags, it’s not about quantity. It’s about relevance.
Followers
According to the data, 46.6 percent of Instagram users have fewer than 1,000 followers.
Around 33.5% of users have between 1,000-10,000 followers.
Only 9.8% have 10,000-50,000, and 2.7% have 50,000-100,000 followers.
For more data on Instagram engagement, download the full PDF here.
