2019 Social Media Stats: Instagram
At the end of 2018, we published the results of an informal survey of kombucha brands on social media. We reviewed the stats for the number of posts and followers, or likes, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram from 140 brands.
Now, 14 months after the initial survey, we’ve collected far more extensive data as part of our Worldwide Directory listing of over 1,400 brands.
The 2018 stats showed that the most active site was Instagram. The numbers we posted to our own Instagram account in October 2018 showed the top 20 brands, by the number of followers.
This table shows the percent increase (or decrease) in the number of followers of these initial 20 brands over the past 14 months:
While the leading brand, GTs, added over 1,000 followers a week, the average (ignoring the last four that inexplicably stayed the same or actually lost followers) was an additional 200 new followers a week.
Posts
No doubt many leading brands have dedicated social media managers who update Instagram. This table shows the activity of the top 20 from October 2018 to now:
Health-Ade led the pack, posting an average of 40 times a week, followed by Booch Organic at 38 and Brew Dr at 33 posts a week. Komvida and Rise, who led in terms of the percent increase in the number of followers, post an average of 10 updates a week. However, The Kombucha Company increased the number of followers 25% while only posting a couple of updates a week.
The average for the top 20 from 2018 was around 20 posts a week.
2019 Leader Board
The extensive research that led to the Worldwide Directory has resulted in a much more thorough inventory of brands than was available back in October 2018.
This table shows the leading ‘pure-play’ kombucha companies. We’ve removed companies such as Suja Organic, Flax & Kale and Rude Health who make many other products in addition to ‘booch that attract Instagram followers.
What’s immediately apparent is that GTs and Health-Ade still lead, with a 50% drop in the number of followers for the next group. This is exactly what we saw in 2018.
Only seven of the brands listed in 2018 are in the 2019 list. That mainly because we just hadn’t found them back then. It took a lot of time to locate all 1,453 brands in the Directory. So, unfortunately, we only have longitudinal data for 10% of them.
We plan to repeat this analysis next December to see what difference a year makes.
The list above includes three brands from Brazil, two from Australia as well as brands from Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, and Turkey.
The Worldwide Directory lists all of the brands, with links to websites and social media sites.
Additional measurement
The raw numbers only tell part of the story. There’s a host of sophisticated tools that can measure social media effectiveness and take into account customer engagement by looking into the number of comments, responses to stories, and more.
We should also caution that these numbers are taken at face value. One unfortunate feature of social media is the possibility of fake, or ‘bot’ followers. Detecting those is beyond our scope. This article recommends steps brands should take to remove suspicious followers.
We hope this report has given useful insights into what Instagram leaders are doing as we head into 2020.
Disclaimer
The content of this article is accurate to the best of our knowledge and is presented for general informational purposes only. The opinions are those of the editor. Please send corrections or questions to ian@boochnews.com. Comments are welcome.
