2020 Social Media Stats: Instagram
This is the third annual report on the social media statistics of leading kombucha brands.
At the end of 2018, we published an initial, informal survey of kombucha brands’ presence on social media. At the time, we reviewed the stats for the number of posts and followers, or likes, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram of a small group of 140 brands.
The 2019 stats expanded the survey to select the top 20 from all 1,400 brands listed at the time in the Booch News Worldwide Directory. Now, at the end of 2020, the survey selects from over 1,700 brands.
The most active social media platform, as always, is Instagram.
Comparing the 2019 numbers to those from today shows a number of trends.
This table highlights the percent increase (or decrease) in the number of followers of the top 20 brands listed on last year’s Leader Board. There are only 19 on the list this year, as Cultured Brew Co (Sydney, Australia) seems to have closed.
Humm is the clear winner, adding 74,800 followers in a year. This beats the previous record of 68,000 new followers added by GTs in 2019. Indeed, GTs only added roughly a third as many new followers this year as they accrued in 2019. Similarly, the second largest number of new followers at the end of 2019 was Health-Ade who added 29,000. This year they added less than half this number.
Instagram was, as a whole, more active this year than last. The brands on this list added an average of 280 additional followers a week, compared to 200 in 2019. For what it’s worth, there are 5,942,044 total followers of all brands listed on the Worldwide Directory. Some people might, of course, follow more than one brand.
As in 2019, there are a few brands that lost followers. This might be due to proactive pruning of ‘fake followers’ — there are a number of free tools that give insight into Instagram audience quality. This article recommends steps brands should take to remove suspicious followers.
Posts
It’s safe to assume that leading brands employ social media managers to update Instagram. This table shows the change in the number posts of the Leaders from 2019 to now.
Comparing the 2019 numbers it’s apparent the pace of posting slackened for some of the leaders. GTs increase of 368 was 86 fewer than the 2018-2019 increase. Brew Dr.’s increase of 277 was 95 fewer than before. Others ramped up the pace. Humm posted an additional 60 for the year over the 2018-2019 increase. Most brands kept approximately the same pace of posts. I assume Clearly Kombucha made the decision to reboot their Instagram feed and delete old ones.
The top 10, in terms of the largest absolute number of posts, update Instagram 32 times a week. GTs and JuneShine post pretty much every day.
And hey, only a third of this random sample show GT Dave meditating 🙂
2020 Leader Board
Here are the leading ‘pure-play’ kombucha brands ranked by the number of followers. 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.
The right column shows the ranking from a year ago. In terms of the number of followers, GTs is the perennial leader, as you’d expect from the brand that created the category. Health-Ade maintained the number two position. Humm shot up the table, as did Komvida Organics. There are four new entries.
A sample of Humm’s Instagram feed shows they invest in varied, high-end graphics. And check out this creative video embedded in a post.
The list includes three brands from Brazil, as well as brands from Australia, Spain, Turkey, Colombia, and Chile.
The Worldwide Directory lists all brands, with links to their 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.
Overall, there are three brands with 100,000+ followers, 91 brands with 10,000-99,999, and 782 with 1,000-9,999 followers.
We hope this report has given useful insights into what Instagram leaders are doing as we head into 2021.
The next report in this series will look at the statistics for Facebook.
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.
