2023 Social Media Stats: Instagram
This is the sixth 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 survey selected the top 20 from 1,400 brands listed at the time in the Booch News Worldwide Directory. In 2020, the survey covered over 1,700 brands. By the time of the 2021 survey, the number of kombucha brands worldwide has grown to over 2,000. By the close of December 2022 and that year’s survey, we were tracking 2,629 brands, and all but 123 had an Instagram account.
Now, at the end of 2023 we track 2,688 — a mere 59 increase in absolute numbers. We added 142 and deleted 83 — those with no online presence whatsoever — over the course of the year.
The most active social media platform in terms of posts and comments is, as always, Instagram.
There are a total of 2,564 brands with an Instagram account — 95% of all kombucha companies worldwide. However, of these 1,029 have not posted an update in the past year — there’s a good chance they are no longer in business, but some might just be too busy brewing ‘booch to mess with social media! The Worldwide Directory is an archival list and many businesses might have closed but still have a social media footprint. In which case we continue to list them.
Only 1,044 companies posted an update to Instagram in Q4, 2023.
2022 Leader Board
Here are the leading ‘pure-play’ kombucha brands ranked by the number of followers. We’ve left out companies such as Suja Organic, Flax & Kale, and Rude Health, who make many other products besides ‘booch that attract Instagram followers. We also omit brewers such as Sierra Nevada, who make hard kombucha but primarily sell beer.
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.
Over half are located outside the USA. There are three brands from Brazil, two from Spain, as well as brands from Australia, Colombia, Canada, India, Germany, and South Africa.
The Booch News Worldwide Directory lists all brands, with links to their websites and social media sites.
Year-over-Year
Comparing the 2022 numbers to today’s shows several trends.
This table highlights the percent increase (or decrease) in the number of followers of the Top 20 leaders.
There is no strict correlation between the number of posts and the number of Followers added. Remedy and Health-Ade posted over 200 times, yet only added a couple of thousand new people. However, Cove added 6,200 with just 62 posts.
Social media slowdown?
Juneshine is the clear winner in absolute number of new followers, adding over 35,000 in 2023. However, this comes far from the previous records of 74,800 followers that Humm added in 2020 and the 71,781 added by Komvida in 2021. As the market leader, GT’s added over 20,000 followers annually for 2020-2022. However, back in 2019, they added 68,000 new people. This year, the numbers sank to 6,212 new Followers.
This plateauing in the growth of new followers is typical of industry leaders. While it might not be significant in terms of sales (that we cannot know since no brands report unit volume), it might be due to a shifting demographic and indicate more mainstream acceptance of kombucha. Perhaps the number of brand evangelists drinking ‘booch who could become fans on social media is a finite universe. People who buy the drink as a matter of course might not follow a brand any more than they would other staples.
On the other hand…
What’s true of the global leaders above is not, however, true of the vast majority of brands worldwide. For what it’s worth, the brands in the Worldwide Directory added just over 2.5 million followers in 2023 for a total of 9,751,929. This is a fraction of 2 billion who use Insta each month–a remarkable quarter of the world’s population! Some customers might, of course, follow more than one brand.
Regionally, North America leads with three million Followers, Latin America has 1.8 million, and Europe has 1.5 million. This, of course, might reflect the relative popularity of the social media platform in different countries, as much as the number of ‘booch fans!
It’s interesting to see that seven brands experienced a decrease in the number of followers in 2023. This might be due to the proactive pruning of ‘fake followers’ — there are several free tools that give insight into Instagram audience quality. This article recommends steps brands should take to remove suspicious followers.
The numbers for Biozen are all over the map. In 2021, they saw a 7% decline in followers over 2020. Last year, they led with a 48% increase. This year saw an 8% drop.
Posts
It’s safe to assume that leading brands employ teams of social media managers to update Instagram. And they’ve been very busy in 2023. This table shows the change for the brands with the most posts.
The Stakhanovites working for these brands posted an average of an update a day. Some post twice a day. Look at their feeds, and you’ll see these are not just casual shots of a bottle of ‘booch on the beach. They employ art directors, photographers, and writers who keep their tens of thousands of followers informed and entertained.
Again, FWIW, there are 786,684 posts in the accounts we list. That’s a lot of pictures!
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.
