Increase Instagram Engagement with a Scavenger Hunt

Increase Instagram Engagement with a Scavenger Hunt

Every marketing strategy contains a social media campaign or social media tools, at least it should. The impact of social media for businesses who target both B2B customers and B2C customers are undeniably important.

It's not good enough to utilize and participate in social media, but selecting the right tool for your company or brand and distributing the right message is equally as important. Most companies and organizations are aware of the impact of Facebook and Twitter. Thrill of the Hunt certainly has incorporated those tools into all of our scavenger hunts and marketing efforts. But what about Instagram?

Impact

*According to Our Social Time, only 28% (November 2015) of marketers are using Instagram, even with the potential social impact of the 200 million monthly active users. Instagram has an engagement rate that’s 15 times higher than Facebook and 20 times higher than Twitter. Currently, 86% of top brands have Instagram accounts, which are up from last year, at 71%, and 73% of brands post at least a single photo or video per week. Those are impressive numbers, however is Instagram really that powerful, especially for businesses?

It is if you’re a brand that wants to grow. Those with over 100K followers have grown by 163% in a two year span. Keep in mind there are a lot variables such as proper engagement and messaging that assists this growth, but these number are certainly worth taking a closer look. Who are these brands?

Brands

+According to TrackMaven who released the latest Fortune 500 Instagram Report (yes there’s an actual Intagram report) showed 50% of Fortune 500 companies are on Instagram. The same report showed “Instagram provides the highest post engagement rates of any platform for both B2C and B2B companies.” Now you have my attention.

Engagement

Let's dig deeper. When do these companies share on Instagram? According to the report, company activity is at it’s greatest toward the end of the workweek; Thursday and Friday, boosting 17.1% share of total posts. Sunday’s share is only at 8.5%. This makes sense since a typical workweek is Monday through Friday.

According to these numbers, one would deduce that the post engagement rate would be highest toward the end of the week when the company or brand shares the most, right? Wrong! It’s the opposite actually. Post engagement rates were below average when post volumes were at the highest. While Saturday and Sunday and even Monday, when post volumes where at the lowest, the post engagements where at their highest. Following along?

Let’s get even more detailed. Generally speaking, post activity is highest between 11 am and 1 pm. However, the same pattern outlined above between the post volume and post engagement during the week follows suite. The fewest posts were made during overnight and early morning hours, the “off hours”. That interaction showed the highest engagement rates.

What does this mean? It means that engagement is higher on lower post volume days. Why? Possibly because people are too busy to engage on Instagram during workdays, or it’s easier to engage with fewer information and “clutter”. I don't have a definitive reason why this is, but the facts certainly speak volumes.

What should you get out these stats, to only post during off hours and weekends? Nope. But perhaps it would behoove any marketer to learn their target audience and find out when those individuals are engaging on Instagram to get the most out of the social media campaigns. Or it would be advantageous to use this information to create interaction on Instagram, say through a scavenger hunt?

Posts

Please note, not all posts are equal. Those that include question marks and hashtags see slightly higher engagement rates. Makes sense since posing a question always encourages engagement, and everyone loves to a good hashtag. But be warned, those posts containing an exclamation point show slightly below average engagement. The majority of posts, 89%, don’t use a filter, even though the most common Fortune 500 filter is Juno and Lark and the eighth most popular filter is Mayfair, which sees the highest engagement rates.

Company Benefit

How can I gain online recognition, specifically on Instagram, through a scavenger hunt for my company or organization? Easy. Create either a traditional, an online, or a combination of both (a standard structure for all Thrill of the Hunt's scavenger hunts) style of scavenger hunt for one reason or another, or no reason at all.

Below are a few examples of company scavenger hunt ideas. In addition to creating a fun and interactive event for a team building activity, educational training, or as a perk or reward, a scavenger hunt is a great vehicle to increase your online footprint through a controlled and friendly activity.

Examples

Team Building

Team Building activities are proving their importance and gaining momentum with companies of all sizes. Offer your employees a team building scavenger hunt with the focus on Instagram interaction. Maybe incorporate training and company education in the scavenger hunt. Let your employees use the scavenger hunt as a way to engage their reach and share the company posts. This can be done during normal business hours, or try and increase your Instagram's interaction by hosting the event during "off hours".

Trade Shows / Sales Meeting

Use a scavenger hunt as a way to ...

Read these scavenger hunt ideas for Instagram 

Increase Instagram Engagement with a Scavenger Hunt

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