Study Shows How Emojis, Videos and Caption Lengths Affects Instagram Post Performance
A new study of Instagram post performance was conducted by Quintly, a social analytics platform. The study analyzed 5.4 million posts, and 34k Instagram business profiles throughout the month of January 2019. The study gives an overall insight on how these profiles are using the platform and what kind of content drives engagement in a landscape that is shifting fast.
Takeaways from the Report
Post Type
Although users have the choice between videos, images, and carousels, images remain the top format preferred by Instagram users, accounting for 68% of all published posts.
Post Lengths
More than just types of posts, the study also shed some light on captions, and whether caption length has an impact on post performance. The study showed that there is a visible trend of publishing descriptive posts as 67% businesses use more than 150 characters and 35.8% over 300 characters for their captions.
The Use of Emojis
Quintly also looked into the use of emojis in Instagram posts, and whether they helped to drive interactions. The report stated that “the higher the number of emojis used, the higher the amount of interactions.” It also asserted that businesses are currently not using enough emojis, as 52.3% of all Instagram posts do not include emojis at all. This research shows that no matter the size of the Instagram account, posts that don’t include any emojis receive the lowest interactions.
The Use of Hashtags
The final part of the study analyzed the use of hashtags in Instagram posts. Predictably, the smallest profiles in terms of followers used the highest number of hashtags in their posts, which contained an average of 4-10 hashtags. Meanwhile the bigger profiles (10m+ followers) used much fewer hashtags. Quintly concluded that the bigger your audience, the less likely you’ll need to use hashtags. But for the majority of users, using more hashtags is a better option as it provides more exposure.