We live in a time when so much of our culture is influenced by social media. Instagram, specifically, brings people to restaurants, travel destinations, and small businesses based on the content users find on their feed. With so many people buried in their phones looking for the best experiences, there are a few patterns we can learn from about the most popular trends.
More than half of all 18 to 29-year-olds in the United States are on Instagram --, 55% to be exact. Additionally, Instagram has about 400 million active users that check in daily, whereas 700 million are active monthly users.
That’s a lot of eyes looking for great content. So what are they looking at?
Instagram and Travel
Social media plays an important role in the travel and leisure industry. According to research from TravelBird, some of the most popular travel destinations in the United States are also some of the most Instagrammed. This infographic shows the most popular destinations on found on Instagram based on their hashtag.
Surprisingly, the top two destinations came from Disneyland. California’s location came in first with a staggering 14.6 million hashtags and Florida’s Disneyworld came in second at 5.5 million. South Beach and Las Vegas trailed third and fourth with 4.7 and 3.7 million hashtags all as of May 2017.
Keep in mind that these destinations seem to be fairly on par with the age group of active users. The individuals in the latter half of the age group are most likely posting pictures of their children at Disneyland. The more we know about our potential followers, the better we can understand them and provide content that they’re expecting.
But these stats show that it’s important for restaurants to find ways of marketing to tourists in their area.
Instagram and Sports
Sports and social media go hand in hand. Now that most teams have loyal followings, which ones get the most social media attention?
Similarly to travel destinations, hashtags used in sports can really describe important qualities about a team’s fans. The activity on social media is drastically different depending on the sport and the teams associated with them.
Instagram has become so significant in sports that stadiums are bending over backward to cater to their media-hungry fans. Sports teams including the Philadelphia Eagles, Seattle Sounders, and San Francisco Giants have begun using technology that lets them stream their Instagram Stories on the jumbotrons inside the stadium. These ideas are aimed at building team followings while also driving social media engagement to keep up with the demand for constant content, while also likely contributing to their attention on Instagram.
Based on data collected from the research database InfluencerDB, #NBA peaked as the most popular sports-themed hashtag at around 27,900 times last June. The NFL, MLB, and NHL couldn’t even come close with numbers in the 16,700 and 17,500 ranges.
These charts are intended to help you understand a handful of users so that you can have a better idea of their interests. With that said, every audience is different and these statistics are only showing a large portion of users, not everyone.
