35 statistics Instagram creators and brands need to know

Instagram Stats and Demographics

Starting at a bird’s eye view, the number of monthly active users on Instagram is likely to reach 1.2 billion in 2023. The platform is growing rapidly, especially among younger demographics – about half male and half female worldwide – particularly in big countries like the US, Brazil, and the UK. 

Many Instagram users also tend to check their apps multiple times a day, so it is important to ensure you are creating content frequently.

Let’s put these findings into perspective: 

1. As of January 2022, 49.3% of Instagram's audience are female, and 50.7% are male. (Source)

2. As of January 2022, Instagram was most popularly used by younger audiences. Most of the users were aged between 18 and 34 years old. (Source)

3. It is projected that in 2023, there will be nearly 1.2 billion global Instagram users. (Source)

4. According to a survey, 22% of U.S. teenagers say Instagram is their preferred social media channel. (Source)

5. The United States accounts for most Instagram posts, followed by Brazil. The UK, Europe's most populous English-speaking country, comes in third. (Source)
   
   
6. 59% of U.S. adults use Instagram daily, while 38% of them log in to their accounts multiple times per day. This makes it important for content creators to post consistently too. (Source)
   
   Erin Thumann, an influencer with over 150k followers on Instagram, tells Notch:
   
   “Actively engaging with your audience throughout the week can help your stories and posts stay on your followers' feed. By not posting for even a couple of days, the algorithm will take you off of your followers' feed.”

Instagram Security and Hacking Stats

With over 2 billion active users worldwide, Instagram is home to some of the brightest and most creative minds on the planet. However, it’s not uncommon for creators to discover they have been hacked. And it’s not just the mega stars who are being targeted - anyone from small business owners to fashion influencers are falling victim to phishing scams and hacks.

We scoured the internet to uncover the most important statistics around Instagram hacks. 

We’ve also interviewed numerous Instagram creators who have all been hacked in our “How I Got Hacked” series and exposed the latest tactics used by hackers to trick people and steal their accounts.

7. As per FTC reports, in 2021, over 95,000 people reported that they lost cumulatively about $770 million to fraud initiated on social media platforms - double the figure reported the previous year. (Source)

8. According to a report, there were more than 5,000 tweets from 899 accounts mentioning Instagram hacks in just a week. (Source)

9. The results of a survey from October to November 2020 showed that a third of respondents believed that at least one of their online accounts would be hacked into in 2021. (Source)

10. According to a survey from the University of Phoenix, almost two-thirds of U.S. adults with social media accounts report having been hacked. (Source)

You might be interested in: Notch Report: 85% of marketers would pay extra to work with influencers with social media insurance

Instagram’s Influencer Earnings Statistics 

Whether you’re an aspiring creator wondering how much money you could realistically make per month, or an experienced creator looking to compare your current earnings to the average of others in your bracket, earnings benchmarks are a useful guide. Not only that, you can get an understanding of the different ways to actually earn money - it’s not just brand deals. 

On the topic of brand deals - Notch surveyed over 220 U.S based influencer marketing professionals and found that 85% of marketers would pay extra to work with influencers with social media insurance. Click here to read the report.

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11. According to the HypeAuditor 2021 Influencer Income Survey report, 48.49% of influencers said they do earn money from their accounts. (Source)
    The average influencer earns $2,970 per month with their Instagram account with:
    - Influencers with 1K-10K followers making $1,420 per month
    - Influencers with 50k-500k followers earning $3,517 per month
    - Influencers with 500k-1M followers earning $5,847 per month
    - Mega influencers with over 1M followers earning an average of $15,356 per month

11. With an average of $60 per hour, influencers in the Beauty category make the most money. (Source)

13. While as many as 40.15% of influencers surveyed stated that they made money from brand promotion, other popular ways to make money include:
    - Building a personal brand and attracting customers to your business through Instagram (21.71%)
    - Participating in affiliate programs (14.92%)
    - Selling courses (3.86%)
    Providing subscription services (Onlyfans, Discord, and others) is also an additional source of income for about 7.68% of influencers. (Source)

14. According to Influencer MarketingHub's Benchmark Report 2021, Instagram is the number one platform for content monetization.
    A whopping 72% of Creators surveyed prefer Instagram as their primary content channel, far ahead of the nearest competition. TikTok came in at 13%, followed by YouTube at 9%. (Source)

Instagram Engagement Stats

The most liked image on Instagram as of writing this post has about 55,746,040 likes! So that compels content creators to ask the question: how do we improve our Instagram engagement?

There are many ways to grow your Instagram account without having to pay for followers and likes. You can get real growth organically by finding the right hashtags, posting the optimal amount of times, and learning which media types get the most engagement. 

Here’s a list of the latest trends and statistics that can help you boost your engagement rate on Instagram: 

15. Using captions in the 500–1,000 and 1,000–2,000 character range will get the most engagement on Instagram. (Source)

16. Instagram’s 2022 trend report suggests that 1 in 3 of its teenage users are excited to see more dance challenges in 2022. (Source)

17. When using hashtags on Instagram, research varies regarding the optimal number for getting the highest engagement rates. Research by Mention suggests one hashtag per post is best. (Source)
    However, a report by Hubspot suggests that posts with 11 hashtags get the highest engagement rates. (Source)

18. Photos with faces result in more engagement on Instagram. They get 38% more Likes and 32% more comments than photos not showing faces. (Source)

19. One study found that influencers with fewer followers tend to have higher engagement rates. (Source)

20. Another report by Hivenchy confirms the above. The report predicted that micro-influencers (10k to 50k followers) and nano-influencers (under 10k followers) are bound to be the next big thing in influencer marketing. (Source)
    That's because they build relationships with their small but tight-knit community —and they have the engagement stats to prove it.

21. Instagram posts with at least one emoji get about a 6% higher engagement rate globally, but after that, adding more emojis doesn’t really seem to matter. (Source)

22. Users had the highest level of engagement with content posted between 6 pm and 9 pm. As for the days, weekends have a slight edge over the weekdays, with an average engagement rate of 6.47% on Sunday, 6.05% on Saturday, closely followed by 5.95% on Monday, and 5.6% on Tuesday to Friday. (Source). 

Instagram Stories Statistics 

Stories are a great way to create candid content and deepen connections with your audience. But what frequency should you be posting them? What kind of things should you be showing?  

The following Instagram story statistics will provide you with the answer to these questions and more.

23. Nearly 500 million people use Instagram stories daily. (Source)

24. Influencers posted an average of 12 sponsored stories weekly in 2020. The number increased to 16 in 2022. (Source)

25. Adam Mosseri, Instagram chief, says that posting 2 stories per day is ideal for building a following on Instagram. (Source)

26. 44% of users surveyed stated they used Stories to promote products or services. (Source)
    

26. In a HubSpot survey, 35% of respondents indicated that they prefer to watch short, narrative-style stories most of all, closely followed by interactive stories that contain quizzes or polls. (Source)

Instagram Feed Post Statistics

Instagram Feeds are the most popular format for sharing on the platform. You can see why they're so effective. Not only are they easy to create, but they enable creators to apply filters, location tags and more.

Many creators, keen to level up their account and measure their content’s performance, want to know the optimal posting frequency for feed images and the average engagement rate for photos. These statistics should be an eye-opener (no pun intended).

28. Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, suggests that posting 2 feed posts in a week is optimal if you want to grow your followers. (Source)

29. Businesses on Instagram post on average 1.6 times a day, and 62.7% of their posts are photos, while 16.3% are videos. (Source)
    
30. Later examined over 81 million feed posts to discover (Source):
    
    - For accounts with less than 1K followers: 14 posts per week result in the highest reach and engagement rates per post.
    
    - For accounts with 1K-250K followers: 14 or 20 posts per week lead to the highest reach rate per post, while one post per week gets the highest engagement rate per post.
    
    - For accounts with more than 250K followers: only one post per week results in the highest reach and engagement rates per post.
    
    
31. The average engagement rate of giveaway posts is 3.25%, compared to 2.40% for non-giveaway posts.
    Similarly, feed posts related to contests get more engagement. The average engagement rate for contest posts is 3.58% vs. 2.40% for non-contest posts. (Source)

Instagram Carousel Post Statistics

Instagram Carousel posts are becoming all the rage on social media. And they actually have a ton of potential for content creators. That's why we curated this list of statistics to find out just how popular posts in the carousel format are.

32. As of 2022, carousel posts drew the highest level of engagement from page followers. Their interaction rate was 3.15%. (Source)

33. Globally, users prefer video and carousel posts, which are far more engaging than single images.
    Video content brings in an average of 24.25 comments and 1097.9 likes per post. Carousel posts come in second, but the race is tight. They’re only just behind video posts, with 23.2 average comments and 933.7 likes! (Source)
    
    
34. Only 4.9% of carousels include swipe-left messages which encourage users to do so, and they outperform the other carousels, increasing the average engagement rate from 1.83% to 2%. (Source)

35. Engagement rates for carousel, video, and image posts on Instagram feeds have dropped yearly since 2020. For example, data collected by Later indicates that average carousel engagement dropped from 4.4% in 2020 to 2.4% in 2022. That's likely because Instagram is prioritizing Reels. (Source)

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That’s a wrap 

We collated these statistics with the intention to help guide content creators and brands with their Instagram strategy. 

However, statistics are not the be all and end all - they can certainly help provide guidance, but ultimately every account is unique and the key is always to experiment, look at Instagram analytics, and improve your content accordingly. 

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