Instagram Will Be The Most Powerful Social Media Platform In The World

If you study Edgar Dale’s Cone of Learning, you’ll learn that the importance of visual content plays a significant role in retaining information. His studies dating back to the early 1900s reveal that after two weeks, we tend to remember about 30% of what we see. This compares to remembering only 10% of what we read and 20% of what we hear.

Even your Facebook friends are catching on that photos/videos drive more engagement and “likes.” Surely you can remember that photo of a baby, a cat or a cute puppy cuddling on a pillow. But do you actually remember that status update … you know the ones like “Note to self: Don’t trust anyone!” which in my opinion is just a cry for attention. I would assume that unless it’s a relationship status change, you don’t remember.

Even LinkedIn’s power users are realizing how important visual content is in order to break through the content chaos and drive engagement. It’s the only thing we notice as we scroll through our feeds.

According to one report, which is 6 months old, there are roughly 350 million photos uploaded to Facebook every day. And according to Instagram (scroll to the bottom), there are 60 million photos uploaded daily, 1.6 billion likes per day, 20 billion photos shared and 200 million active users. Wow.

That's why I really wasn’t surprised when I watched this video of Scott Galloway, who runs a think tank called L2 and is also a marketing professor at NYU Stern. In the video, he states that within 24 months, Instagram will be the most powerful platform in the world based on its growth trajectory and it’s engagement rate compared to the other platforms. One data point that stood out was that Instagram’s engagement rate is 15 times higher than Facebook and 25 times higher than Twitter.

Watch the first 4 minutes.

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Michael Brito is a Group Director at WCG, a W2O Company and helps brands think strategically about content and social business. He is the author of Your Brand: The Next Media Company which is a blueprint for companies to think, operate and communicate like a publisher.