October 20, 2014
Instagram Grows As Teens’ Social Network of Choice
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from MarketingCharts, a Watershed Publishing publication providing up-to-the-minute data and research to marketers.
Teens continue to gravitate toward Instagram and away from Facebook, finds Piper Jaffray in its latest semi-annual survey of American teens. Roughly three-quarters of respondents reported using the visual platform, up from 69 percent in the previous survey. By comparison, just 45 percent said they use Facebook, a significant drop from 72 percent. (Perhaps all those almost-year-old reports of teens fleeing Facebook are finally coming true?)
In any case, Facebook’s decline was enough to move the platform behind Twitter in the popularity stakes. The micro-blogging site is now the second-most used among teens, but doesn’t seem to be making inroads: the 59 percent adoption rate in this latest survey marks a slight decline from 63 percent in the preceding report.
Meanwhile, Pinterest and Tumblr have stayed relatively flat, used by slightly more than one in five teens, while Google+ tumbled from 29 percent to 12 percent.
Instagram’s ascendance to the top of the social heap has been quite rapid: in Piper Jaffray’s Spring 2014 survey, 30 percent of teens called it their "most important" social network, overtaking Twitter (the Fall 2013 favorite) and placing more distance between itself and Facebook (the Spring 2013 favorite).
The latest study notes that 38 percent of teens believe Instagram is a favorable marketing channel through which to reach them, compared with 34 percent saying the same about Twitter and 21 percent about Facebook.
Finally, the Piper Jaffray study reports that four percent of teens use Snapchat, a surprisingly low figure given Snapchat’s well-documented skew towards youth. That four percent did represent an uptick from one percent in the survey fielded six months earlier.
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Discussion Questions
What’s behind the allure of Instagram for teens versus other social networks? What lessons from Instagram’s continuing appeal can retailers use in their communications in other social networks?
Poll
I am from the decidedly un-trustworthy over-30 cohort, so take my input with a grain of salt.
I do believe Instagram captured a genuine bit of the Millennial zeitgeist by focusing on photos. Mobile is their lifeline, and their communication style is clearly evolving to be more visual.
But I also think part of Instagram’s popularity is owed to its being not-Facebook. Teachers, parents and other undesirables weren’t there when teens early-adopted it—just like Facebook way back when.
There are lessons to be learned from youth social media behaviors, but they are notoriously fickle and resistant to marketers’ efforts to interject.
The good news is that researchers like Piper Jaffray are paying attention to the shifting landscape of social media. If teens choose a different channel than their parents, that should not be too surprising. Remember when MTV burst on the scene? Should be easier to target market, right?
Trite but true: A picture is worth a thousand words. The visual nature of Instagram makes it a more engaging format for smartphone-wielding teens. By focusing on images and limiting text, retailers can make marketing messages more consumable and relatable. The platform also is a great mechanism to gain user-generated content, something that teens also love.
I wrote a blog about the fact that teens are quickly losing interest with Facebook in that now less than 50% of them use it today. I’m not all that certain that Instagram or any other social channel is all that innovative, due to increasingly short attention spans, and the desire of teens to escape the eyes of their parents on Facebook.
In 18 months, MarketingCharts shows, Facebook has fallen 19 points out of favor with U.S. teens, Instagram has risen 18 points and Twitter has stayed exactly the same. Reasons are threefold:
- Facebook’s inevitable decline with teens continues.
- Parents exert less control over Instagram than Facebook and other social networks that have a strong desktop presence.
- Increasing mobile penetration among teens disproportionately benefits Instagram with its image-centric appeal.
Retailers are applying tactics learned from other social networks. They are encouraging shoppers to share their stories using their photos, commenting and favoriting photos from their community and using Instagram to float breaking news and offers.
Retailers are setting a higher bar for the quality of visual content—but attractive images are not just for Instagram. Increasingly vivid visuals help retailers make a bigger splash on Pinterest, Facebook and even Twitter and YouTube. Eye-catching posts get more shares across networks.
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I am from the decidedly un-trustworthy over-30 cohort, so take my input with a grain of salt.
I do believe Instagram captured a genuine bit of the Millennial zeitgeist by focusing on photos. Mobile is their lifeline, and their communication style is clearly evolving to be more visual.
But I also think part of Instagram’s popularity is owed to its being not-Facebook. Teachers, parents and other undesirables weren’t there when teens early-adopted it—just like Facebook way back when.
There are lessons to be learned from youth social media behaviors, but they are notoriously fickle and resistant to marketers’ efforts to interject.
The good news is that researchers like Piper Jaffray are paying attention to the shifting landscape of social media. If teens choose a different channel than their parents, that should not be too surprising. Remember when MTV burst on the scene? Should be easier to target market, right?
Trite but true: A picture is worth a thousand words. The visual nature of Instagram makes it a more engaging format for smartphone-wielding teens. By focusing on images and limiting text, retailers can make marketing messages more consumable and relatable. The platform also is a great mechanism to gain user-generated content, something that teens also love.
I wrote a blog about the fact that teens are quickly losing interest with Facebook in that now less than 50% of them use it today. I’m not all that certain that Instagram or any other social channel is all that innovative, due to increasingly short attention spans, and the desire of teens to escape the eyes of their parents on Facebook.
In 18 months, MarketingCharts shows, Facebook has fallen 19 points out of favor with U.S. teens, Instagram has risen 18 points and Twitter has stayed exactly the same. Reasons are threefold:
Retailers are applying tactics learned from other social networks. They are encouraging shoppers to share their stories using their photos, commenting and favoriting photos from their community and using Instagram to float breaking news and offers.
Retailers are setting a higher bar for the quality of visual content—but attractive images are not just for Instagram. Increasingly vivid visuals help retailers make a bigger splash on Pinterest, Facebook and even Twitter and YouTube. Eye-catching posts get more shares across networks.