The Era of Organic Instagram Reach is Almost Over: Study Of Over 300K Accounts Reveals Engagement Rate on Influencers Posts is Dwindling

Instagram is one of the most popular social apps nowadays. It is a platform of people from a variety of categories. People use this app to create unique content and create their own special place to make them stand out. Instagram is used for all sorts of purposes, from being an entertainment platform to a network promoting products or influencing people with food or travel-related stories.

Engagement of any account is measured by comparing the average likes on each Instagram post to the number of followers of the account. People use different techniques to reach organic engagement on their accounts and to be featured on the Explore page.

Detailed analysis of engagement reach

Reportedly, engagement is down across every category of influencer ranging from beauty, fashion, food to travel, fitness, etc. InfluencerDB shared its report in which it displayed engagement rates of sponsored and organic posts from around the world.

The engagement for the sponsored post was 2.4% in Q1 2019, reduced from 4% three years earlier. The engagement rate of organic posts dropped from 4.5% to 1.9% of the same years. The engagement rates for travel influencers literally cut in half from 8% in 2018 to 4.5% in 2019.

How engagement on sponsored posts outperforms engagement on non-sponsored posts

The sponsored ads are affecting influencers to get organic engagement reach on their accounts.

Sponsored posts affecting organic engagement

The sponsored posts are driving maximum engagement than organic posts. Recently, Instagram introduced Explore ads and sponsored posts for users to get maximum engagement and because of that, the Instagram feeds are now full of them, making engagement rates thin.


Amount of sponsored posts in different categories

Instagram is pretty much consisting of maximum sponsored posts in the fashion industry with more than 25% of all sponsored posts. The food industry holds 12% of all sponsored posts, beauty accounts 7% and the travel has the lowest sponsored posts at 5%.

The marketers usually see better engagement with sponsored posts from nano-influencers. The nano-influencers have a small engagement reach but their followers are highly dedicated.




Working of marketers with nano-influencers

According to a study from InfluencerDB, the average number of influencers used in a campaign is 726. This shows that marketers are working more with nano-influencers and just a few major influencers.

Currently, Instagram is working on a new ad unit that will enable brands to expand their reach of sponsored posts but it's still under the testing mode and not fully launched at this time.
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