The luxury market’s customer base is expected to hit 500M by 2030, according to a report on the luxury goods market. On their journey to reach these new limits or, perhaps, surpass them, we’ll continue to see luxury brands utilizing the power of social networks to shape their brand image and connect with their target audiences, which, as we’ll see later on, are shifting.

According to our latest Social Media Industry Benchmark Report, retail was among the lowest-performing industries on nearly every social media platform. They earned last-place engagement rates on Instagram and second-to-last on Facebook. This year, luxury and retail brands managed roughly comparable engagement rates, except on TikTok, where they pulled ahead.

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To see what strategies have helped these fashion houses win on social media, we analyzed over 20K of their posts across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter to bring you this report on the top trends from the top luxury brands.

Have any guesses about what they’ll be? Let’s dive in.

Top luxury brands on social media

When ranking the top luxury brands on social media, there are a few factors we consider, mainly the size of their audience, average total engagement per post, and average engagement rate by follower across the four main social media channels. With that in mind, here are the top luxury brands on social media.

In first place, we have Louis Vuitton, who generated the highest average cross-channel engagements per post at 66.7K. They also have the largest cross-channel following of any brand in this landscape at 102M—props to them for growing their following by 11.8% from the previous year.

Taking silver, we have Dior with an average of 56.8K cross-channel engagements and an audience of 81.3M. They also generated the most shares and conversation engagements across all social media platforms. Well done.

Rounding out the top three is Versace, who consistently had one of the highest engagement rates by follower on each social channel. They averaged 43.4K engagements per post, a 16.7% increase from last year, and built their following up to 43.2M.

Top trends from high-engagement luxury brands on social media

Featured trend #1: Celebrity brand ambassadors

Kicking off the top trends from luxury fashion brands, we have celebrity brand ambassadors. Putting a familiar face to their products helped brands build trust with consumers and shape their awareness on social media. From announcing a new collaboration to showcasing how these partners exemplify brand values, the luxury industry saw engagement skyrocket when posting about their ambassadors.

Take a look at the most successful cross-channel posts by total engagement.

Studies show that the Asia-Pacific region is the top market for luxury brands. So, it makes sense to see brands partnering with K-pop stars like J-Hope and Jisoo, who are pretty popular in the area (that’s putting it lightly). They’re also the perfect ambassadors to reach younger audiences worldwide, a good move considering younger Millennials, Gen-Z, and Gen Alpha are expected to make up 80% of luxury product consumers by 2030.

When Louis Vuitton announced on their Instagram account that BTS member J-Hope would be joining the team, they saw a 10.7% engagement rate by follower, a significant increase from the retail industry’s 0.23% average. The single-photo post, the content type that brought in the most engagement on Instagram, also included the hashtag #BTS, the most broadly used tag across channels with the highest engagement rate at 6.89%. It’s safe to say LV fans were pleased with this collab.

Let’s shift gears to Twitter. Here, Tiffany & Co had the highest engagement rate by follower at 0.33%, nearly 17x higher than the retail industry’s median engagement rate of 0.025%. Their most successful content had a few things in common: brand ambassador Jimin of BTS and photo or video content. Video content helped brands in this landscape bring in the most engagement on Twitter, followed closely by photos. Time and time again, we’ve seen the benefits of using visual elements to capture Twitter followers’ attention. This is especially true when a public figure is involved.

Tiffany & Co. also included links in their tweets to make it easier for followers to learn more about their products and used simple, brand-centered hashtags like #ThisIsTiffany while increasing exposure with #Jimin.

While exclusivity is the name of the game in the world of luxury brands, appealing to new demographics of consumers through strategic partnerships has proved to be a worthwhile effort. Brands in this landscape succeeded in doing so with ambassadors who embody complementary values like elegance, poise, and timelessness and have a solid rapport among younger followers.

Find out what is a good engagement rate on Instagram.

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Featured trend #2: Special events and collections

In a similar vein, followers also seem to love seeing A-list celebs dressed to the nines for special occasions. From runway shows to awards season, hashtags related to red-carpet events were the most popular in this landscape, namely music-related events like the Grammys and Beyonce’s Renaissance World Tour. These tags, along with #MetGala2023 and #GoldenGlobes, came with a particularly nice engagement rate lift across channels. Brands also found success showing off their latest and greatest collections at these events with the help of their ambassadors and guests.

Looking at the most popular topics and hashtags, we see an important element of luxury branding: exclusive experiences. For fans, it’s not just about the clothing item or accessory but the novelty that comes with it. Seeing big names at big events in fashion’s latest brings their products to life and gives brands that desired otherness that is so attractive to consumers.

Of all the social platforms, luxury brands struggled the most on Facebook, where their average engagement rate was 0.030%. However, capitalizing on the extra eyes that tune into big events helped them win additional support.  A great example of this comes from Dior in what ended up being one of the top Facebook posts in the landscape. The nearly 2-minute-long clip from their 2023-2024 Men’s Winter Show features celebs arriving and walking the red carpet, interacting with interviewers, and snippets from the runaway show itself. This was a great way to give people at home a taste of the ambiance and hear what attendees thought of the impressive event (did someone say FOMO?). Name-dropping a few celebs in the post caption was also a good move to attract more viewers.

Although Versace recently deleted almost all of their social media presence to kick off a new era with creative director Anthony Vaccarello, we still want to draw attention to their content from the 2023 Met Gala. Last year’s Met was particularly special for luxury fashion brands as they paid tribute to renowned designer Karl Lagerfeld. In one of the top posts about the event, Versace went into great detail describing the thought, effort, and history behind ambassador Anne Hathaway’s ensemble and how it related to the theme. Doing so created a lot of social buzz on the post to the tune of 1.84K comments.

There’s definitely something to be said for letting a product speak for itself, but in this case, delving into the significance of the design helped Versace create an experience for onlookers that showed it was much more than a pretty gown.

Luxury brands have a lot in common in terms of target audiences and how they market themselves, but they are also all unique entities. Showing off different facets of their brands at big events and through their collections is one way they were able to really captivate audiences this past year on their social media accounts.

Featured trend #3: Making TikTok their own

Only half of the brands in this landscape actively post to TikTok, which is interesting considering it’s the platform where brands across industries have largely generated the highest engagement rates. There could be a couple of reasons for this. Luxury fashion brands might see the more laid-back and accessible nature of TikTok as inconsistent with their more polished and exclusive image. Or maybe they’ve determined their target audience’s presence on the app, or lack thereof, doesn’t warrant the effort. However, not only are younger generations predicted to make up the large majority of luxury markets by the end of the decade, but Gen Zers, the largest age demographic of TikTok users, are buying luxury items three to five years earlier than millennials around age 15. Given this shift in the luxury market, it will be interesting to see if more luxury brands jump on the TikTok train in 2024 to appeal to younger audiences or keep their positions.

Luxury brands in this landscape who do post on TikTok did so on average around 21 times per week, generating an average engagement rate by view of 3.61%, the highest of any other social channel. Versace had the highest engagement rate at 7.98% and leaned heavily into a few familiar trends: brand ambassadors, new collections, and fashion shows. Their top post pulled off a 29.9% engagement rate and teased a clip of ambassador Hyunjin of Stray Kids for their holiday collection.

You’ll notice a consistent video style when scrolling through Versace’s feed. Their clips are exceptionally high quality, with sharp images, dynamic angles, and professional-level editing. Like most brands in this landscape, the fashion house stays away from popular TikTok trends and trending audios, favoring their commercial or campaign-style content and original sounds. This ties into the idea that luxury brands want to set themselves apart from the mainstream rather than follow trends.

We should also shout out to Louis Vuitton, whose TikToks occupied several of the top spots in the landscape, averaging an engagement rate of 3.39%. Their most successful post, with a 41.5% engagement rate by view, featured ambassador J-Hope in a futuristic, cinematic-style advertisement for the 2023 Men’s Fashion Week collection. The post received nearly 24K comments and was shared over 38.6K times. Now’s a good time to note that in the world of social media marketing, we like to give special importance to comments and shares since they’re the engagement actions that require the most effort from followers.

There doesn’t seem to be an overwhelming consensus on whether TikTok is “in” for luxury fashion brands. However, several brands have demonstrated that the most effective way to navigate the platform is simply by showing up authentically. Luxury fashion brands can maintain their refined and exclusive style on TikTok by creating unique content and utilizing high-quality footage.

Methodology

With the help of Rival IQ, a Quid company, we analyzed 20K Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter posts between December 31, 2022, and December 30, 2023. The 12 luxury brands surveyed have followers ranging between 17.5M to over 102M and include all brands featured in this article, as well as Chanel, Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Hermes, Prada, Rolex, and Swarovski.

To determine the top luxury brands on social media, we focused on key metrics such as engagement rates, follower count, follower growth, and more.

Note: When we talk about engagement rates, we refer to a post’s measurable interactions, including likes, retweets, comments, shares, etc., divided by the total number of followers. Here’s the formula:

Engagement rate = [total engagement] / [total number of followers]

Wrapping up the top luxury brands on social media

What did you think of trends from the top luxury brands on social media? Were there any that surprised you? What would you have added?

Luxury brands have done a great job claiming their corner in the market online. We’ve seen the best brands harness the influence of brand ambassadors to earn followers’ trust and appeal to younger audiences, show off impressive collections at red-carpet events, and make TikTok work for them.

The post What’s working for the top luxury brands on social media appeared first on Rival IQ.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your engagement rate is okay or how often you should post on social media, understand that there is no one answer to these questions. To determine what is normal for your brand, you must consider it within the context of your industry and direct competitors. Only then can you accurately assess your social media presence and look for concrete ways to improve. That’s where social benchmarking comes in.

We’ve compiled a list of top social media benchmarking tools to help you utilize competitive benchmarking to its fullest potential. These tools come in all shapes and sizes, price points, features, and more, so you can find the one that fits just right.

What is social media benchmarking?

Social media benchmarking refers to the process of measuring your social media performance against others using metrics such as engagement rates, post frequency, follower count, and more. It helps you define a baseline for industry norms and averages and understand where you stand next to your competitors. From here, you can determine specific things to improve in your social media strategy and see what has worked for others.

With the social media landscape constantly changing, it’s a good idea to get in the habit of regularly using a benchmarking tool. That way, you can quickly spot any evolving trends in your industry and shift your social strategy as needed.

How to use social media benchmarking to increase engagement

Social media benchmarking tools give you puzzle pieces that, when considered all together, tell a story about the best practices in your industry. You’ll see how often others post, what type of content is most successful, whether or not your competitors boost posts, the best times to post, the most popular hashtags and topics, and more. These insights can explain why your competitors have significantly larger followings or higher engagement rates than your brand.

You can also use social media benchmarking to craft a strategy specific to each social channel. Our latest Social Media Industry Benchmark Report found that for Beauty brands, Twitter and Facebook followers are most likely to engage with posts that include photos, while on Instagram, Reels are most effective. But for Nonprofits, photos are most popular on Facebook, Carousels on Instagram, and videos on Twitter. There is no one-size-fits-all content strategy, which is why it’s so important to use data to find the best practices for your unique target audience on all social media platforms.

How to choose the right social media benchmarking tool

Before we dive into the top social media benchmarking tools, there are a few things to consider to find the right tool for you. After all, no two social media benchmarking tools are the same. Beyond choosing a tool that fits within your financial means, you’ll also want to get clear about the most important features to you and your social media needs.

Here are a few points to consider:

• Types of tracked metrics (reach, engagement rates, audience demographics, follower growth, popular topics, hashtags, best times to post, etc.)
• Number of competitors to track
• Number of managed brands
• Number of internal team members
• Social media platforms covered
• Additional available tools (cross-channel analysis, customizable reports, social listening, publishing and planning, ad management, etc.)

Have an idea about what you’re looking for? Great. Now, let’s take a look at the top social media benchmarking tools.

Top social media benchmarking tools

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMB)

For social media managers and small businesses on tighter budgets, here are a handful of social media benchmarking tools that get the job done with a more modest price tag.

Google Analytics

If you want to test the waters with a free tool, check out Google Analytics. Their platform is like a Mary Poppins bag of helpful tools that collect data from your website and social accounts to provide insights on your performance. Very importantly, you can see how much web traffic comes from your social network accounts and compare that data against your competitors. To get started, open your Google Analytics account and follow these steps to enable benchmarking.

Useful features:

• Find similar competitors based on geographic location and traffic size.
• Compare key metrics like audience demographics, user acquisition from socials, web sessions, web engagement, and top conversion paths.

Price: Free

Keyhole

With Keyhole’s dashboard, you can get real-time insights into your social media activity alongside your competitors that help you establish industry baselines and define your goals. It also helps you predict up-and-coming voices in your industry. Their tiered plans offer options ideal for individual users and smaller businesses and go up to offers for large brands and agencies.

Useful features:

• The benchmarking tool tracks following sizes, engagement numbers, general sentiment, and influencers.
• Use the Quick Trends tool to search the latest trends or hashtags and get an analysis of your competitor’s social strategies up to 6 months back.
• Additional features include social listening, scheduling and planning, audience demographics, and influencer tracking.

Price: Starting at $79/mo

Hootsuite

Among its various analytics features, Hootsuite offers a customizable benchmarking tool in which you can track up to 20 competitors. It covers all the key metrics and shows users their top-performing posts, most popular post types, trending hashtags, and average post lengths. Hootsuite also provides helpful recommendations to improve your social media efforts.

Useful features:

• Competitor analysis reports on important metrics such as posting frequency, engagement rates, and audience growth rate. Easy to share with clients.
• Industry benchmarking tool that provides insights into overall industry trends.
• Social listening tool to track mentions and selected topics.

Price: Starting at $99/mo

Kompyte

Kompyte is an artificial intelligence-powered software from Semrush that focuses exclusively on competitive analysis. It tracks competitors in real-time and pulls information from their social media accounts, websites, ads, job postings, and more.  Kompyte gives you a broad overview of your competitors’ online moves, from social media tactics to product pricing, so you can keep an eye on their overall strategies.

Useful features:

• Customizable reports and workflows.
• Research tools give insights into behavior analytics, win/loss analysis, and keywords.
• Battlecard Templates let you compare multiple competitors side by side or focus on one brand at a time.

Price: Pricing provided upon request

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content research tool that helps brands understand their audiences by analyzing the most popular content in every niche. Brands can track competitors’ social performance to see what strategies are working best for them and get a breakdown of engagement analysis at the individual post level. BuzzSumo is a great option for those looking to benchmark on the web and different social channels.

Useful features:

• Track up to 10 competitors at a time.
• Create alerts for desired brand activity, topics, and keywords.
• Media Database connects you with creators and journalists.
• Content Ideas Generator tool gives insights into trending questions and ideas in your industry.

Price: Starting at $199/mo

Enterprise

Have multiple team members or need to manage several brands? Check out these social media benchmarking tools geared towards enterprising brands and larger social media marketing agencies.

Rival IQ

Rival IQ is a comprehensive analytics app that helps you see both the bigger picture of your social strategy and dive into the finer details. With our social media benchmarking tool, you can instantly generate analysis on your biggest competitors and compare engagement metrics, posting frequency, follower count, and more. Review the most popular posts on each social media platform to see what’s working where and when competitors paid to boost their content. (Bonus: You can always peep our parent company Quid, for even more consumer insights and competitor trends.)

Don’t forget to take advantage of Rival IQ’s live industry benchmarking tool to get an idea of industry averages and key trends, or run a free head-to-head report on your biggest competitor.

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Useful features:

• Customizable dashboard shows how your brand compares to competitors on key metrics
• Automate reports with customizable graphics and charts to easily share with clients.
• Actionable Insights on the most popular hashtags and topics and recommendations for improved performance
• Additional key features include social listening, in-depth post analysis, custom alerts, full social media audits, and more.

Price: Starting at $239/mo

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool and analytics platform. They offer a slew of features, like in-depth post-analysis and competitor reports, that give actionable insights to understand consumer and competitor behavior. If you want to utilize influencers to their highest potential and outdo your competitors, their platform lets you streamline the process from negotiations and contracts to collaboration and campaign analysis. This is a great option for those looking for a tool that does a bit of it all.

Useful features:

• Display benchmarking and performance results in customizable downloadable reports.
• Social listening allows you to monitor consumer sentiment and spot industry trends.
• AI recommendations for best posting times, engaging captions, and general content development.

Price: Starting at $249/mo

quintly

quintly by facelift offers a scalable pricing plan, meaning you pay by the number of social profiles and users on your account. Who doesn’t love paying only for what they need? With their platform, you can track over 350 metrics and use their social benchmarking tool to compare your performance across channels and against your biggest rivals. Then, download a customizable report to share with team members and clients.

Useful features:

• Get intuitive insights to optimize your social strategy
• Use pre-made dashboards or customize your own to assess desired metrics.
• API feature lets you integrate social media data with analytics tools and Data warehouses.

Price: Starting at $315/mo

Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a consumer intelligence platform that focuses, no surprise, on consumer behavior. They allow brands to tap into follower conversations to understand preferences and patterns and then compare the results next to those of their biggest competitors. They also provide insights on best industry performances so you can benchmark your stats against the greater landscape.

Useful features:

• Benchmarking feature analyzes consumer sentiment, audience demographics, industry best practices, and direct competitor performance on key social metrics.
• Monitor media coverage of selected topics.
• Available in 187 languages on over 30 social platforms.

Price: Pricing provided upon request

Brandwatch

For larger brands who want an all-inclusive social media management tool and benchmarking solution, check out Brandwatch. Their platform benchmarks valuable data across social channels, so you can see the social platforms where competitors are pulling ahead and occupying more of the conversation. Then, utilize Brandwatch’s AI-powered insights to strategize a plan forward. You can also research important industry topics to see what followers and competitors are talking about.

Useful features:

• Access historical data up to one year back.
• Benchmark metrics like audience size and growth, top post analytics, popular hashtags, share of voice, and more.
• Additional features include publishing, collaboration, direct engagement, analytics, ad management, and listening tools.

Price: Pricing provided upon request

Wrapping it up

Social media has made it easier than ever for brands to get their name out in the world. This also means that markets are more saturated than before. Cue social media benchmarking, a tool that helps you get a leg up on your competition by first understanding them.

The social media benchmarking tools we looked at today, with all their various features and offerings, can help you identify concrete areas for improvement by showing how you compare against industry leaders. It’s a tool for reflection that shows you how to take up more social share of voice in your industry and, ultimately, attract more customers.

Most of these tools offer a free trial, so be sure to take advantage of that and give a few of them a go. Be sure to let us know how it goes by dropping us a DM on Instagram or Twitter.

The post Top Social Media Benchmarking Tools to Increase Your Brand’s Engagement appeared first on Rival IQ.

Despite showing up fairly regularly, Fashion brands struggled with engagement on social media platforms this past year. On Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter they had nearly the lowest engagement rates of all industries surveyed for our 2023 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report. On TikTok, however, they found more success with engagement rates right around the all-industry median.

As we head into a new year, it’s not a bad idea for Fashion brands to reflect on why they’re falling behind other industries and think of ways to connect better with their target audiences. To help with this, we’ll take a look at the brands in the fashion world that stand above the rest. Let’s see what stories the numbers tell us about the latest trends from the top Fashion brands on social media.

Top Fashion brands on social media

Top Fashion brand on Instagram: FIGS

We couldn’t talk about the best fashion brands on Instagram without mentioning FIGS, who pulled off an engagement rate nearly 3x the industry average of 0.29% at 0.83%. The Californian brand known for its stylish scrubs and medical apparel had the highest engagement rate of any brand in this landscape despite only posting around six times per week, about half the landscape average. This reminds us that quality content should take precedence in our marketing strategies.

Trending audio sounds and relatable content were the most powerful tools in FIGS’ Instagram marketing arsenal this year. Their followers were big fans of the brand’s day-in-the-life and “POV” Reels that highlight an everyday struggle or experience their target audience knows all too well. One of their especially popular Reels features a healthcare professional wearing scrubs, naturally, coming off a 12-hour shift and struggling to think of anything other than hospital sounds. The post brought in 14.8x more engagement than usual, including over 500 comments from followers laughing and tagging their friends.

Nearly all of FIGS’ top Instagram posts were Reels in this style, some from their team and others reposted from other creators (always tagged for credit.) They’re an excellent example of how brands can entertain their audiences while subtly drawing attention to a product.

FIGS posted relatively similar numbers of Reels and Carousels this past year, while they rarely posted single photos. In the end, their Reels brought in the highest engagement, with carousels coming in second, right on par with what we saw for the overall landscape. So, despite Instagram’s move to balance out photo and video content, Reels continue to be a powerful medium for brands to engage with followers.

Other important tools brands used on Instagram were hashtags and interactive giveaways. In this landscape, Instagram posts that didn’t feature hashtags performed, on average, 3.52x worse than those that did. Of the most widely used tags, #Pride had the highest engagement rate by follower, reflecting the importance of inclusivity for today’s brands. #Giveaway was another popular tag that paid off in the engagement department. Getting potential customers to comment, like, and share posts for the chance to win their products helped brands bring in 4.35x more engagement than the landscape’s average.

Top Fashion Brand on Facebook: Wildfang

While brands in this landscape only managed an average 0.017% engagement rate by follower on Facebook, about a third of the all-industry median, Wildfang focused on their community to pull off a .058% average engagement rate by follower. They were one of the least active brands on Facebook, posting less than once per week compared to the landscape average of 7 posts a week, but what they did choose to share was always rooted in their core values.

The Portland-based clothing brand is all about challenging gender norms in fashion and supporting the LGBTIQA+ community in the process. Their commitment to inclusivity shines through on social platforms, where they express their support for Pride Month, raise money for nonprofits like The Trevor Project, and speak out against injustice. After several states criminalized drag shows, Wild Fang decided to organize and break a Guinness World Record for the longest drag show at 48 consecutive hours. DRAG-A-THON, as the event was called, showed that the brand’s commitment to its community is just as active offline as it is on. One of the comments left on a post about the event sums up just how successful it was, beyond breaking a world record, “Every time I think I can’t love Wildfang more, you up the game.”

Fashion can be an influential venue for self-expression, and Wild Fang is all about using it to support and strengthen their community. Knowing the power of celebrity collaborations (and choosing the right ones at that), Wild Fang teamed up with Brandi Carlile to raise money for the singer’s nonprofit organization, The Looking Out Foundation. The post announcing the partnership included a giveaway for those who donated, and ended up being their most successful, with a 0.31% engagement rate. As we’ve seen time and time again, giveaways are a great way to get followers engaged, and those tied to an important cause are even better.

Despite having the fewest Facebook page followers of any brand in this landscape, Wild Fang grew their following by 5.37% and pulled off the highest engagement rate by follower. Pretty impressive. Their success reflects a shifting landscape in which consumers are increasingly interested in buying from brands that share similar values. This is something brands in all industries should be conscious of as they continue to develop relationships with their audiences.

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Top Fashion Brands on TikTok: Oh Polly

TikTok was where Fashion brands really shined, pulling off the highest engagement rates of any social media platform, and leading this landscape is Oh Polly. The UK-based boutique known for their collections of dresses and going-out outfits pulled off an impressive 10.0% engagement rate per view, over 3x the landscape’s average. They also grew their following by 125% in this period. So, what’s their secret? Posting consistently and using simple video editing to show off their products.

Oh Polly’s videos, which they posted on average 27 times per week compared to the landscape average of around five times per week, occupied nearly all the top spots of any brand on this list, and of these top posts, very few featured faces or even real people. The attention lies solely on the dress in question, sometimes hung on a mannequin or simply placed on a piece of fabric. The videos cut from clip to clip, showing off different angles of the item, and always use a glittery filter, which is helpful in both creating a cohesive effect throughout their content and playing into their identity as a fun, glamorous, and girly brand. They also like to keep their TikToks short and sweet, with most of their most successful videos lasting between 7 and 8 seconds.

Another way Oh Polly was able to rack up those engagements was by using strategic hashtags. #Glitter and #SparkleSeason were used in their top ten most engaging videos, which is quite on-brand for them, while holiday season-themed hashtags were also very popular. #Wishlist was the big winner as the most widely used tag with the highest engagement rate. On TikTok, as well as other social platforms, topics related to anticipated releases, like “coming soon” and “new collection,” were also pretty popular. Audiences seem to respond very positively when brands create a sense of novelty with their launches, so don’t be shy about creating hype or putting out teasers.

The data tells us that audiences are more likely to interact with content on TikTok. So, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for brands to focus their efforts here, where they’ll see higher ROIs. One way they can do this is by tapping into followers’ conversations about the latest industry trends and issues. This can help you shape brand awareness, create more authentic content, a core value for Gen-Z consumers, and, very importantly, avoid seeming out of touch with your audience. To understand the greater scope of public sentiment, a social listening tool can really come in handy. It tracks all mentions of your brand and selected topics so you can monitor telling conversations in real time. You might uncover some insight that influences your TikTok strategy moving forward.

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Top Fashion Brands on Twitter: Good American

While brands posted mostly frequently to Twitter, around 20 times a week, they were met with the lowest engagement rate by follower of any platform at 0.038%. One brand that made its mark on Twitter this year was Khloe Kardashian’s Good American. With an average engagement rate over 2x the landscape average, the celebrity clothing line frequently used photos to snag readers’ attention. Tweets that featured the reality star turned founder were by far their most popular content.

Whatever the subject of their tweets, Good American always includes a link to their website to make it easy for readers to learn more, like in this post about the brand’s Bodyglove swimwear collection. Making content more accessible is one of the most effective ways to increase engagement on Twitter.

Inclusivity through exclusivity was an interesting theme that popped up throughout Good American’s social media marketing strategy. On Twitter, they created the #GoodSquad hashtag and social media campaign to “promote inclusivity in the fashion industry” by featuring women of “all backgrounds, shapes and sizes.” They’ve made it a point to appeal to all kinds of women while promoting a sense of belonging and empowerment, frequently using words like “squad” and “girl boss.” When the brand used the #GoodSquad tag to promote their casting calls and send out messages about body positivity, they saw their average engagement rate by follower climb to 0.13%.

We also want to give a special shout-out to UNIQLO, who is behind the five Twitter posts with the highest engagement rates in this landscape. These posts all featured special manga collections, some only available for a limited time. Once again, followers’ intrigue with the announcements of new drops was reflected in engagement numbers. These collections, which likely opened UNIQLO to manga fans who had never engaged with the brand, show how brands can reach a wider audience organically.

Methodology

Here are a few notes on how we put together this analysis. With the help of Rival IQ, we looked at nearly 23K Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter posts between October 31, 2022, and November 1, 2023. The 13 Fashion brands surveyed have followers ranging between 300,000 to over 103 million and include all brands featured in this article, as well as Anthropologie, Abercrombie, Athleta, FIGS, House of CB, na-kd, Sézane, Vans, and Zara.

To identify the trends from the top Fashion brands on social media, we paid special attention to key metrics such as engagement rate, posting frequency, post type, follower growth, and hashtags.

Note: When we talk about engagement rates, we refer to a post’s measurable interactions, including likes, retweets, comments, shares, etc., divided by the total number of followers. Here’s the formula:

Engagement rate = [total engagement] / [total number of followers]

Wrapping it up

Fashion brands struggled to increase engagement numbers this past year. Nevertheless, the trends we looked at today from the top Fashion brands on social media provided good starting points for others to draw inspiration and reach their target audiences. Time and time again, we saw the value of interactive experiences, like contests and giveaways, and the power of voicing brand values. Brands also stirred up engagement by getting social media users excited for exclusive collections and upcoming drops.

At Rival IQ, we love using numbers to help us tell stories. We hope the ones we looked through today spark some inspiration for you. Let us know your thoughts by sending a DM on Instagram or Twitter.

The post Trends from the Top Fashion Brands on Social Media appeared first on Rival IQ.

The past few years on Twitter have been anything but the norm. The platform has weathered several public controversies, a rebrand (hey X), and competition from Meta’s new Twitter-esque Threads app. Through the changes, Twitter has managed to maintain roughly 556 million monthly active users— a sign that it is still a very worthwhile place for brands to market themselves.

To learn more about all those active Twitter users and their relationships with brands, we analyzed hundreds of brands in over a dozen industries for our 2023 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report earlier this year. We found that brands posted least frequently to Twitter, a little under 4x a week, and came out with the lowest engagement rates of any social media channel at 0.035%. Given these stats, it’s not a bad idea for brands to reflect on their content strategies to better connect with their target audience.

Luckily, we’ve got some suggestions (backed by data, of course).

Understanding Twitter engagement

When we talk about engagement at Rival IQ, we’re referring to the measurable interactions on a post, such as likes, retweets, replies, and bookmarks. Add all these interactions up to get the total number of engagements. If you divide that figure by the total number of followers, you get the engagement rate. Here’s the formula:

Twitter engagement rate = [Likes + retweets + replies] / [total number of followers]

When looking to understand how well your content is working, it’s better to focus on your engagement rate rather than total engagement. Think about how much more significant one thousand likes and retweets are to a brand with 3,000 followers than one with 300,000. The higher your engagement rate, the better you connect with your audience.

Why does Twitter engagement matter?

Obviously, we want our brands to receive more attention than not. But what specifically does engagement do for your brand on Twitter? Here are a few benefits:

• Social proof: What others think about a brand can heavily influence a person’s opinion of them. Think about whether you’re more inclined to visit a restaurant with zero reviews or one hundred. The same goes for social media. Likes and retweets are another kind of approval stamp.
• Brand awareness: Every interaction is a free promotion, and the more likes and retweets you have, the more eyeballs you’ll get on your brand. Engagements can also help you gauge how well your message resonates with your audience.
• Website traffic: Pulling an impressive engagement rate on social media platforms is one thing, but using it to build momentum and direct followers to your website or a new launch is even better.

Last year, Sports Teams and Higher Education brands were the frontrunners on Twitter, with engagement rates at .078% and .058%, respectively. We’ll take a closer look at some strategies they used to grab those top two spots along with other leading brands. Let’s get into how to increase engagement on Twitter.

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How to increase engagement on Twitter

1. Use hashtags

It feels as if hashtags have been around since the dawn of Twitter itself. In 2023, they’re still one of the best ways to get your content in front of a wider audience, opening yourself up to more engagements and connections. The key is knowing how to find the right ones.

One way to find hashtags organically is to head over to the Explore tab on Twitter. If there’s a trending topic relevant to your brand, jump in on the conversation. Another option is to browse your competitor’s content to get an idea of the hashtags they use on their more popular posts.

Or, consider using a hashtag analytics tool like Rival IQ that instantly sorts through the data to show you the tags and terms most likely to boost your engagement numbers.

Let’s look at an example with D2 colleges and universities.

In this case, schools looking to leverage hashtags for engagement might consider kicking off new semesters with #WelcomeBack or celebrating #WomensHistoryMonth. Not only were these tags used by multiple schools in this landscape, but they managed to pull off engagement rates several times higher than the all-industry average.

Another great way to use hashtags is to build brand awareness and shape brand image with signature taglines. You might be familiar with campaigns like #MyCalvins by Calvin Klein, encouraging supporters to share user-generated content (UGC).

Going back to our D2 colleges example, schools have long used branded hashtags like Virginia State University‘s #GreaterHappensHere to represent their brands and spread school spirit. These tags paid off in the engagement department, too. Plus, branded hashtags can be a great introduction for new audiences who can simply click a tag and be brought directly into your community.

2. Use competitive benchmarking

With competitive benchmarking, we use key metrics, such as posting frequency, audience demographics, follower growth, and engagement, to compare our performance to competitors and the industry at large. It’s kind of like using a compass to gauge whether or not you’re on the right track. If you notice any major discrepancies in the metrics, perhaps your competitors have significantly higher engagement rates or larger followings, it’s a good idea to reflect on why that is.

Looking at sparkling water brands, we can see that while LaCroix Water is the most frequent tweeter of the group, they have the lowest engagement rate by follower, 6x below the landscape average. This might suggest that, despite appearing more regularly in their followers’ feeds than other brands, their message isn’t resonating as well as it could. From here, they could look at what their competitors are doing differently to win those engagements and lean into the type of content they’ve had success with in the past.

3. Host giveaways

Contests and giveaways are often a surefire ticket to higher engagement because who doesn’t love free stuff? Typically, brands tell readers to give them a follow, like and retweet the post, maybe tag their friend, and in return, they’re entered to win a prize. You can get as creative as you’d like with your contest rules or keep things short and sweet, like ColourPop.

Last year, the cosmetics company was one of the top beauty brands on Twitter, known for hosting giveaways for their themed product lines. Keeping their captions brief and including photos of prizes to excite followers, they were very effective in spreading their brand across the Twitter-verse.

You might also consider teaming up with other brands to sweeten the prize deal and dip into their following pool. Or, combine two of our favorite strategies by thinking up a unique hashtag.

4. Share photos and videos

One theme we saw among the top brands on Twitter was visual content. Sports Teams had the highest average engagement rate of all industries and brought in the most likes and retweets when they included photos and video content.

Why do photos work on an app that doesn’t have an especially big visual lean? Likely because they’re effective at grabbing readers’ attention as they scroll. Try incorporating more photos, videos, and graphics to help your posts stand out and snag more likes and retweets.

5. Post with purpose

Media brands tweeted 17x more than other industries last year yet earned the lowest engagement rate. It makes sense that these brands would post more frequently to keep up with fast-paced news,  but it shows that more tweets won’t necessarily result in more engagements. You’re better off focusing on content that adds value, not noise. Let’s break down what that looks like in action.

As you plan upcoming content, start with a simple question: What’s the point? In other words, what are you hoping this particular piece of content will do? It could be to provide helpful information, solve a problem, make readers laugh, make them feel appreciated, add context to current events, *insert your objective of choice*.

Posting with a purpose in mind will ensure that your content reflects the value your brand provides and doesn’t waste followers’ attention (the ultimate currency).

6. Use calls to action

Want followers to like or retweet your post? Tell them to do it. Really, it’s that simple and a very easy way to increase engagement. Calls to action work because they remove the guesswork and offer readers a clear next step. So whether it’s visiting a link, saving a post for later, giving feedback with a reply, or otherwise, let your followers know what you want them to do.

This post by Jeni’s Ice Cream is an excellent example of how to gently guide followers toward an engagement action. Teaming up with Apple TV to promote a special edition Ted Lasso pint for the show’s latest season, Jeni’s posted an eye-catching photo that they encouraged followers to share with a “Lasso super fan.” We love that they personalized this call-to-action to inspire their audience to share the tweet. This simple move ultimately helped them pull off a 6.83% engagement rate by follower on this post.

7. Keep captions brief

As social media users, we notoriously have short attention spans. It’s up to brands to figure out how to capture that attention and do something with it. Oceana Perú, who was one of the top nonprofits on social media with an average Twitter engagement rate 36x higher than the industry average, shows us that brevity and clarity go a long way.

In one of their most successful tweets, the organization encouraged supporters to attend an in-person event. The caption provided the date, time, and location. In a reply, they included links to get tickets and learn more. They did the work, providing all the necessary information in one place so followers wouldn’t have to go searching, which increased the likelihood that readers would interact with the tweet and participate in the event. Oceana shows us that in addition to getting those sought-after likes and retweets, you can use calls to action to get your followers in on the action in real life, too.

8. Comment on current events

Is there anything new happening in your industry? Consider adding to the conversation. Not only can news-pegged content give you a visibility and engagement boost, but it’s also a chance to build relationships and trust with followers, connecting over shared interests and providing support when needed.

Last year, when the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, Planned Parenthood led the conversation by giving play-by-play updates and posting links to abortion-related resources. The contentious case was the subject of their most engaged content in 2022, and this year, as more legal action surrounding abortion and healthcare came about, they were once again quick to bring supporters up to speed.

So, if news hits your industry (good, bad, ugly, or somewhere in between), take to Twitter to provide reliable information, solidarity, and practical help to your followers.

9. Utilize social listening

Ever wondered what your people are saying about you on social media? Well, now you can tap into those conversations with social listening, a tool that scours social channels for mentions of your brand and tracked topics. With this information, you can get to know your target audience better, stay on top of ever-changing trends, and follow public opinion. It can also help you get ahead of potential PR crises or gauge sentiments about specific issues.

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Let’s say you’re a travel brand curious about what people traveling to Japan are most interested in. If you track the words “Japan,” “travel,” and “trip” with the social listening tool, you’ll see a bunch of trending conversation topics. The words labeled in green represent subjects with positive connotations and red negative. In this case, visa-free travel, food, and ancient sites would be popular content subjects to cover. It might also be wise to address affordability and over-tourism in Japan, as they appear to be concerns for travelers.

10. Conduct experiments

Last but not least, if you want to know how to increase engagement on Twitter, we strongly encourage you to run experiments on new strategies. Doing so can help you find that content sweet spot that marries authenticity with tactfulness.

Ideally, you’d try out strategies one at a time, give it a testing period, and then collect your results. How long you should run the tests depends on the size of the experiment. For example, if you want to know if videos or photos bring in more engagement, you might consider giving it several weeks to a month or two to collect enough data. Then, look for patterns among the data, if there were any outlier posts with massive engagements, etc., and lean into the strategies you found work best.

Consider using a Twitter analytics tool to assist you with your experiments and overall engagement goals. With Rival IQ, you can track your engagements over time, utilize super helpful visual tools, benchmark your performance against competitors, and more. Here’s a glimpse of what that would look like.

Wrapping it up

As overall engagement on Twitter continues on a slight but steady decline, it’s critical for brands to be proactive about finding the best ways to connect with potential customers. Understanding your following through social listening, sharing photos, and focusing on adding value are just a few ways to ramp up those engagements as we wrap up one year and head into the next.

Understanding how to increase engagement on Twitter is a learning process. So don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment with strategies you’ve never tried before. Just be sure to let us know how it goes!

The post How to Increase Engagement on Twitter: 10 Proven Strategies appeared first on Rival IQ.

It’s no secret that at Rival IQ, we love pulling up our sleeves to dig deep into the data and bring you all the insights. Most recently, we published our Top 100 Nonprofits on Social Media report, which is packed full of analysis and practical tips from the nonprofits leading the way for social change on social media.

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Let’s turn our attention to Twitter (maybe you’ve already moved on to calling it X?). Nonprofit organizations posted more frequently to their Twitter accounts than other social media channels, but it’s ultimately where they earned the fewest engagements. Yikes. Nevertheless, it’s worth looking at what the top organizations did to inch ahead of the rest. We’re confident it will spark some inspiration for your own Twitter strategy, and, who knows, maybe we’ll even see your organization on this list next year.

The Top Nonprofits on Twitter

To find the brands in the nonprofit sector that stood out on Twitter for our Top 100 Nonprofits on Social Media report, we surveyed hundreds of organizations between April 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023. We plugged their engagements—retweets, replies, likes, bookmarks— and a few other important stats into a weighted formula to get our rankings.

Here were the results:

Among the nonprofits we surveyed, we found a median engagement rate of 0.04%, the lowest of any other social network, and that brands tweeted on average around 8x per week, the most of any other social network. So, right off the bat, we can see that posting more doesn’t necessarily translate to more engagement from followers.

Rounding out the top five spots, we have Oceana Peru, The Carter Center, HAYTAP, Planned Parenthood, and Heartfulness. Let’s take a look at what these organizations have to teach us about engaging with Twitter users.

5 Lessons From the Top Nonprofits on Twitter

1. Oceana

What’s working: Concise messaging

Average tweets per week: 8.3

Average engagement rate: 1.44%

Leading the group with an impressive 1.44% median engagement rate, Oceana Peru isn’t afraid to tackle environmental news head-on. The organization tweeted around the industry average, often including photos, links, and hashtags. However, what really stands out is how they can draw followers in and direct them to the next step. Calls to action are a big deal in social media marketing, and Oceana shows us how to use them to engage followers in their cause.

In their most successful tweet, which earned a 69.85% engagement rate by follower, the caption reads: “One year after the Repsol oil spill in the Peruvian sea, the situation remains serious. Opening a thread.” In the thread, they provided information about the recent environmental studies on the spill, the state of affected areas, and, in their final message, they linked a YouTube video and encouraged followers to watch and see the damage themselves.

Issues as significant as the anniversary of a local oil spill may naturally attract more attention than usual, but Oceana’s strategic approach helped them earn those extra impressive engagement numbers.

Overall, Oceana’s presence on Twitter is straightforward, draws intrigue, and always includes a next step, whether it be to sign a petition, attend an event, or learn more about an important subject, like the tweet below talking about the growing number of stranded sea lions. When it comes to getting your followers engaged, Oceana shows us that clarity and value pay off.

2. Carter Center

What’s working: Including photos

Average tweets per week: 11.8

Average engagement rate: 0.63%

Coming in the number two spot is The Carter Center. The former president’s organization was one of the more frequent tweeters on this list, and they earned an engagement rate over 15x the median of all nonprofits on Twitter. To help them rack up those engagements, they utilized the power of photos. Of the tweets that featured some type of image, the organization saw their average engagement rate by follower increase to 0.98%, telling us that photos are a great way to visually break up followers’ feeds and grab their attention.

In one tweet that rocked 606x the average engagement as their average Twitter posts, the organization used an image to spread positive news concerning the President’s health. In other tweets, they’ve posted photos from during this presidency, pictures showing what he’s up to these days, graphics to commemorate his 98th birthday, and more. The success of these tweets is an example of how meaningful multimedia is for communication, even on an app not known for being especially visual.

3. HAYTAP

What’s working: Rallying followers

Average tweets per week: 28.8

Average engagement rate: 0.24%

Shifting gears to animal rights, let’s turn our attention to Turkey’s HAYTAP. The group was very busy on Twitter this year, posting around 28 times a week. They shined a light on cases of animal mistreatment and, very importantly, their efforts to make a difference.

In a tweet that received 45x the engagement as their average tweet, the group posted live updates as they worked on a particularly news-pegged rescue mission. The message also called for readers to join the cause by taking in some of the animals.

This tweet made waves for several reasons. First, it showed followers that the organization already had a hand in the action and that they are, for lack of better words, the real deal. Secondly, it mobilized followers who were concerned about the incident but didn’t know how they could help. HAYTAP’s invitation was likely a welcomed direction.

HAYTAP doesn’t shy away from confronting unpleasant realities, and it’s another way they were able to galvanize their online community for a purpose. Following the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey in February 2023, Preto, a service dog from Mexico, was flown in to search for survivors. Tragically, he lost his life doing so. HAYTAP posted a graphic to honor his service, and followers responded by liking and retweeting the tribute over 3K times and replying with messages of gratitude.

4. Planned Parenthood

What’s working: Keeping followers informed

Average tweets per week: 8.5

Average engagement rate: 0.27%

Planned Parenthood took silver on our overall social media ranking, and they snagged the fourth spot for Twitter. This past year, most of the organization’s conversation centered around the historic Supreme Court decision to end the constitutional right to an abortion, which predictably led them to be a bit more vigorous on Twitter than usual.

Planned Parenthood’s action on socials during this time is a lesson in what to do if big news hits your nonprofit sector. When the draft opinion of a potential Roe V. Wade overturn was leaked in May, the organization took to Twitter to settle confusion around the document and tell followers how to get involved. They also posted a link to an abortion clinic locator. The latter tweet was among their most successful, receiving over 7K retweets.

Given the sheer volume of noise surrounding the leak and the contentious issue, Planned Parenthood’s practical support likely helped many who were confused about what was happening.

The following month, SCOTUS officially overturned Roe V. Wade, and Planned Parenthood was once again quick to spread the word on Twitter. The tweet breaking the news received a 75% engagement rate with over 52K retweets and nearly 2K replies. That is a lot of conversation and shows the necessity of their online efforts to engage followers.

As new abortion legislation came and went over the following months, Planned Parenthood continued to use Twitter to deliver the latest news. Given that Twitter is the most popular social media platform for news, this was a smart move and a lesson for nonprofits in every niche. By serving as a trustworthy news source and commenting on current events, your organization can position itself as a credible voice.

5. Heartfulness

What’s working: Community

Average tweets per week: 9.8

Average engagement rate: 0.47%

Heartfulness wears their heart on their sleeve on socials, and it’s part of what’s helped them amass 22K Twitter followers and snag the fifth spot on this list. Looking through their Twitter feed, you’ll find lots of content on spirituality, mindfulness, and mental health. More than anything, their focus in real life and the Twitter world seems to be using community to create a better world.

What does it look like to bring together 40,000 people for a group meditation? Heartfulness gives us an idea in one of their most popular Twitter posts. The tweet featured a video montage of the gathering, and it brought in 2.71x more engagement than their average post, including several replies from attendees who shared personal pictures and expressed how impactful the experience was. Once again, we see how using images and videos on Twitter can give your content that extra engagement boost.

Investing in your community is paramount for cause-driven nonprofits. You might not be able to round up tens of thousands of followers in person, but connecting with your audience and bonding over shared interests will deepen your relationships and help sustain support in the long run. One way to do this is by following their conversations to see what matters most to them.

In the world of social media analytics, we call this social listening, and it’s a tool that can help you find what topics your followers are talking about and gauge their opinions on various issues. Equipped with this information, you’ll understand your audience that much better and be able to create a meaningful community both in person and online.

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Wrapping it up

What did you think about these leading nonprofits? We hope the lessons we looked at today inspire you to hone in on your Twitter strategy this year.

Across the board, we saw that nonprofits were big on using photos and videos to catch readers’ attention. They also used Twitter to provide followers with valuable resources, inspire action to support their causes, and keep supporters informed on the issues that matter.

If you want to dive into some of the analytics we went through in this article, you can sign up for a free 14-day trial with Rival IQ and start uncovering insights within your organization’s data. Or, you can run a free analytics report on your biggest competitor to see how your performance compares.

As always, you can find us in our corner of Twitter talking about all things social media analytics. Come say hi!

The post Top 5 Nonprofits on Twitter and What You Can Learn from Them appeared first on Rival IQ.

With TikTok, Threads, and a newly rebranded X (formerly Twitter), is Instagram even that relevant for brands anymore? The numbers tell us it is. Of the 1.35 billion users on the app, 80% use Instagram to find new products and services.

So, regardless of whether Instagram is the newest or shiniest social media platform, it’s still a very worthwhile place to grow a following. To help you do so, we’ve compiled a list of practical ways to grow your following organically (because real followers are the best kind!)

Let’s take a look.

How to grow your Instagram following organically

1. Show up consistently

When looking at your overall marketing strategy, maintaining a consistent social media presence is one of the best ways to support organic growth. Think about the message it sends your Instagram followers if you post and engage with them regularly rather than going hot and then unexpectedly cold. Meaningful relationships between brands and followers require consistency and thoughtful content (more on the latter later).

It might be helpful to use a content calendar and plan your posts ahead of time. And in terms of how often you should be posting, here’s what the data from our 2023 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report tells us about Instagram:

• The top 25% of the most active brands post to Stories roughly every other day. 
• The median number of feed posts was 4.55 per week across industries.

2. Optimize your profile

You have just a few seconds from the time someone first visits your Instagram page to make an impression and incentivize them to look deeper into your brand. From just glancing at your Instagram profile, people should be able to identify who you are and what you’re all about.

Your Instagram bio should include a concise description of what you do, a link to your website, and use relevant keywords to increase your chances of being discovered. Many brands use emojis or bullet points to break up the information and make it easier to read. Try to keep your handle (Instagram username) and profile picture as simple as possible so as not to add any distractions.

3. Use analytics to understand your target audience

Social media analytics can shed light on who your audience is and what they like to see so you can meet them where they are. It’s like using a GPS to get from point A to point B instead of wandering around aimlessly and hoping for better results.

A good place to start is by identifying the content that typically performs best in terms of engagement (Rival IQ defines engagement as the measurable interaction on a social media post, such as likes, comments, shares, and saves) and looking for patterns among things such as:

• Preferred media types (e.g., Reels, carousels, photos, etc.)
• Popular topics and themes
• Best time(s) and day(s) to post

If you’re ready to harness the power of data to grow your Instagram following organically, the next best step could be getting started with a social media analytics tool. Might we suggest our very own Rival IQ?

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4. Get active on Stories

Remember when we said consistency is key to growing your Instagram following? That doesn’t mean you need to churn out new feed content every day.

Instagram Stories is where you can get up close and personal with followers. You can give them a behind-the-scenes look at your brand, touch on timely topics, drive traffic to your website or launches with links, use interactive stickers to get feedback, and so much more. For a visibility push, use relevant hashtags and tag your tag your location.

One brand that really knows how to leverage the power of Stories is James Madison University, the standout D1 school on Instagram for our 2023 Higher Education Social Media Engagement Report.  They use Stories to answer questions from students, give insight into daily life on campus, and generally foster a sense of community for their Instagram followers. Then, they create Story highlights so new followers can quickly immerse themselves in JMU culture.

5. Use competitive benchmarking

Competition breeds innovation and, in the case of social media benchmarking, helps you identify practical areas for improvement, especially if there are extreme performance disparities. Let’s say your competitor has a significantly larger following and an engagement rate you don’t come close to. It would be in your best interest to reflect on why that is, reassess your own content strategy, and move forward accordingly.

If you want to see how your brand compares to your competitors (like, right now), you can run a free head-to-head report and get instant analysis on several key metrics.

6. Harness the power of influencers

Gone are the days of having to plaster your brand on a highway billboard to be seen. Now, you can pay an influencer to talk about you online and gain access to their social networks and devout followers.

Within the $21.1 billion industry, you’ll find influencers in all kinds of niches that can help spread awareness and get your brand in front of the right people. Recently, there has been a trend towards micro-influencers—creators that typically have less than 15K followers. Their audiences tend to be very active and engaged, and there’s a lot of trust in those relationships. Having these smaller creators vouch for your brand is a great way to get in with new circles of involved followers.

How to Discover and Track the Right Influencers for your Brand.

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7. Utilize hashtags to find followers

Instagram hashtags may be less potent on their own than they once were, but they still play an important role in growing your Instagram following. You’ll want to use hashtags specific to your brand and industry to get yourself in front of your target audiences, and there are a few ways to find the right ones.

One method is to do some digging into what your competitors are doing. Look through their posts and see if they frequently use any of the same hashtags. Then, see how widely utilized those tags are and play around with some of the more popular ones. Another place you can look is at your own post analytics within Instagram to see how well your hashtags perform. Head to any post and click “View Insights,” then scroll down to where it tells you how many impressions were from hashtags.

Did you find any juicy insights? If you’re looking for something more in-depth, you can also use a hashtag analytics tool and let it work its magic so you can instantly find the hashtags that will open you to new markets and followers.

8. Host a giveaway

Giveaways are a tried and true strategy to boost your engagement and stretch into new pockets of Instagram followers. By incentivizing followers to share your post and tag their friends to gain entries to the giveaway, you’ll naturally increase your exposure, drive impressions, and make yourself more visible across the platform.

For inspiration, take a look at The Ordinary’s giveaway celebrating 2 million followers. They used a fun, eye-catching Reel to grab interest and provided clear participation instructions. Take their lead and make it your own!

9. Host Instagram Live events

Instagram Live events are the perfect place to nurture your audience and find new ones. They’re much more immersive than posts or Stories, and attendees can leave messages, ask questions, and interact with your brand in real time.

Here are some ideas for Instagram Live sessions. Don’t forget to spread the word about your Live event on Instagram and other social channels beforehand.

• Celebrate or announce new launches
• Host Q&A sessions on a new product or relevant industry topics
• Partner with creators to discuss trends in your industry
• Host workshops and tutorials

10. Get active in your comments section

Social media is for socializing, after all, right? And Instagram is the perfect place to strike up meaningful conversations with your followers and create an inviting space for new ones. Head to your comment section and DMs to answer followers’ questions, thank them for singing your praises, or simply acknowledge their presence— it goes a long way.

The Birch Benders team does a phenomenal job of using the comment section to make their followers feel seen. They’re constantly replying to comments and making followers feel like they’re just chatting with a friend. This approach helped them earn an impressive 4.16% average engagement rate (it’s worth mentioning that’s over 17x the health foods industry average) and snag the #1 spot for Instagram on our Top 100 Healthy Food Brands on Social Media report.

11. Tag your location

To put yourself on the map (literally) and make yourself visible to new Instagram followers, start geotagging your Instagram posts and Stories. If you already have a business profile for your brand, you can tag your business itself so people can see your exact address and opening hours. Otherwise, you can geotag your city, neighborhood, county, etc. Who knows, your next customers could be right around the corner!

12. Use CTAs in your captions

The best social media captions will engage your audience’s attention while directing them to take a desired course of action, whether that be sharing, commenting, or saving the post for later. To do so, you’ll need to get specific. Straightforward direction can result in higher engagement and help you reach new audiences.

Take a look at this simple yet effective call-to-action from Rare Beauty. To build excitement for a new surprise launch, they posted a teaser clip and instructed followers to leave their guesses about the announcement in the comments. Followers quickly and excitedly followed suit.

13. Engage with brands in your community

Another place you can find new followers is through adjacent brands and local businesses in your community. Sharing and commenting on each other’s content and partnering up for giveaways or events means you can dip into each other’s following pools and gain exposure together. Even without the benefit of gaining new followers, it’s always a good idea to invest in meaningful professional relationships.

14. Use the power of trends

Trends can be a great asset to reach new Instagram followers for obvious reasons. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of viral audios and memes that practically create great content for you? The important thing to remember is to use the ones that fit your brand. Rather than jumping on every trend born online, focus on the ones that are actually relevant to your brand.

Take, for example, poppi’s play on the viral photo of Justin and Hailey Bieber looking like they’re attending two opposite-end-of-the-spectrum events. The messaging works (if you’ve ever had a poppi drink, you know) and touches on a pop culture moment well-known among their demographic of Instagram followers.

15. Link your Instagram wherever you can

You want to be sure your Instagram has as much visibility as possible. A few easy places to do this include:

• Email marketing: Place the Instagram logo at the bottom of your emails that links to your Instagram account for an easy follow.
• Your website: Add a live Instagram grid to the main page of your website so people can see your latest posts.
• Other social channels: You can build hype for upcoming Instagram Live events or direct followers to Story highlights across your other social media accounts. This is especially helpful if you have a larger presence on another social media platform.
• Marketing materials: If your brand uses physical materials like napkins, pamphlets, folders, etc., add your Instagram handle for another little plug.

16. Encourage user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) refers to any content posted by followers that features your brand. It can be an important boost in the social proof department, nurturing a sense of brand trust and even a bit of FOMO, maybe?

You can encourage followers to post about your brand by regularly sharing content you’re tagged in or creating a signature hashtag, such as Coca-Cola’s #ShareACoke or Apple’s #ShotOnIphone style.

17. Prioritize organic followers

As our final tip for growing your Instagram following, we encourage you to keep your sights set on growing sustainably and organically. Purchasing Instagram followers may seem tempting, and while some folks see it as a means to an end (more followers lead to more exposure, which leads to gaining more “real” followers), this just isn’t the case.

When you purchase followers, you’re often buying bots or inactive Instagram accounts, neither of which will interact with any of your posts. So, while your follower count is growing, it won’t be reflected in your engagement. When this happens, it is painfully obvious and can actually push your real followers away. Slow and steady wins the race!

Wrapping it up

While engagement on Instagram has been on a steady decline in the last few years, it still beats Facebook and X combined. So, as long as potential followers and customers are hanging out on Instagram, it’s in your best interest to learn how to find them.

To grow your following on Instagram organically, try out some strategies we’ve seen on this list, make them your own, and let us know how it goes! If you want to learn more about how other brands in your industry are approaching their social media strategies, check out our Social Media Industry Benchmark Reports.

The post 17 tips to grow your Instagram following (that actually work) appeared first on Rival IQ.

Behind every impressive social media marketing strategy is a consideration for what the data tells us works. This is how agencies give their brands the upper hand—by crafting a unique social media presence that lives in the sweet spot between tailoring content to followers and utilizing the top posting strategies.

So, here’s to finding the best social media analytics tool to help your brands grow alongside your agency. Let’s get into it.

The Importance of Social Media Analytics for Agencies

At its core, social analytics is the roadmap that teaches brands how to best connect with their target audience on social media platforms. With the right tool, you can determine:

• What content followers engage with the most
• Popular industry topics and themes
• The best day(s) and time(s) to post and interact in your comment sections
• How many sales are generated by paid posts
• The social media strategies most effective at reaching new pockets of clients

This list is far from complete but shows how valuable an analytics tool can be for agencies to help clients create an effective social media strategy and grow on social networks.

How to choose a social media analytics tool

Here are a few things to think about when choosing a social media analytics tool for your agency:

• Your current situation: Evaluating what’s working and what’s not will take you one step closer to finding the analytics tool you need. What areas do you struggle with? What does your client feedback tell you?
• Features: Every analytics tool will look a little bit different. Consider the features that are most important to you. Is it the number of metrics available? Being able to compare your social media performance against your competitors? Do you care about scheduling or management tools? Get clear on the things that matter most.
• Cost: The good news is that social media analytic tools come in all shapes, sizes, and prices. While some divide their plans by the types of features included, others offer all features at all levels and price you by the number of brands or account users. Consider how this fits into your budget.

Now that you have a better understanding of what you’re after, let’s get into the top social media analytics for agencies so you can get analyzing.

Top Social Media Analytics Tools for Agencies

Free social media analytic tools

Analisa.io

analisa.io’s sweet spot is Instagram and TikTok analytics, so if that’s where you want to help your clients shine, this is a great free option. You’ll get access to some key metrics that can help you assess a brand’s overall performance and identify areas for improvement, while their hashtag tracker can help you find where your clients’ target audiences are hanging out online.

Key features:

• Profile analysis: Get insights on engagement rates, commonly used hashtags and topics, top posts, and posting activity.
• Hashtag reporting: Search hashtags to understand their reach and engagement and identify related trending topics.
• Analytics reports: Easily export an overview of profile metrics and post activity to share with clients.

Price: Free with paid plans starting at $69/monthly

Buffer

Buffer is packed full of intuitive tools for agencies of all sizes. You can streamline your team’s creative process from the brainstorming phase to publishing, making it an ideal all-in-one type of analytics tool to manage any number of brands.

The paid plans are where you’ll get access to the engagement, analytics, and collaboration features, but their free plan comes with a few useful tools for up to three social channels.

Key features: 

• Planning tool: Set up a content calendar so you can easily see what posts you have coming up for which clients and set up automated posting across different social platforms to save time.
• Landing page tool: Build a landing page within Buffer for your clients to use across their social media accounts to promote their services and share important links in one place.
• AI Assistant: Their AI tool can help you brainstorm content ideas, translate, or re-work past posts.

Price: Free with paid plans starting at $6/monthly

Google Analytics

Did you know that Google Analytics can be used for social media marketing? While it’s not the most comprehensive tool for social media analytics, it could be worth adding to your marketing repertoire for even more insights into how you can help your clients’ brands grow, especially if your agency is already taking advantage of Google products.

Key features:

• Traffic insights: See total traffic to your client’s websites and social media accounts, identify where those leads came from, and which social platforms bring in the most traffic.
• Analyze campaign ROIs: Help your clients find the most effective content by tracking how many sales their social media campaigns bring in.

Price: Free

For Mid-Market Agencies

Hootsuite

Hootsuite began offering a modest entry-level paid plan after doing away with their free option earlier this year. It does a good job covering the meat and potatoes of analytics, providing insights on essential social media metrics and super helpful management tools for agencies. The next tier up, you can add more users and social accounts as your agency grows.

Key features:

• Ad manager: Integrate marketing tools like Mailchimp or Salesforce to analyze Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn ad performance.
• Analytics reporting: Generate reports on social media ROI, find the best times to post for your audience, and compare your performance against your competition’s.
• Collective message inbox: Answer direct messages and mentions across all social media channels from your dashboard inbox.

Price: Starting at $99/month with a 30-day free trial

Iconosquare

iconosquare could be an especially suitable option for small to mid-size agencies, given its price point and range of features. The customizable dashboard comes with all the analytics, reporting, and listening tools you could need to shape a unique social presence for your clients, and you only pay based on the number of brands you’ll be tracking.

Recently, iconosquare has added LinkedIn and TikTok dashboards, integrated social listening for Facebook and Instagram, and included analytics for Instagram Reels so you can provide your clients with even more juicy insights.

Key features:

• Track 100+ metrics: Gage your clients’ social performance by tracking their post engagements, follower demographics, reach, best posting times, and more to improve their social media marketing strategy.
• Content planner: Schedule your clients’ upcoming posts on your content calendar and save time by automating crossposting across social media platforms.
• Collaboration tool: Easily share content for input and approval from team members and clients.

Price: Starting at $59/month with 14-day free trial

Keyhole

Keyhole advertises itself as “so easy to use, you don’t need to be a data geek,” which is good news for those who like to keep things simple. Their starting plan covers Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even more social channels as you move up payment tiers.

In addition to all of Keyhole’s amazing analytic features that can inform how you help your brands create campaigns and shape brand awareness, agencies will appreciate having one place to manage publishing, team and client collaboration, shareable reports, and more.

Key features:

• Profile analysis: Get insights on engagement and profile performance to improve your clients’ social strategies.
• Searchable trends tool: Use Keyhole’s Machine Learning tool to identify emerging trends about any topic or industry.
• Hashtag and keyword monitoring: Use these essential metrics to guide your social strategy and download reports to share with clients.

Price: Starting at $79/month with free trial

For Enterprise Agencies

Rival IQ

If you’re looking for a comprehensive tool that can satisfy all your agency’s social analysis needs in one place, Rival IQ could be a good fit— call us biased.

Our app provides detailed real-time insights on the metrics that help you better understand your followers, scale engagement rates, and give your clients a leg up on their competitors. When it comes time to show off those results, you can download customizable reports to share with your team and clients.

Start analyzing with a free Rival IQ trial.

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For a glimpse into the actionable insights you’d get with Rival IQ, run a free head-to-head competitor report to see how you measure up or check out our industry benchmark reports.

Key features:

• Comprehensive analytics reporting: On your custom dashboard, see what types of content brought in the most engagement, the best times and days to post, track trending topics and hashtags, see historical data, and more.
• Competitive benchmarking: Measure your performance against your competition to see where you stand.
• Social listening: Follow conversations about your brand– the good and the bad— to stay in touch with your brand’s general sentiment online.
• Social media audits: With custom analysis, you can identify the areas to improve and garner more engagement.

Price: Starting at $239/month with 14-day free trial

Zoho Social

Zoho Social is the social media arm of Zoho Corporation, a computer software and web tools company. They offer a slew of analytic-based services as well as management, AI, and integration tools that would be useful for agencies looking to centralize their organization.

Key features:

• Monitoring software: Track desired keywords, hashtags, reviews, and how people engage with your brand online.
• Profile analytics dashboard: Measure audience demographics and reach, identify top-performing posts, track social traffic, and more.
• Content planner: Create a pipeline from the scheduling tool to automated publishing.

Price: Starting at $230/month for agencies with a 15-day free trial

Sprout Social

On the lookout for a two-in-one management and social media analytics tool?  Sprout Social could be for you. It’s got all the analytic tools to see what type of content has historically performed best for your brands and user-friendly reports so you can show off results to clients.

If you care about integrating other tools like Canva, Slack, or Google Drive, you can do that with Sprout as well.

Key features:

• Customizable metric analysis: Choose the data and parameters to analyze so you only look at the information you want.
• Scheduling and publishing tool: Plan your content in advance and set up automated posting.
• Engagement tools: Reply to comments and messages within the Sprout dashboard.

Price: Starting at $249/month with 30-day free trial

quintly

Unlike most companies on this list, quintly calculates their pricing based on the number of profiles you want to analyze and the number of users on your account. So, no matter your choices there, you’ll have access to all of quintly’s analytics and reporting tools, making it a valid option for established agencies looking to scale their analytics plan alongside their growing business.

Key features:

• Reporting on 700+ metrics: Select the data points you want to appear on your customizable dashboard to support your content strategy goals.
• Benchmarking: Comparative analysis to see how your brands measure against your competitors.
• API and integrations: Connect outside software for even more in-depth analytics within quintly.

Price: Starting at $315/month with a free demo

Wrapping it up

Social media analytics is about so much more than just numbers. It’s about how that data can help brands shape their stories and foster a one-of-a-kind relationship with followers. For agencies who want to help brands show up online in a way that is both effective and true to their voice, social media analytics is a vehicle that can get you there.

We hope you come away from this list ready to get analyzing. Don’t forget to dig into some competitive analysis to see how your brand fares against your biggest rivals, or check out industry averages on our benchmark reports.

The post Social Media Analytics for Agencies: Top 10 Free and Paid Tools appeared first on Rival IQ.

Have you heard? After surveying 100 beauty brands between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022, we released our Top 100 Beauty Brands on Social Media Report. The report is out now and full of useful analysis on how beauty brands shined across social media platforms.

See how Rival IQ can help top beauty brands.

Explore our beauty solutions

For now, let’s turn our attention to Twitter. Much like in previous years, the app wasn’t super popular among beauty brands. They averaged less than one tweet a week, with an average engagement rate of 0.02%. Comparatively, Instagram saw an average engagement rate of 0.19%, Facebook 0.03%, and TikTok 2.94%. Despite lagging behind other social channels, we discovered some exciting trends in the data, some involving uber-famous celebrity founders and K-pop collabs, that are sure to spark some inspiration.

Now, let’s get right into the top beauty brands on Twitter and how they stand out from the rest.

The Top 7 Beauty Brands on Twitter and How They’re Winning

1. Rare Beauty

What’s working: Having a greater mission

Total engagement (likes, retweets, replies, and bookmarks): 272,529

Engagement rate by follower: 1.57%

If we’re talking about top beauty brands on Twitter, we’ve got to start with Rare Beauty, which was the shining star across all social media channels this year. With founder Selena Gomez leading the way, the makeup brand whipped up an average engagement rate by follower of 1.57%, an impressive figure next to the industry’s 0.02% average, and nearly 300K engagements.

Their secret to success seems to lie in keeping Selena front and center— both her face and all the things fans know and love her for. Nearly all of their top-performing posts feature the singer-turned-founder showing off her products, whether it be for a new launch or getting ready for an awards show. Videos and photos were key here.

Fans also seem to love that Rare doesn’t shy away from discussing the importance of mental health, which Selena has always been big on. One shining example is the photo of Selena’s open letter in The New York Times, which described the company’s goal of raising $10 million for mental health services, among other value-centered goals. The post earned over 6x their average engagement.

2. Etude House

What’s working: Contests and giveaways

Total engagement: 69,321

Engagement rate by follower: 2.65%

If you’re into beauty products, you know that Korean skincare is all the rage online. Etude House is no exception. The brand had the highest engagement rate by follower of any company on this list at 2.65%, just under the average engagement for beauty brands on TikTok. Extra impressive.

In the fall, Etude House tapped teen K-pop singer Kazuha as their “charming muse,” and the crowds went wild. Subsequently, the brand saw some seriously high engagement with the Le Sserafim member as the subject in 9 of their 10 top tweets.

Once again, pictures and videos did exceptionally well, but their giveaways (a top trend among beauty brands) helped take their engagement to the next level. The more Twitter followers engaged with a post by replying and retweeting, the higher their chances of winning some Etude products and Kazuha merch. Great incentive and an even greater partnership!

3. Fenty Beauty

What’s working: Moves toward inclusivity

Total engagement: 282,002

Engagement rate by follower: 0.14%

Rihanna’s Fenty makeup line had a great year on socials, coming in with silver overall and bronze on Twitter.

Their most popular tweet, which notably brought in 140x their average engagement, is the famous captionless photo that hinted at a Ri-Ri Super Bowl appearance. Followers were eager to know more, to say the least, just as they were when Fenty mysteriously tweeted “Rhianna” with no further explanation. *mic drop*

But what’s really behind the brand’s success on Twitter is its central mission of being accessible to more people— a top trend we saw among beauty brands across all channels. Their move into retailers across several African countries was very well received on Twitter, and the brand was very active in responding to follower questions. They also made sure to share photos of supporters across the world using their products.

Celeb beauty brands are decidedly in, but Fenty stands apart by literally going where few of them have gone before, consistently engaging with supporters online, and creating buzz with their cryptic messages.

4. ColourPop

What’s working: Interactive experiences

Total engagement: 1,351,256

Engagement rate by follower: 0.10%

It’s well-known that fans of Korean pop band BTS are an enthusiastic bunch, so when ColourPop announced a collaboration with the popular group last summer, their engagement exploded. The following contests and giveaways helped the brand amass over 1.3M likes, retweets, and replies, and 10x the followers of the average beauty brand.

Another thing that helped ColourPop snag its spot on the list of the top beauty brands on Twitter was their consistency. They tweeted 5x times more than the average beauty brand, with video and photo posts garnering the most engagement by follower.

ColourPop’s take on celebrity collabs is unique in that they are less of an endorsement and more of a fun, interactive experience for consumers. The BT21 collection features animated characters created by the BTS members themselves, while The Muppets-themed holiday line surely sparked cozy childhood nostalgia.

5. Topicals

What’s working: Leaning into imperfection

Total engagement: 35,942

Engagement rate by follower: 0.34%

Embracing flaws is the name of Topicals’ game, and it’s paid off on Twitter, where they’ve snagged fifth place among the top beauty brands on Twitter.  Specializing in products for chronic skin conditions, the brand doesn’t shy away from unedited close-ups or getting real about what it’s like to deal with these issues.

In their most successful tweet by engagement rate, the brand recognized Psoriasis Awareness Month with a thread covering the who, what, when, where, and why of the condition. They included untouched images of individuals with psoriasis and offered insights into how their products can help.

The Topicals team isn’t afraid of laughing at themselves, either. When a customer posted a tweet praising the effectiveness of one of their products while simultaneously commenting on its foul odor, the brand had the perfect response: “It’s like a drag with a hug…we’ll take it.”

We know younger generations especially appreciate when brands are candid instead of putting forth a cookie-cutter image, and this interaction is a perfect example.

6. Glossier

What’s working: Limited collections

Total engagement: 15,467

Engagement rate by follower: 0.60%

After a few tumultuous years at Glossier, the company has set its sights on turning around its public image. They fell from 4th to 8th place this year overall but were able to move up one notch on Twitter to grab 6th place.

At the forefront of their most popular campaign on Twitter was singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo, the subject of the brand’s top three performing tweets.  The partnership makes a lot of sense, considering the brand is trying to turn a new leaf and solidify its place in the hearts of Gen-Zers. And while Miss Rodrigo has undoubtedly been a huge sticking point with customers, offering her collection for a limited time seemed to really bring home the win.

In fact, limited offers were a big trend for them overall on Twitter. In all of their top five tweets, there is some mention of a limited-edition product, both related to Rodrigo’s line and not. Customers felt the urgency and responded accordingly.

7. Paula’s Choice Skincare

What’s working: Skincare education (and memes)

Total engagement: 22,938

Engagement rate by follower: 0.21%

Last year, Paula’s Choice didn’t even make the list of top beauty brands on Twitter, so props to them for stepping up their game! Their secret sauce seems to be a mix of skincare infographics and trending memes. Once again, photos were big with Twitter followers.

In their most popular tweet, the brand broke down how you can effectively pair Vitamin C with other skincare ingredients. It had a 202x rate lift compared to the brand’s average tweet and, more impressively, more than 1700 bookmarks, which tells us that followers found this simple explanation very helpful.

Other times, Paula’s Choice opted for lighthearted memes. Sometimes they were informative, like the Galentine’s Day post highlighting skincare ingredient “besties,” and other times just silly and relatable. The brand’s strategy is a great example of how to use easy-to-consume content to communicate good nuggets of knowledge.

Wrapping it up

While Twitter has never been a beauty brand’s favorite app, there are several lessons we can learn about how they interact with their audiences. Overall, we saw that celebrity brands and collaborations were a big hit, as were the brands that made an effort to act on a greater mission for good and frequently used photos and videos in their tweets. Lastly, don’t be afraid to show off your brand’s more unpolished side.

We hope these insights have given you some ideas about how to engage more with your followers. Let us know how you plan to use them by sending us a DM on Twitter. And if you want to learn more about how brands in the beauty industry are showing up on social media platforms, check out our Top 100 Beauty Brands on Social Media Report.

The post What the 7 Top Beauty Brands on Twitter Are Doing appeared first on Rival IQ.

For our 2023 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report, we analyzed over 5 million posts across the major social channels to find the leading brands, industries, and trends audiences couldn’t get enough of. TikTok, the newest of the main social platforms, effortlessly took first place for engagement, beating out Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook combined.

With audiences engaging with their favorite brands more on TikTok than any other platform, we have to ask: Who are these brands, and what are the top industries on TikTok?

Let’s look at what the leading TikTok-ing industries are doing and how you can use their strategies to better engage with your audience.

Key Metrics

Before diving in, let’s cover a few critical details from our 2023 TikTok Benchmark Report, which is, by the way, packed full of super helpful performance insights broken down by industry so you can figure out exactly how your brand is doing against the competitive benchmarks that matter most.

Ready to start analyzing your TikTok metrics?

Grab a free Rival IQ trial

If you need a refresher on important lingo, you can read up on TikTok metrics and terminology.

Now for a few takeaways from our TikTok analysis:

• The median engagement rate by follower on TikTok is 5.69%, higher than Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter combined.
• Brands post between 1-2 TikTok videos per week on average.
• Brands post TikTok less frequently than other social media channels.

Without further ado, here are the top industries on TikTok.

The Top Industries Using TikTok

Top Industry on TikTok #1: Higher Education

Taking gold with a median engagement rate of 16.26% is Higher Ed.  Despite having an engagement rate nearly 3x greater than the all-industry median, Higher Ed was one of the industries that posted the fewest times per week, showing us that more doesn’t always mean better.

On the 2023 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report, we also found that the hashtags with the highest engagement rates belonged to Higher Ed with tags like #College and #Uni. There were also a few related to special events like #Graduation and #CollegeMoveIn.

It seems followers appreciate content about day-to-day experiences just as much as special occasions.

P.S. If you noticed that one of these things is not like the others, we should recall that 2022 was the year of the viral “corn kid” across social channels.

Winning trend on Higher Ed TikTok: A taste of campus life

Celebrating on-campus moments was big on TikTok this year. Schools posted about everyday life for students on campus, how they get ready for game days and class, and generally relatable content for students.

What these campus life-focused TikToks have in common is a feeling of authenticity. The posts feel like something made by students for their friends. Gen-Zers especially value this off-the-cuff content that moves away from the perfectly curated social media content popular in years past.

We couldn’t talk about the schools winning on TikTok without mentioning Baylor University, who were big into posting relatable content.

In a post that had a 12.2% engagement rate by view, the school paired a trending sound with a video of students talking about studying at home but instead falling asleep. Followers commented by tagging their friends and leaving messages like “not my school calling me out.”

We should also give a shout-out to Louisiana State University, which focused heavily on on-campus engagement with students this year. Their TikTok feed is full of funny clips of students around campus, like the one featuring students doing the popular #GriddyDance that was shared over 1.26K times.

Other popular trends in Higher Ed were sports wins, school year kick-offs, and graduations.

How to make it yours: Embrace unfiltered moments.

If there’s anything we can learn from Higher Ed Tok, it’s that authenticity goes a long way. So no matter your industry, don’t be afraid to lean into the more candid moments. Peel back the curtain to give fans a taste of who your brand really is, and invite your followers to laugh and have fun with you.

Top Industry on TikTok #2: Sports Teams

With the second-highest TikTok engagement rate at 9.18%, we have our Sports Teams. They posted roughly around twice per week, which is on par with the industry-wide median, and found success with event-focused hashtags like #Fifa23 and #Preseason.

Winning trend on sports TikTok: Highlight plays

Unsurprisingly, sports fans were all about wins and the unforgettable plays that got them there this year on TikTok. One shining example came from Leeds United, who posted a TikTok showing off their goalkeeper’s amazing double-shot save during a game with 15.7x more likes, comments, and shares than their average post — a sign that the team struck a chord with followers. The slo-mo effect probably didn’t hurt, either.

Another team to watch on TikTok this year was the Phoenix Mercury. The team frequently posted to the platform to show off game highlights, behind-the-scenes footage of the players, and even some on-court trash talk.

Their top post of 2022 showed one of their players making a ⅔ court shot just in the nick of time. This TikTok brought in a 21.2% engagement rate by view, which is impressive enough on its own, but what really makes this a standout post are the 7.80K shares.

Since shares are the more laborious way followers interact with posts (think of the effort required to stop mid-scroll to hit ‘like’ versus share with friends), highly-shared posts show that brands really gave the people what they want.

How to make it yours: Celebrate your wins.

Your industry may not have literal home runs and slam dunks, but you get where we’re going with this metaphor, right?

Take to TikTok to show off your community’s victories, both big and small. Do you have any milestone achievements to brag about? Did you break any company or industry records? Are your clients experiencing significant progress thanks to your brand? People love being part of a winning team. Don’t be afraid to tap into that.

Top Industry on TikTok #3: Travel

Coming in with the third highest engagement rate at 7.43% is the travel industry which found massive success with location-focused hashtags like #Thailand, #NYC, and #SouthAfrica. Other successful hashtags like #Adventure and #Bucketlist aligned with Travel TikTok’s overall theme of capturing those wanderlust moments.

Winning trend on Travel TikTok: Exploring destinations

This year on Travel TikTok, brands were all about using stunning destinations to captivate followers. They showed off the unique culinary experiences, exciting adventures, and can’t-miss activities that make a place unique. Luxury hotel experiences were also a big hit.

SANDALS Resorts leaned into their followers’ love of adventure and luxury with TikToks showing off mouthwatering tropical scenes and giving a glimpse into what their resorts can offer.

In one of their top-performing videos, with 6.91x the engagement as their average post, we see visitors exploring Grenada in search of incredible waterfalls. Through their other posts, we get a taste of swimming with sea turtles in Barbados and diving into a crystal clear pool in Jamaica.

No matter the location or activity, SANDALS is all about creating an experience for its followers focused on exploration, pleasure, and one-of-a-kind adventures. Followers seem to really take to this type of immersion experience, even if it gives them a case of FOMO.

Another way we saw Travel Brands reach followers this year on TikTok was through creator-led campaigns like Marriott Bonvoy Hotel’s #30stays300days.

Each post in the campaign featured a different travel creator showing off destinations across the world, from Mexico City to New York to Bali. They took followers around amazing sites and highlighted all the perks of staying in one of Marriott’s hotels. Going deeper into destinations paid off in the engagement department, and by handing the mic (or tripod?) over to creators, Marriot opened themselves up to new pockets of followers and invited audiences to see a more personal side of the brand.

How to make it yours: Create an irresistible experience.

The Travel Brands that stood out the most on TikTok really leaned into the idea of crafting an experience around their services. These brands showed followers that they’re not just getting a nice place to sleep when they stay at their hotel; they’re getting luxury, adventure, exclusivity, and new cultural experiences.

Think about how your brand can apply this lesson and craft a one-of-a-kind experience for your followers. You can also collaborate with creators and influencers and shake up your brand marketing.

Wrapping it up

While engagement on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook was less than ideal this past year, TikTok was a silver lining for marketers across industries. It’s undoubtedly the place to be for brands looking to connect with followers.

Higher Ed, Sports Teams, and Travel Brands led the way this past year on TikTok and showed that authenticity, celebrating our victories, and creating enticing experiences could help brands in every industry connect on a deeper level with their audiences.

Now, it’s your turn to take these lessons and make them your own. We’d love to see what your brand comes up with, so feel free to share them with us on Twitter.

The post The Top 3 Industries Using TikTok to Inspire Your Content appeared first on Rival IQ.

Creating content with which audiences want to engage is a learning curve for every brand, especially on Instagram, where brands are having a hard time even getting their content in front of followers.

In our 2023 Instagram Stories Benchmark Report, we saw that more and more brands are using Instagram Stories in their marketing. While Instagram posts do a better job of reaching followers, Stories is where a lot of engagement magic happens.

To help you shake things up for the upcoming year, we have 22 unique and interactive Instagram Story ideas for maximum engagement. Before we get into it, let’s cover a few need-to-know points about Instagram Stories.

Instagram Stories basics

• Instagram Stories disappear after 24 hours.
• Stories are ideal for off-the-cuff and engagement-focused content.
• In 2022, brands posted to Instagram Stories 11 times per month with a median of 2 Story frames per day.
• You can save Stories past the 24-hour mark on your Story Highlights.

22 ways to create an interactive Instagram Story

Here are 22 ways to create an interactive Instagram Story and get your followers more engaged.

Remember to make these ideas your own, and don’t hesitate to step outside the box. Story ideas can be repeated, but your brand’s footprint is one of a kind.

1. Use Q+A boxes to give your followers a voice

Benefits:

• Show your audience you’re here to listen
• Provide must-know information
• Increase brand awareness

The possibilities are endless with Q&As. Pop a question sticker in a story to see followers’ thoughts about new launches, industry topics, working at your company, and more.

You can then follow up by answering their questions in a video response or a text screen.

Don’t forget to save your questions and answers in Story highlights so followers can easily go back and reference them.

2. Host an “ask me anything” hour

Benefits:

• Gauge follower attitudes toward your brand and products
• Help followers feel like they are part of your brand

Also known as “AMA,” an “ask me anything” session goes along the same lines as a Q&A, but instead of focusing on a specific topic, followers can, as the name suggests, ask about anything they want.

AMAs are audience-led, meaning they can provide a fresh perspective and shed insight into things you may not have thought about before.

3. Make your Stories more inclusive

Benefits:

• Appeal to a broader audience
• Retain the viewer’s attention

As you interact with your audience on Stories, consider how you can make them more accessible to more people.

Take videos, for example, where you can add closed captions so viewers can read along as you speak. For some Instagram users, there is an audio transcriber in Stories. If this function is not available, you can always use a separate app to add captions and then upload the video to Stories.

Other ways to make your Stories more inclusive and user-friendly include using large fonts, highlighting texts with bright colors, adding a trigger warning when flashing lights are coming, and writing out image descriptions.

4. Show off your new Instagram guide

Benefits:

• Provide useful resources
• Curate content from Stories, feed posts, products, and locations all in one place
• Repurpose old content

Have you tried using Instagram’s Guide feature? You can create a mini blog post on Instagram about any topic you’d like.

Curate a buying guide or an instructional how-to manual, share helpful tips and tricks, tell your brand’s story, answer FAQs, and more.

Guides don’t appear on Instagram feeds like Reels, carousels, and image posts, so make sure to share to Stories and encourage followers to save the guide and share it with their friends.

5. Get feedback with polls

Benefits:

• Cover diverse topics
• Followers more likely to engage
• Measure demand

Polls are a great way to increase engagement because they require minimal effort from followers.

Unlike question stickers, polls provide followers with prewritten options, so all they have to do is click. You can get feedback on various topics, ask about their preferences, and more.

We loved the travel brand BÉIS “Pack with BÉIS” series, in which a team member showed themselves packing for a trip. The Stories featured several of the brand’s products and used polls to ask followers to choose their favorite BÉIS bag.

6. Let your audience choose “this or that”

Benefits:

• Low-barrier to engagement
• Notice patterns among followers

Another easy way to engage your followers is with “this or that” Stories.

Start by choosing two photos to upload in a single Story and align them horizontally or vertically. Then, select the poll sticker and write out “top” and “bottom,” “left” and “right,” or use finger emojis to signal the option followers are voting for.

WeWork’s “this or that” coworking space series is a great example. We imagine that as followers voted for their favorite spaces, they visualized themselves working there.

7. Create a behind-the-scenes vlog

Benefits:

• Build trust and tell your brand’s story
• Show the effort and quality of your work
• Show off the more casual side of your brand

Video content does especially well on Stories. It shows followers there is an actual human behind the account and helps them feel more connected to your brand.

With vlogs, you can give followers a peek under the hood, which Gen-Z tends to gravitate towards. Think unpolished, off-the-cuff, and authentic content.

Pull back that curtain and show your community what a typical day working at your company is like, show how you are preparing for an upcoming launch or anything that gives a behind-the-scenes look at your brand.

8. Use an emoji sticker slider

Benefits:

• Gauge follower attitudes towards
• An easy way for followers to engage

Pop a sticker slider on your Story and let followers express their feelings by sliding the emoji of your choice.

You can ask them how they like your newest product, how excited they are to attend an upcoming event, or, like Kodiak Cakes, have them rate a series of flapjack flips.

9. Get creative with quizzes

Benefits:

• Low barrier to engagement
• Build excitement for upcoming launches or events
• Educate your audience about your brand and industry
• Gauge their familiarity with specific topics

With the quiz sticker function, you can set a prompt about any topic, for example, “Guess when our next product line launches…” or “How long have we been in business?” You can also test them on topics related to your industry.

Quizzes can have up to four multiple-choice answers, and after tapping their selection, followers can see if they guessed right in real-time.

10. Post a helpful tutorial

Benefits:

• Provide educational resources
• Followers can access it at any time
• Be “hands-on” with your audience, even online

Tutorials are an excellent marketing tool for many reasons: they help followers learn more about your products or services and position your brand as a trusted industry leader.

You can use a mix of videos and still posts to give your audience step-by-step instructions to use a product or, like superfood brand Golde, teach followers how to make yummy Matcha Rice Krispies.

As always, be sure to save your tutorials in Story highlights.

11. Host an Instagram Story takeover

Benefits:

• Reach new audience
• Build credibility
• Increase engagement

An Instagram takeover is when someone temporarily “takes over” your account to share content on behalf of your brand, talk about your products, and interact with followers. Takeovers can involve company team members, content creators, influencers, students, or anyone in your community.

Not only will this help you tap into new pockets of followers, but adding new voices to the mix will help make your brand more dynamic.

12. Participate in a “Add yours” trend

Benefits:

• Discover more about your followers
• Reach new audiences
• Create FOMO
• It can be as playful as you’d like

The “add yours” stickers are one of Instagram’s relatively newer features allowing users to post about specific topics to a collective chain. Prompts can range from “Favorite running shoes” to “Show us your dog” (Thank you, Instagram, for that.)

For brand marketers, the “Add yours” feature can help you engage with your audience in ways that are both useful and playful.

You can create a challenge and go viral, ask for feedback on a new product, or keep things light by asking them to show you the best sunset they’ve ever seen or their go-to coffee order. Just tap on the sticker to see what participants have posted to the thread.

13. Share customer wins

Benefits:

• It gives new customers a reason to trust you
• Shows some appreciation to existing customers

Social proof is a powerful mechanism to convert leads into customers. By showing how your brand has made a positive difference in your clients’ lives, followers can feel you could do the same for them.

You can share a screenshot of a Google review, an email singing your praises, or even a video testimonial.

14. Shine a spotlight on your team

Benefits:

• Makes employee stories part of the brand story
• Fosters a sense of community between the brand, audience, and employees

Put a face to your brand by introducing your team to followers on Stories.

You can show them who team members are in and out of the office, feature their milestones and notable achievements, welcome new hires, and show how everyone fits into the well-oiled machine that is your fabulous brand.

Encourage followers to ask questions and pass the mic to your team to follow up with answers.

Not only will this help your audience get to know your brand better, but you can shine a deserving light on the people who make your company what it is.

15. Re-post tagged posts and Stories

Benefits:

• One of the easiest ways to show up on Stories
• Show followers you appreciate their shout-out

Short on time or creative juices? One easy content idea coming right up.

Head to your tagged posts, Stories, and comments to see how your audience is interacting with your brand and repost them to your Stories. Followers will love seeing their content featured on your account, and it requires little to no effort on your part.

16. Build excitement with an event countdown

Benefits:

• Creates a sense of urgency
• It gives followers something to look forward to and reminds them of the details
• Boost sign-ups

Have something special coming up? Take to Stories to remind followers with a countdown sticker.

Select a background photo in Stories and then pop in the countdown sticker with the event name and end date.

Use this Story idea to build anticipation for new product drops, promote upcoming events, and inform followers of time-sensitive happenings. You can also include direct links to your website or sign-up page to encourage people to register before the event date.

17. Post a link sticker

Benefits:

• Hassle-free gateway to your website or sign-up
• You can use it in conjunction if sharing a feed post that contains more information

Did you know as of October 2021, every Instagram user can post links in their Stories?

You can send followers to your website, to a new product, ask them to sign up for an event or your email list, and share other important resources directly on your Stories.

You can customize the link sticker to fit your aesthetic or rename it to read however you’d like.

Read more about using Instagram Stories Link Stickers.

18. Share new Instagram feed posts

Benefits:

• Drive traffic to your posts
• Reshare old posts that become relevant

To ensure your followers see your shiny new posts, publish them to Stories.

You should also include some kind of call to action that invites them to click on the post, such as “Check out our new post!” or “Have you seen our new post about ____?”

You can also use one of the many “New Post” stickers in various colors and designs to grab viewers’ attention.

19. Offer screenshot-worthy wallpapers

Benefits:

• Have fun creating designs
• Customers love freebies
• Followers will take your brand with them wherever they go

Stories are the perfect place to share screenshot-worthy images that followers can use as their phone wallpapers.

Wallpaper Stories should be high-quality and can feature professional camera shots, fun cartoon drawings, or anything that represents the essence of your brand.

Take Discovery, for example. They have a whole highlights page dedicated to wallpapers featuring amazing nature shots.

20. Tap back and forward with stickers and emojis

Benefits:

• Make moving between Story frames a bit more fun
• Choose from several fun sticker options
• Get followers to pay extra attention

You can use stickers and emojis to signal to followers that something worth sticking around for is just around the corner or that they should go back and check out something important on the previous frame.

Add arrows to point between slides or head to stickers and search for “Next Story” or “Go back!”

21. Give followers a sneak peek

Benefits:

• Pique their interest
• Spread awareness about something special coming up

If you want to build hype and maybe some FOMO, give followers a taste of what’s to come with a sneak peek. Your followers want to know whether it’s a brand-new service or an exciting announcement.

Plus, you can use these Stories to build your email list for those who want to know more.

Remember to keep things simple and not reveal too much, as excited as you may be. The fun is in the build-up.

22. Create a questionnaire template

Benefits:

• Fun for followers to share their answers
• Learn more about your audience
• Followers are likely to share with their friends

With questionnaire templates, you can prompt followers with basic “get to know me” questions, ask them to share their unpopular opinions, offer them “would you rather” scenarios, or ask them to answer using only emojis.

It can be as serious or silly as you’d like. All followers have to do is screenshot the Story, share it to theirs, and fill in the blanks.

Wrapping it up

While Stories aren’t where you’ll likely garner massive numbers of new followers, they are where you can get up close and personal with your audience and engage them with your brand. With interactive Instagram Stories, you make your audience feel part of your brand’s community and help you learn more about each other.

Start analyzing your Instagram Stories with Rival IQ.

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Check out our 2023 Instagram Stories Benchmark Report for valuable insights and telling engagement metrics.

Now it’s your turn to take these Interactive Instagram Story ideas and make them your own. We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

The post 22 Ways to Create an Interactive Instagram Story in 2023 appeared first on Rival IQ.

Does your brand utilize Instagram Stories and posts in your content marketing strategy? Do you need help knowing what content should go on your Stories rather than your feed?

Not to fear, we’re here to guide you through what there is to know about posting possibilities on the Meta platform. We’ll even highlight a few stellar brands leading the way that will surely spark some inspiration.

Psst. If you’re particularly interested in Instagram Stories, check out our 2023 Instagram Stories Benchmark Report. It’s full of the latest data and insights on Stories trends.

Download the full 2023 Instagram Stories Benchmark Report

Get your PDF here

Instagram Stories vs. posts

Instagram Stories and posts have several distinguishable features. Here’s a quick recap of the most significant differences:

• Instagram Stories are live for 24 hours, while posts are evergreen, meaning they stay on a profile forever.
• On Stories, you can share videos, photos, text-only screens, and content from Instagram. Posts can be videos, photos, carousels, or Reels.
• Instagram Stories typically only reach your followers, while posts can reach a wider audience.

Where and how brands post impact overall engagement outcomes and, ultimately, their growth. For more tips on finding that sweet spot for authentic connection with followers, check out our top practices for Instagram. 

Reaching your audience on Instagram

Growing and nurturing your following starts with consistently getting your brand’s content in front of them. When it comes to Instagram Stories and posts, is one more useful than the other?

Between 2021 and 2022, overall reach declined for both Stories and posts. Story reach rate is defined by the percentage of followers who view your Stories, while post reach rate is, similarly, the percentage of your followers that saw one of your posts.

Overall, our research found that posts did a significantly better job reaching audiences than Stories. This disparity could be for a variety of reasons. Followers may prefer scrolling to tapping through Stories, feeling they get more value out of posts, or perhaps, some Instagram users avoid Stories altogether.

Engagement is the name of the game on Instagram. However, our research showed that in 2022, users experienced an overall downturn in engagement (likes, comments, and shares). Much of this decline is due to the newfound interest in video platforms like TikTok and Youtube.

To increase your engagement on Instagram, knowing how to use Instagram Stories and posts as complementary features can really work to your advantage.

When to use Instagram Stories

Instagram posts may have Stories beat when it comes to reach rate, but Stories still have their strategic function on Instagram.

Here are a few things Instagram Stories are best for:

• Timely Content: The 24-hour lifespan of stories can be an advantage. Stories do a great job capturing fleeting moments if you’ve got something new or topical to discuss. If you want Stories to have a permanent home on your feed, you can save them to your Story highlights.
• Unscripted Content: Stories are where you get to give followers a more light-hearted, behind-the-scenes look at your brand. They are a great way to make followers feel included in your inner circle.
• Posting Links: If you want to post a link to your website, a new product, or any other site, you can do so directly on stories. This makes it easy to direct followers wherever you want them to go.
• Engagement-focused content: On Stories, you can ask questions, create quizzes, conduct polls, or ask followers to vote on topics via interactive stickers.

Read more about how Instagram Stories link stickers can help boost your engagement.

Instagram Story Weaknesses

• Stories disappear after 24 hours.
• Smaller reach than Instagram feed posts.
• The larger the brand following, the lower the reach rate.

Featured Instagram Stories

Ready to see some superb Instagram Story examples?

Let’s shine a deserving light on Erewhon, the California-based luxury supermarket that loves all things wellness. They took to Stories to see what questions followers had for them about their products and general health and nutrition.

They didn’t stop there, though. Erewhon decided to answer all those follower questions in a YouTube video with one of their wellness experts. They posted the direct link to the video in their Stories for easy access.

If followers missed the 24-hour window in which the Story was live, no biggie. Erewhon has it saved under the Stories highlight “EREWHON ANSWERS” so followers can quickly go back and find the link.

Creating and saving resources like Q&As is also helpful when you think about new followers coming to explore your brand on Instagram. It is always a good idea to make it effortless for new audiences to learn more about you.

When to use Instagram Posts

We’ve established that Instagram posts generally have a more extensive reach rate than Instagram Stories, but knowing how to use them effectively can up your Instagram strategy to the next level.

Here’s what Instagram posts are good for:

• Evergreen content: Instagram posts will remain on your feed unless deleted. Followers can always revisit posts, send them to friends, or save them.
• Create brand aesthetic: As the most visually focused social media platform, many users value aesthetically pleasing feeds and content. Show off high-quality videos and images on your feed and curate your feed by planning posts ahead of time.
• Reach-focused content: As seen in our research, Instagram posts have a more extensive reach than Stories, so anything you want to share with the maximum number of users, even those not following you, should be published as posts.
• Longer messages: Instagram posts allow up to 2,200 characters in the caption. You can also continue the conversation in the comments and interact with followers.
• Diverse content types: Shake up your feed with an assortment of single-image posts, carousels, videos, and Reels.

Instagram Post Weaknesses

• Few in-app editing tools.
• Not ideal for showing day-to-day happenings.
• More effort is required to create feed aesthetics.

Types of Instagram Posts

A great way to boost your Instagram reach is to consider the types of posts that do best with your followers.

There are currently four media types users can post to their feeds:

• Images: Posts with one photo.
• Carousels: Posts with up to 10 photos or videos.
• Videos: Posts with one video that can be up to 60 minutes long.
• Reels: Short-form video posts that often use trending audio sounds or music clips. Some Reels can be up to 90 seconds long.

After surveying 965 Instagram handles for our 2023 Instagram Stories Benchmark Report, we found that Reels had the highest reach rate at 14%. Instagram video posts came in second at 10%, followed by carousels and images, which both had reach rates of 9%.

In terms of post engagement per impression, images and carousels found themselves in another tie, but this time, for first place.

Did you find that your image and carousel posts also had the highest number of likes, comments, and shares?

If you want to see how each media type performs with your followers, you can sign up for Rival IQ’s free trial and peruse lots of other super valuable data insights.

Featured Instagram feed posts

Speaking of strategic ways to use Instagram posts, let’s turn our attention to Brit + Co. The lifestyle company’s feed is full of great posts that are sure to give you some inspiration for your own brand.

Scrolling through Brit+Co’s feed, you’ll find lots of encouraging posts related to self-care, travel, current events, food, and more. While some posts are more for entertainment purposes, others provide real value to followers, such as Reels with step-by-step recipe instructions and quick meditations.

Their branding is full of bright colors and fun imagery that all tie together to form their optimistic, feel-good aesthetic.

Other brands, like Patagonia, use their Instagram feed space to show off sharp, high-quality images and videos that showcase their appreciation for the outdoors.

Wrapping It Up

To answer your question, “Should my brand use Instagram Stories or posts?”, the answer is, it depends.

Stories and posts serve distinct purposes on Instagram, so rather than focusing exclusively on one or the other, consider how to use each to further your unique goals on the app. Try playing around with some of the posting strategies we looked at in this article, and, as always, don’t be afraid to put your own spin on them. After all, your brand’s individuality is one of its greatest strengths.

2023 is your brand’s year on Instagram. We can feel it!

The post Instagram Stories vs. Posts. Which one should you choose? appeared first on Rival IQ.

Whether or not you participated in the TikTok sourdough bread craze of 2020, we think you’ll be impressed by the top health food brands on TikTok. From yummy recipe videos and celebrity partnerships to Gen-Z humor, these brands stood out from the crowd this past year and are sure to spark inspiration for your own TikTok marketing strategies.

It goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: We’re big fans of these brands in the kitchen and on social media. Let’s dive into how they dominated the TikTok engagement game this past year.

Top 10 Health Food Brands on TikTok

In our research for the 2022 Top 100 Health Food Brands on Social Media report, we dove deep into the data to discover the leading brands and the ways they’ve been engaging with followers on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Our findings show that although the brands posted fewer times on TikTok than on other platforms, roughly 1.8 times per week, their average engagement rate by view was significantly higher at 3.12%.

Here are companies that made our list of healthy food brands on TikTok. The clear winner by a long shot is Kodiak Cakes,  with Grenade and Spindrift vying for the second and third slots and a tie for tenth by Forager Project and Three Wishes Cereal.

Engagement Inspiration from the Top Health Food Brands on TikTok

Kodiak Cakes: Posts made by and for Gen-Z

Engagement rate: 11.09%

Kodiak Cakes did an outstanding job on TikTok this past year, pulling off an average engagement rate nearly four times greater than the average for health food brands in 2022.

How did they do it? With a healthy dose of playfulness, solid editing skills, and some help from Gen-Z. Let’s look at some examples.

The brand, known for protein-packed breakfast meals, celebrated the launch of its new Thin and Crispy Cookies with a TikTok video full of eye-catching transitions and dynamic angles. The company’s move into the world of sweet treats was well received, judging by the number of positive comments and the 1.43K shares. It ended up being one of the brand’s most successful posts in terms of engagement rate by follower— second only to the announcement of Kodiak’s partnership with Zac Efron.

The overall sentiment of Kodiak’s TikTok feed is light, fun, and personable. One excellent example of their TikTok style is the post featuring their CEO’s son. In a single-shot video that had a 17.6x engagement rate lift compared to their other posts, the son enjoys Kodiak’s signature waffles as the well-known #iamjosemourinho audio sound plays. As simple as this video was, the comment section speaks to its massive success. Followers left positive messages about both the waffles and the brand’s sense of humor and even requested to see more of the kid on TikTok.

The lesson here? Don’t be afraid to hand the TikTok reins over to the Gen-Z members of your team, and let them do what they do best.

Grenade: Niche trends

Engagement rate: 13.67%

Have you ever had an inside joke with your favorite company? Grenade’s customers have.

Last summer, the brand found serious success with the “protein bor” trend that took over the #Gymtok corner of TikTok. The fad started with popular fitness TikToker James Doyle, whose thick Irish accent and pronunciation of “protein bar” caught the attention of gymgoers on TikTok worldwide. Grenade, being the super savvy brand it is, featured the TikTok creator in several of its videos to promote its assortment of protein bars and even teased followers with a potential flavor inspired by Doyle’s signature red hair. If you take a peek at the comment section, you’ll see that followers celebrated by commenting “protein bor” over and over.

However silly the trend seems to those not “in” on the joke, this partnership was engagement gold for Grenade and ended up being the subject of three of their top-performing posts.

Spindrift: Relatable content

Engagement rate: 9.54%

Not everyone consumes sparkling water, but many can relate to the disappointment of posting something you think will be a big hit only for it to flop. That’s what the Spindrift team tapped into with the TikTok post that, ironically, earned them a sky-high engagement rate by view of 38.4%.

The young member of the brand’s TikTok team admitted this social media struggle, and followers were quick to leave comments of support and even offered advice on how they could increase their views. Spindrift’s success with this TikTok shows us that posting widely relatable content is a great way to show the human side of your brand and may also help reach new pockets of clients and expand exposure.

Another element we should highlight about Spindrift’s TikTok strategy is their responsiveness in the comments section. Consumers love feeling like they have a personal relationship with their favorite brands, and taking the time to reply to their messages helps to foster that community feeling we all value.

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purely elizabeth: Providing value

Engagement rate: 10.36%

According to their website, purely elizabeth is centered around the idea of using foods to feel better and thrive. What better way to help your followers choose healthy foods than with short and tasty recipe posts?

The superfood granola and oatmeal brand’s TikTok feed offers no shortage of meal and snack recipes, so consumers can easily incorporate the brand’s products or regular healthy kitchen staples into their daily lives. The recipe ideas and easy-to-follow instructions are the subjects of nearly all of the brand’s most successful posts.

By providing value to TikTok users, purely elizabeth’s videos appeal to wider audiences. There’s undoubtedly more incentive to hit that “follow” button when you know you’re going to get yummy recipes and healthy food inspo out of it.

Another company this TikTok strategy has worked for is Forager Project, who was able to snag a spot on this list by consistently showing customers different ways they can consume and cook with their products. A look through their top-performing posts, and you’ll learn to make yummy vegan cauliflower tacos, nachos, cookie dough, and more.

gimMe Snacks: Cute content

Engagement rate: 11.24%

There’s a reason adorable puppy and baby videos are such a hit online — people love content that makes them smile. GimMe Snacks, the brand providing healthy snack options with their Korean-inspired, seaweed-based products, must be on to this because everything about their TikTok feed radiates wholesomeness.

The brand’s stand-out post gave viewers a look at how they could use gimMe Snacks seaweed to make heart-shaped sushi. In reference to their question in the post caption, the answer is yes, sushi does taste better when in the shape of a heart. The post raked in nearly 94K likes, comments, and shares and boasts a 10.7% engagement rate by view — over triple the average for the brands on this list.

Other popular posts featured more wholesome subjects, such as a baby sea turtle explaining the environmental benefits of seaweed and an adorable set of kids enjoying a pack of gimMe Snacks. For a family-owned company, we think they hit the mark, and their engagement stats speak for themselves.

Jeni’s: Creating an experience

Engagement rate: 4.72%

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams keeps things playful and relatively straightforward on TikTok, putting the brand’s products front and center in nearly all of their posts. The sweet treat brand known for its delicious ice cream flavors taps into the internet’s love of #Satisfying food content in several of its TikTok videos. In one post, followers get a behind-the-scenes look at the pouring, rolling, and wrapping that goes into making their signature ice cream waffle cones. This post knocked it out of the ballpark with a 196x engagement rate lift compared to the brand’s other posts.

Another thing you’ll notice about Jeni’s feed is that they emphasize this idea of a #PerfectScoop. Not only are perfectly round ice cream scoops very visually appealing and an obvious hit on TikTok, but it also creates an experience for customers and turns something as simple as a scoop of ice cream into this gratifying “treat yourself” kind of event. When it comes to food, the experience can sometimes be as important as the product itself.

Harmless Harvest: Not taking themselves too seriously

Engagement rate: 11.50%

After examining their TikTok strategy in 2022, we think Harmless Harvest should consider adding an ‘honest’ somewhere in their name. The brand was very transparent about wanting to grow on the app to the point of directly asking for more followers in some pretty funny and self-aware videos. Their top post brought in 22.2K likes, shares, and comments and was a response to a message that poked fun at their lack of followers. We won’t spoil it for you, but the crying filter was involved. In another video, they joke about going to jail if begging for followers became illegal.

Harmless Harvest’s approach might seem unconventional, but candidness goes a long way with Gen-Z. To win over young social media users, brands should not shy away from embracing their less polished sides.

Wrapping it up

Did you make it to the end without craving a snack? We hope our excavation of the top health food brands on TikTok has helped to inspire some content ideas of your own. Don’t forget to check out the 2022 Top 100 Health Food Brands on Social Media for more insight into what your favorite brands have been up to on other social media platforms.

The post Engagement Inspiration From the Top Health Food Brands on TikTok appeared first on Rival IQ.