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Twitter is out and Instagram is in, at least for advertising. That is a key takeaway from
SocialInsider's 2021 social networking benchmarks. According to their latest data
Twitter posts are netting brands an engagement rate of about 0.07% while ads on
image-heavy site Instagram is netting engagement rates of about 1.16%, an increase of
6% from 2019 through 2020, and Facebook is bringing in an engagement rate of about
0.27%.
Researchers studied more than 22 million posts on the various social networks to come
to their findings, but it isn't just where brands post. In social it's all about what brands
post, and in 2020 those posts needed to be more about products.
Spurred by ongoing protests about racial injustice and political polarization, posts
across all the social networks that dealt with politics saw higher engagement rates than
those that didn't refer to social issues. Breaking this trend down by platform:
• Instagram posts that were politically motivated saw engagement rates increase
to 2.9%, up nearly 2% over 2019
• Political Facebook posts saw engagement rates increase to 0.90%
• Twitter posts dealing with politics or social issues had engagement rates of
0.47%
One other thing to remember about social media posts, whether straight-up advertising
or joining in a cause: it's all about image. Not just the brand image, but according to
SocialInsider, posts in all three major social networks that were image based received
higher engagement rates than posts that were script based.
This will come as no surprise to those familiar with Instagram, which is photo/image
based; about 84% of brands using Instagram are primarily posting images. About three-
quarters (75.14%) of brands on Facebook are focused on image-based posts, and
about half of brands on Twitter are posting images
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