The Nickelodeon Instagram account aims to be the embodiment of the young spirit by looking at social media through the lens of FUN! In 2017 we took this one step further by infusing bright colors, recognizable talent, and intriguing prompts to create thumb-stopping content that encouraged fan interaction.
Our strategy was to create an account that puts a Nickelodeon-spin on the way teenagers are using Instagram, while also meeting the company goals to drive tune-in, retail sales, and digital traffic.
In order to implement, we created a social-first style guide that contained Nickelodeon-twists on memes, emojis, and video captions. We used this guide to recreate popular internet styles that could easily fit into the Nickelodeon world. Our in-feed Instagram presence posted funny memes, interesting prompts, silly photos, and cool clips of our talent having fun on and off screen, while a dedicated Instagram Stories team published weekly custom content that gave fans a deeper dive into what it's like to be a Nickelodeon actor, animator, and creator with a behind-the-scenes, direct-to-camera feel.
By switching up our publishing strategy to be more aligned with the way teenagers use Instagram we were able to grow our average impressions per post by 60% and Likes per post by 42%. We also experienced an ENORMOUS increase in new fans. It took us over 3 years to hit the 1MM fan mark (4/29/16) and less than a year to acquire our next million (4/19/17)!
Refocusing our strategy let us be more nimble with how quickly we took advantage of trends. When the Invisible Box Challenge came out we were able to record, edit, and publish 2 videos of different Nickelodeon cast members taking part in the trend. Each video quickly gained over 1MM views, but the first video kept skyrocketing and now has over 2MM impressions, becoming our Most-Viewed Post of all time!
Our effort to create more Nick-themed prompts gave way to multiple posts that received over 5K (and sometimes over 10K) comments! We tapped into our fans' love of bragging about their interests and showing off their skills in photo-based games similar to those you might find in a previous generation's kid-focused magazine
Overall, this new direction reinvigorated our account and our fans, expanding Nickelodeon's Instagram footprint and encouraging a positive increase in interactions. Our fans have shown that they have unique opinions, love seeing their favorite Nickelodeon talent having fun, and want to be challenged with gamified content.
