Instagram is one of our strongest channels for reaching young adults, but despite steady growth, it had not reached the scale of our larger (and older) audiences on Facebook and Twitter/X. To jump-start more rapid growth, we evolved our channel strategy in 2023 to focus on maximizing reach and reaching new audiences to bring in new followers.
Our strategy tapped into audience insights to help boost engaging and sharing, along with platform insights to ensure our content was optimized and treated favorably by the algorithm:
Heritage Months and Cultural Holidays: We expanded our support for heritage months and cultural holidays, creating compelling educational pieces and original artwork to ensure that every community felt at home and represented in our neighborhood.
Vertical Video: We knew that Instagram’s algorithm prioritized Reels, and served them to a much larger proportion of new users, and saw this as an opportunity to drive growth. We tripled the number of Reels we posted, and produced new original social videos to ensure that our content felt natural in a 9x16 aspect ratio.
Illustration: We tapped into audience nostalgia with new original artwork in our vintage illustration style, which especially resonates with our target age demographics on the platform.
Our evolved strategy led to tremendous growth across all KPIs in 2023. Reels represented 25% of our total Instagram posts, but drove 57% of our total reach. They were also successful at reaching new audiences—94% of the views from our Top 5 Reels came from new users—which helped jump-start a massive increase in follower growth.
