Airbnb's brand purpose is to create a world where all 7 billion people can belong anywhere. When that purpose is brought to life on our Instagram, it translates into content that exemplifies this participatory mindset– a place where we can spark curiosity and showcase a transformative way to travel.
At Airbnb, our editorial mission is to explore different ways of living through the storytelling of and by our community.
With our community at the center point of our editorial mission, we maintain that the majority of our Instagram feed be fueled by user-generated photos and authentic community stories.
We carefully hand select photos and stories being shared by Airbnb users across multiple platforms. By publishing their original stories, we inspire others to not only travel off the beaten path with us, but to similarly share their stories for all to derive inspiration from.
We have done extensive research to determine an ideal cadence of published content. Two times per day is our sweet-spot for optimal reach, engagement and follower growth. We weave in stories for planned content, brand focused moments and culturally relevant moments.
Additionally, we continue to storytell in innovative ways using all the platform's functionalities. Using Instagram Stories, we've been able to take an episodic and raw approach to the platform– taking people to all ends of the world to experience what it's truly like to 'live there'.
From an advertising perspective, we also use the rich targeting to reach people who we don't follow, from a photo, video and 'Stories' perspective. We were one of the first brands in the beta launch for video advertising in Stories, providing us with the ability to reach people at the right time at the right place and with the right content.
Airbnb saw an exponential growth in impressions YoY from 2015 to 2016. In 2015 we had ~163.6 million impressions on owned content. That is ~5x compared to 2015.
Over 2016, we saw 1.876 YoY growth rate in Airbnb's Instagram followers
Our community is also more engaged- we more than doubled the number of user generated photos from 2015 to ~500,000 in 2016.
