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It feels like Instagram, more than any other social media platform, is evolving at a dizzying pace. As it continues to roll out new features, updates, and algorithm changes, it can be hard to keep up.

That’s where the Instagram stats comes in. There’s a whole lot of research out there about Instagram — everything from the demographics of its users and its reach, to how negative space affects the performance of your posts (hint, hint: #68).

Read on to uncover more social media stats that’ll help you get ideas and improve your own Instagram posting strategy.

80+ Instagram Stats

Click on a category below to jump to the stats for that category:

Instagram’s Growth
Audience & Demographics
Brand Adoption
Instagram Post Content
Instagram Posting Strategy

Instagram’s Growth & Usage

1. Instagram is expected to reach 1.44 billion users by 2025. (Source)

2. The Instagram app has over 78 million monthly active users. (Source)

3. 22% of marketers say Instagram has the most growth potential in 2023 than any other platform. (Source)

4. Instagram saw a 48% increase in ad reach from January 2020 to January 2022. (Source)

5. Almost a quarter of marketers (23%) predict that Instagram will offer brands the biggest potential to grow their audience in 2023. (Source)

6. Instagram is the most-used platform for influencer marketing in the U.S. (Source)

7. Marketers say Instagram is the social media platform they know how to use best. (Source)

8. There are an estimated 143 million Instagram users in the United States in 2023. (Source)

9. As of January 2023, India has a total of 229 million Instagram users, the largest Instagram audience in the world. (Source)

10. As of January 2022, Instagram was the fourth most popular social media platform in the world in terms of user numbers. YouTube and WhatsApp ranked in second and third place. (Source)

11. On average, U.S. adults spend 30.1 minutes a day on Instagram in 2022. (Source)

12. As of February 2023, the most-liked post on Instagram is a carousel of Argentine footballer Lionel Messi and his teammates celebrating the 2022 FIFA World Cup win. (Source)

13. Between January and June 2022, the fastest-growing content creator on Instagram was influencer Jorge Gomez, with 573% growth in six months. (Source)

14. Other than Instagram’s own account, the most-followed Instagram account as of January 2023 is professional soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo. (Source)

15. As of May 2022, Instagram’s own account has 504.37 million followers. (Source)

Audience & Demographics

16. More than half of the global Instagram population is 34 years of age or younger. (Source)

17. As of January 2023, almost 17% of global active Instagram users were men between the ages of 18 and 24 years. (Source)

18. Millennials ranked Instagram as their favorite social media app in 2022. (Source)

19. Gen Z-ers also ranked Instagram as their favorite social media app in 2022. (Source) 

20. TikTok and Instagram are the most used social media apps among Gen Z women. (Source)

21. In December 2022, 55% of Instagram users in the United States were women and 44% percent were men. (Source)

22. Only 7% of Instagram users in the U.S. belong to the 13 to 17 year age group. (Source)

23. Only 4.7% of Instagram users in the U.S. are 65 plus. (Source)

24. As of 2022, 82% of Instagram users also use Facebook. (Source)

25. 47% of U.S. Instagram users make more than 75,000 per year. (Source)

26. Instagram users worldwide spend an average of 11 hours per month on the Instagram app on Android phones. This number drops to 7 hours for U.S. users. (Source)

27. 72% of teens use Instagram, and 57 million U.S. teenagers say Instagram is their preferred social media platform. (Source)

28. 500 million+ accounts use Instagram Stories every day. (Source)

29. 35% of music listeners in the U.S. who follow artists on Facebook and Instagram do so to connect with other fans or feel like part of a community. (Source)

30. The average Instagram user spends 30 minutes a day on the app. (Source)

31. 45% of Instagram users live in urban areas. (Source)

Brand Adoption

32. 72% of marketers work with influencers/creators on Instagram. (Source)

33. 29% of marketers plan to invest the most in Instagram out of any social media platform in 2023. (Source)

34. In terms of brand safety, 86% of marketers feel comfortable advertising on Instagram. (Source)

35. 53% of marketers say Instagram has high ROI. Only 7% of marketers say Instagram has low ROI. (Source)

36. 70% of shopping enthusiasts turn to Instagram for product discovery. (Source)

37. Marketers saw the highest engagement rates on Instagram out of any other platform in 2022. (Source)

38. 32% of marketers say Instagram is the easiest platform for working with influencers and creators. (Source)

39. 1 in 4 marketers say Instagram has resulted in the highest ROI out of any platform in 2022. (Source)

40. 27% of marketers plan to use Instagram the most for working creators and influencers in 2023. (Source)

41. More than half of marketers plan to increase their investment in Instagram in 2023. (Source)

42. In 2022, marketers saw the highest engagement rates on Instagram for user generated content. (Source)

43. Only 8% of marketers plan to decrease their investment in Instagram in 2023. (Source)

44. 36% of marketers plan to leverage Instagram for the first time in 2023. (Source)

45. 90% of people on Instagram follow at least one business. (Source)

46. 50% of Instagram users are more interested in a brand when they see ads for it on Instagram. (Source)

47. When it comes to posting organic content, 27% of marketers say Instagram offers the highest ROI for this type of content. (Source)

48. 1 in 4 marketers say Instagram provides the highest quality leads out of any social media platform. (Source)

49. Nearly a quarter of marketers (23%) say Instagram is the most effective platform for brands looking to build a social media strategy for the first time in 2023. (Source)

50. 46% of marketers leverage Instagram Shops. Of the marketers who leverage Instagram Shops, 50% report high ROI. (Source)

51. 41% of marketers leverage Instagram Live Shopping. Of the marketers who leverage Instagram Live Shopping, 51% report high ROI. (Source)

52. In a 2021 report, the higher education industry currently has the highest engagement rate of any other industry per post on Instagram, at 3.19%. Second was sports teams at 1.79%, and third was influencers at 1.42%. (Source)

53. 67% of users surveyed have ‘swiped up’ on the links of branded Stories. (Source)

54. 130 million Instagram accounts tap on a shopping post to learn more about products every month. (Source)

Instagram Post Content

55. Engagement for static photos has decreased by 44% since 2019, around the time Reels made its debut. (Source)

56. The average engagement rate for photo posts is 1.18%. (Source)

57. The average engagement rate for carousel posts is 3.15% (Source)

58. As of January 2022, #love is the most popular hashtag on Instagram. Over two billion posts use this hashtag. (Source)

59. Marketers rank Instagram as the platform with the best in-app search capabilities. (Source)

60. The most popular Instagram Reel has 289+ million views. (Source)

61. Marketers rank Instagram as the platform with the most accurate algorithm, followed by Facebook. (Source)

62. A third of marketers say Instagram offers the biggest ROI when selling products directly within the app. (Source)

63. As of 2021, 9 out of 10 users watch Instagram videos weekly. (Source)

64. A third of marketers say Instagram offers the best tools for selling products directly within the app. (Source)

65. 995 photos are uploaded on Instagram every second. (Source)

66. The median posting cadence across all industries is 4 posts per week. The median posting frequency declined by just 8% this year compared to last. (Source)

67. On Instagram, photos showing faces get 38% more Likes than photos not showing faces. (Source)

68. On Instagram, images with a high amount of negative space generate 29% more Likes than those with minimal negative space. (Source)

69. On Instagram, images featuring blue as the dominant color generate 24% more Likes than images that are predominantly red. (Source)

70. This is so much so that the latest Instagram statistics show that an average Instagram post contains as many as 10.7 hashtags. (Source)

71. Image posts received 27.55% more likes than permanent video posts. (Source)

72. An average image on Instagram gets 23% more engagement than one published on Facebook. (Source)

73. The most geo-tagged city in the world is Los Angeles, California and the tagged location with the highest engagement is Coachella, California. (Source)

Instagram Posting Strategy

74. The best time to post on Instagram is Friday between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. in your respective time zone. (Source)

75. Posts with a tagged location result in 79% higher engagement than posts without a tagged location. (Source)

76. 20% of users surveyed post to Instagram Stories on their business account more than once a week. (Source)

77. 44% of users surveyed use Instagram Stories to promote products or services. (Source)

78. One-third of the most viewed Stories come from businesses. (Source)

79. More than 25 million businesses now use Instagram to reach and engage with audiences. (Source)

80. 69% of US marketers plan to spend most of their influencer budget on Instagram. (Source)

81. The industry that had the highest cooperation efficiency with Instagram influencers was Health Care, where influencer posts were 4.2x more efficient than brand posts. (Source)

82. Instagram is now the most popular social platform for following brands. (Source)

A couple years ago, artificial intelligence still seemed like a somewhat far-off, sci-fi version of reality. And it certainly didn’t seem like something that would completely transform how marketers work within the next few years.

But in 2023, generative AI is officially here, and it’s only growing. In fact, the generative AI market size accounted for over 7 billion USD in 2021, and it’s projected to occupy more than 110 billion USD by 2023 — growing at a CAGR of 34.3%.

All of which is to say: Generative AI is poised to completely disrupt — and elevate — business’ content strategies in 2023 and beyond.

And disruption of any kind can be scary. What does generative AI mean for the future of marketing? Will it replace us, or elevate us? And what about SEO? Will Googling be replaced with AI chatbots — and what does all that mean for content creation?

Here, I spoke with Samyutha Reddy, Jasper’s Head of Enterprise Marketing, to explore her perspective on whether AI will replace content creators, as well as SEO, in the future.

Let’s dive in.

Will AI Replace Marketers?

AI Augments The Human Experience — but It Doesn’t Replace the Human Within That Experience

Generative AI can research virtually any topic across the internet, and distill that research into original content. It can format that content as a blog post, email, Facebook ad, or something else, depending on the query.

Generative AI is still in its early stages, and it has some issues. The information it collects can be biased or simply false, and it doesn’t have the discernment of a real human to catch those inaccuracies.

But as generative AI continues to learn and grow, it makes sense that marketers are concerned. In the future, rather than needing a team of five or ten content creators, will you just need one — someone to fact-check the AI’s content?

Fortunately, Samyutha isn’t worried. In fact, even though her team currently uses generative AI on a daily basis, she’s still actively hiring and growing her team.

As she puts it, “AI augments the human experience, but it doesn’t replace the human within that experience. We value writers in our society because they’re able to give us a thought-provoking human perspective on the world. It isn’t just about summarizing facts that are out there. It’s about humans sharing opinions on very real topics that help build your perspective on how you feel about something. So an AI could really never replace that human perspective.”

However, AI Will Force Content Creators to Re-skill

Samyutha does acknowledge that AI will force content creators to re-skill, as aspects of their roles become more automated.

She told me, “I think it’ll force content creators to re-skill. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think that’s what every big shift in technology has done for humans.”

She adds, “I’ve never met a content creator who has said, ‘Wait. I really want to spend more time doing all the rote tasks of reading everything I need to know on the internet about a given topic.’ AI will give marketers more time to be creative, form an opinion, and incorporate more data sources into their perspectives.”

Rather than thinking of AI as a content creator replacement, it’s better to think of AI as a marketer’s efficient side-kick.

Consider this: A marketer decides she wants to write a topic about SWOT analysis. Rather than spending her morning chugging coffee and reading up on what SWOT analysis means, effective SWOT analysis examples, and how SWOT analyses can help businesses grow, she can simply plug the query into an AI chatbot.

Once she’s confirmed the sources the chatbot used to pull that information are accurate, she can quickly skim through the AI’s response and learn everything she needs to begin writing about the topic. She can even use the AI’s response as a first draft, and strengthen it with her own unique tone and perspective.

From there, she can leverage the AI’s proofreading skills to edit her final copy.

Additionally, if the marketer has written a piece of content that she’d like to turn into an entire campaign, she can use AI to re-format her blog post into corresponding ad copy and creative, which she can hand over to her sales and paid ad teams.

As Reddy puts it, “I can effectively hand over to sales an entire drip campaign, an entire outbound sequence, complete with landing pages, with the ads that people will click and see. And it really allows me to take control back on what it means to execute a campaign. It enables me to truly be a project manager and a strategist, versus someone who is waiting on other people to deliver their end of the bargain.”

Marketers Will Need to Become Experts in Select AI Platforms

Freelancing platform Upwork recently announced it added a new category, ‘Generative AI’, as a specialty within their marketplace.

This means business leaders can now hire freelance content creators who have expertise with a specific AI platform — and Reddy isn’t surprised.

She says, “AI has biases deeply embedded within its models that people are working on. AI has the tendency to hallucinate and start talking about random things when you’re asking it for outputs, so it would be really tough to just completely remove a human from the process.”

She continues, “Similar to how a marketer can level-up by becoming HubSpot or Salesforce certified, I think we’ll soon see marketers who demonstrate their value by saying, ‘Hey, I’m skilled in using generative AI platforms.'”

AI Will Eliminate Portions of the Creation Process – But it Will Also Elevate Marketers

Reddy admits, “I do think it will eliminate some portions of the content creation process.”

However, she’s quick to add, “I think AI will focus on elevating folks, and I think the angle you take matters on this whole generative AI front. If you’re a writer, content creator, or a marketer, you’ll want to ask yourself, ‘Am I going to be someone that embraces technology and figures out how to upskill myself and actually become the cream of the crop in terms of talent? Or am I going to be someone who pushes technology away, refuses to believe it’s happening, and clings onto an old way of life?’“

For Reddy, she sees marketers at the forefront of a tool that will ultimately upend all roles within a business, and she believes there’s great privilege in being the first to adopt it.

As she puts it, “I think there’s a certain power here that marketers can reclaim, and instead of being the victims in this story of ‘generative AI is coming for marketing’, I think we really reposition it as saying, ‘generative AI has landed in the most innovative portion of the enterprise: marketing.'”

She continues, “And we are now the stewards of this technology and how it’ll be used within the enterprise, and we get to pilot it and see how it can supercharge our work. And the folks who lean into being the stewards of this powerful technology will reap its benefits. I consider myself and our industry extremely lucky to to be in this position.”

Will Generative AI Replace Search Engines?

As more marketers and consumers use AI chatbots to get quick answers to common queries, it stands to reason that they’ll be leveraging search engines less often.

Reddy doesn’t see search engines going away, particularly since the information supplied on search engines is what powers generative AI results — but she does see it drastically changing.

As she puts it, “Search can help battle AI’s inaccuracies. For instance, Jasper has a function where you can toggle on Google search results. So if I say, ‘Jasper, help me write a paragraph about XYZ,’ it’ll write the paragraph, and at the bottom it’ll put in the Google search results it used while it helped me create that output. So I have factual links which I can cite, and fact-check to ensure they’re the most reliable piece of content on a given topic.”

She continues, “I don’t see search going away. I do see a future where I don’t necessarily want to type things into a search bar, and instead, I want to use chat functionality. That, I think, is imminent. And I think we’re already seeing that with the virality of Chat GPT. In just a couple of days, it’s become the fastest-growing consumer app.”

Ultimately, my conversation with Reddy felt positive and uplifting. As marketers, we don’t need to fear AI: We need to embrace it as technology that will help us do our jobs better.

And, personally, I’m all for any tool that minimizes the amount of time I spend researching, so I can get back to what really matters: creating content with the intention to move, inspire, or challenge readers’ to think differently.

A new social network has taken the internet by storm, and it goes by the name of Mastodon. Having amassed a following of almost two million active users by this January, the platform is described as an alternative to Twitter.

So what does this new name have to offer marketers? And can your brand benefit from having a presence on it? In this post, we’ll break down what Mastodon is and how to leverage it — according to an experienced and trusted marketing partner here at HubSpot.

Image Source

What can you do on Mastodon?

On Mastodon, users can explore different servers according to their favorite topics of interest or industry spheres. When you find a forum you’re interested in, you can join in and engage with whomever you like — more or less like you would on Twitter. You can:

Follow users
Reply to other people’s posts
Engage in or begin your own conversations

You can build a feed tailored to what you want to see and use features like an explore tab to find new and exciting content.

Tips for New Mastodon Users

We asked Crystal King, one of HubSpot’s very own Senior Marketing Managers and Principal Inbound Professor, if she had any useful tips for people new to the platform. Here’s what she had to say.

Put yourself out there and join a variety of servers.

“Like any new social platform you might join, there is a learning curve with Mastodon. The hardest thing to get used to is the idea that not everyone is on the same server as you are, but that you can still talk to them.

“It doesn’t really matter what server you are using, but if you want to find a topic-specific server to join then it may mean your local feed is slightly more curated toward that topic, but it’s not a necessity to do so.”

No one’s an expert at something when they first begin. When you join Mastodon, don’t feel you belong on only one or two servers. Everyone has a place to share their thoughts and opinions just as much as the next person.

Mastodon has much more freedom of choice regarding the content you’re given. While it can recommend conversations and servers to you, it won’t crowd your personalized feed with content you haven’t followed, like Instagram or Twitter — where recommended, sponsored, or related content can clutter your feed.

2. Find your favorite accounts from Twitter and find where they reside in Mastodon.

“One thing you can do to find your Twitter followers that are also on Mastodon is to go to Twitter and search for the word ‘Mastodon.’ Then, click the three dots to the right of the search bar and click ‘Search filters.’ That narrows down the search to only people you follow, and by doing this you can often see tweets where they have shared their Mastodon profiles.”

If you’re lost on where to start, look at who you already follow on Twitter. Chances are that if they’re a full-time influencer or a frequent poster, they may have already made their way to Mastodon — and can help you identify which servers you’d enjoy the most.

3. Don’t expect visuals, expect conversations.

“Mastodon is a text-heavy platform, and you won’t see many moving .gifs, videos, or big images. Those things are present, but you usually have to click through to see them. Instead, focus on creating and having conversations. Share interesting information. Ask great questions to get people talking. And engage with others. That’s where you’ll find the most value.”

King recommends that new users focus on contributing insightful conversations to gain traction in the platform. While Twitter and Instagram prioritize visual-heavy content, Mastodon will display trending conversations and forums where visuals are more of an added detail than a priority.

Why would a brand want to use Mastodon?

According to King, Mastodon allows marketers to get creative with their digital marketing.

“Brands may feel skeptical about using Mastodon. After all, there are no ads. There aren’t any rewards for having a certain number of followers. There aren’t any algorithms to push content to more people. In short, it feels like Twitter without all the things that made Twitter great for marketers.

“And that’s sort of the point — people don’t typically like to be marketed to, and that’s what the platform’s creators had in mind when developing it. But that doesn’t mean brands can’t or shouldn’t use it. You just can’t think about the platform as a replacement for Twitter. It’s something different. Mastodon is a place to share information and engage with an audience. And brands that can do that will find a niche on the platform.”

Marketers can’t rely on paid or promoted ads to reach targeted audiences. Instead, they can use Mastodon to provide value, insight, or content that engages prospects — rather than sell to them.

“The engagement rate on Mastodon is much higher than that of Twitter. Plus, there’s a heavy journalist presence on the platform as well, which bodes well for your brand’s visibility. If you are a brand that loves chatting with your audience, it may be a great place for you. The best way to find out is to develop a test of three to six months and see how it works for you. Just don’t expect it to look or act like Twitter, because it’s not.”

You can’t approach Mastodon expecting the same results as you’ve gotten from previous social media channels. If anything, King is saying that brands can position themselves for better brand visibility on the platform if they focus on thought leadership — delegating designated content marketers or journalists to post about buzzing conversations and news.

See All the Possibilities Mastodon Has to Offer

With the rise of new social media channels, marketers can use new greenspace to attract prospects. While Mastodon itself isn’t directly optimized for paid advertising, there are many ways to grow a following and engage with your target audience.