Is your association or chamber of commerce active on Instagram? It’s quickly becoming one of the most popular social media sites out there. (In fact, the site currently has more than one billion monthly active users!)

Whether you’re currently active on the platform or thinking of joining in the near future, take note: As with all social media sites, there are a few best practices. And thanks to a new report — The Instagram Engagement Report — from HubSpot and Mention, we’re now able to get a better understanding of what works (and what doesn’t) as far as engagement goes.

I encourage you to take a look at the whole report (there are so many insightful findings in there!), but below are my three biggest takeaways, particularly for associations and chambers:

Takeaway #1: Image posts on Instagram typically get more engagement than image posts on Facebook 

I wanted to share this takeaway for people who are still on the fence about Instagram. You have a Facebook page for your organization where you share photos, why do you need an Instagram account as well?

Well according to this report, an average image post on Instagram gets 23% more engagement than one published on Facebook, even though (and this is what’s fascinating) the latter has 2x more active monthly users.

What this means is, people are more likely to engage with your content on Instagram, whereas on Facebook, they’re more likely to just gloss over it in their newsfeed.

Takeaway #2: High hashtag usage can actually decrease post engagement

Hashtags are designed to make your posts more searchable. So some people think, the more hashtags you use, the better, right?

Well…not necessarily. Yes, hashtags are great (and still encouraged), but according to HubSpot and Mention’s 2020 report, engagement tends to drop off when more than six hashtags are used.

So, hashtag away…but try not to go beyond six.

And speaking of hashtags, here’s a fun little tidbit: Two of the most engaging hashtags on Instagram (not necessarily the most popular ones, but the ones that drive the most engagement) are #tbt (short for Throwback Thursday, where people post pictures from “back in the day”) and #explore. I point that out because both of those can easily be used in the association and chamber spaces!

Takeaway #3: After a two-year span of video posts receiving the most engagement, image posts are now receiving more likes than video posts

“Video, video, video!” It’s all we’ve heard (and seen) in years. And while video is certainly still popular (and needed in your organization’s marketing), this year, images are now getting more likes than videos on Instagram (about 27% more likes, to be exact).

Why the shift? Well, a big part of it likely has to do with the fact that more people are reserving their videos for Instagram Stories, as opposed to publishing them as a standard video post. And not only that, but there may simply be a renewed interest in image posts.

So, if you’ve been beating yourself up for not having enough video content, just note: Images are wanted and well-received too!

Again, I encourage you to check out the full report from HubSpot and Mention, but for more tips on how to successfully leverage a number of social media networks at your association or chamber — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. — check out our free social media guide below!