If you read the tea leaves of the conversations people are having about social media channels these days, you’d probably think TikTok was dominant, Instagram was struggling, YouTube was relevant and everything else was dead. But the way the conversations go and reality aren’t always aligned. 

HubSpot published two reports over the last couple of months specific to Instagram. One was its 2022 Instagram Engagement Report. The other was a report specific to shopping on the platform. Both reports offered up reminders that not only do consumers still prefer Instagram over TikTok and other platforms, but so do marketers. 

But … research reports come out weeks and sometimes months after the surveys and data analysis is done. And social media often changes by the day. So are HubSpot’s Instagram reports even still valid?

Well, the short answer is yes. Consumer trends often take months to shift. Instagram is still bigger and used by more people than TikTok, though that gap is closing. And the perception of Instagram’s waffling wasn’t helped when its CEO came out recently and said, “Make more vertical video,” in an obvious attempt to compete with TikTok-like content.

But I wanted to dig in deeper to the information and question it a bit. When I do that I like to go to the source. I invited my old pal Kipp Bodnar, who is now the chief marketing officer at HubSpot, to sit in with me and talk Instagram, TikTok and more.

I asked him if he was concerned at all the survey data might be old the day it was published, if Instagram is still relevant and a lot more. We also dug into the shopping report a bit to talk about how marketers are leveraging those features to turn Instagram into a frictionless, shopping app, while also being a fun social network.

This episode of Winfluence is presented by Tagger, a complete influence marketing software solution. Check them out for a demo today at jason.online/tagger.

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