Hottest Brands On Instagram In 2017

Instagram continues to be the darling of the social media world, and the ease of use and generally happy dynamic behind the platform means that brands can use it to connect and engage relatively easily.

But some brands have had an amazing 2017 so far, with feeds that just keep having a huge impact. We thought we would take a look at a few of them.

Starbucks

A powerhouse on social media, Starbucks has spent the last few years trying out possibly everything it could possibly get away with. Their main thing in 2017 is the building of an even stronger audience on Instagram. We think they’ve cracked it.

A recent post shows how it is a brand that is dedicated to making the customer feel better. Starbucks does not have to worry about reach, but it does face the engagement issue like other brands. Here, it’s showing what Starbucks products do for the audience. A midday reboot is what the brand is known for. Refreshment and energy.

This post came from a customer. Then Starbucks jumped on it and in the comments asked customers if it could recommend flavours that they might enjoy. Starbucks is deep inside the customer experience here, and truly interacting, by asking what they like, and why.

The result for the brand is pretty difficult to argue with. Starbucks received 498 comments for the post, and an engagement of 246,197.

H&M

This brand has comfortably managed a unique place for itself ever since it first started trading. The brand has a niche in that it offers fashionable clothing that is still reasonably priced. The audience wants that fashion feeling, but without the outlandish price tags that so many top end fashion brands carry these days.

This unfussy and simple approach to clothing is their message, and the audience knows this. Checking out their Instagram page, it all feels clean and sophisticated, with this post in particular showing how it knows exactly what its audience wants right now: a summer look that will help the customer feel stylish.

Using hashtags like #fashion doesn’t hurt either, and the brand is well-versed in that particular aspect of social media.

Bare Minerals

Beauty has a home on Instagram, and this is never more apparent than with Bare Minerals and its work here. This is a brand that truly understands the idea of being visual, and consistently creates posts that are not only beautifully shot, but also incredibly high quality and full of colour.

On top of this, the brand also knows something about appealing to emotions too. So it ensures there are a few posts here and there that tap into these emotions, as well as the main ideas behind the brand, all of which resonate with the audience massively.

MTV

With the advent of the Internet and social media, in particular, MTV has taken a bit of a hit. Once the only place to see music videos, now it has been pushed to the side by channels like YouTube, which is a major search engine for music these days, among other things.

But MTV doesn’t care. It has created a platform all of its own, and is now a truly reliable source for music information and content related to celebrities. If you check out the Instagram page it operates, you will find that much of the content is aimed at this level.

Celebrities like Gigi Hadid and Taylor Swift fill the Instagram feed, and alongside that MTV slips in photos from the star’s feeds on Instagram. This means a lot of celebrity content and news that links out to other feeds.

It all works out rather well, with MTV content to let the audience provide most of the comments and get a conversation going. If anything, it’s the closest thing Instagram has to a music channel notice board.

FedEx

Yes, that’s right, the worldwide delivery guys. The brand has pulled off the incredible trick of being universally recognised as a worldwide courier company. Over the years, ‘FedEx’ has almost been used as a verb. That’s how reliable and fast they are. But on their Instagram feed, they take the visual thing to a whole new level.

The images they show on the FedEx Instagram are more than attractive. They are beautifully shot. It is hard to make an aeroplane in flight look ugly, of course, but the images on this feed are really something else. The use of high quality, sometimes unexpected imagery, makes the account one that simply looks good.

On top of this, the whole feed is one about building that customer and brand relationship. Forget the selling, nothing here seems forced. FedEx simply uses imagery that is pretty and/or echoes their branding message of super fast delivery.

The Way Forward

For any brand, it can feel daunting setting up on the Instagram platform. But consider the fact that the above brands are focusing on just a few things:

Giving the audience what it wants
Not overtly selling
Keeping colour and design top of the agenda
Responding to engagement

Get these into your plan for the next few months and we can pretty much say that your client’s brand will be rocking the channel just like these guys.

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