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Instagram Is Top Platform For Influencers, But YouTube Gains

It’s another Facebook-Google war, by proxy: photo-sharing platform Instagram is far and away the most popular marketing channel for social media influencers, but YouTube is growing fast.

That’s according to a new survey of around 300 influencers by social media marketing firm Hashoff, which maintains an opt-in network of more than 150,000 influencers.

Asked which social media platform is their number one area of focus, 92% of influencers polled by Hashoff chose Instagram, trailed by Facebook and YouTube at just 2.7% each, while Snapchat garnered just 1.4% and Twitter just 0.7%.

That doesn’t mean they’re not working on the other platforms at all: 99% said they’re working on Instagram, 67% on Facebook, 51% on Snapchat, 43% Twitter, 30% YouTube, and 28% Pinterest.

Instagram looks set to dominate influencer marketing next year as well, with 87% of influencers saying it will be their top focus in 2018 – but 8.5% said they expect YouTube to be their main focus.

No surprise, social media influencers spend a lot of time in their native milieu, with 33.1% spending two to four hours per day on social media, 32.1% spending four to seven hours per day, and 23.6% spending more than seven hours per day.

Despite these impressive figures, for most influencers it still isn’t a full-time job: 57.4% said they have another full- or part-time job, 25.3% are students, and just 12% said being a social media influencer is their only job.

Some influencers take a considerable amount of time to create their best posts, but for others it’s a relatively quick affair, Hashoff found, with 26.2% saying they can create a high-quality post in ten to 30 minutes, while 25.9% said it takes 30 to 60 minutes, and 25.9% said it takes one to three hours, and 16.3% said it takes more than three hours.

Social media influencer marketing is a fast growing niche.

By 2019, the sponsorship money influencers receive on Instagram alone is set to more than double from about $1 billion this year to nearly $2.4 billion, according to a recent estimate by Mediakix.

2 comments about "Instagram Is Top Platform For Influencers, But YouTube Gains".
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  1. Theresa Ho from DNC Parks & Resorts at Yosemite, May 18, 2017 at 6:11 p.m.

    Thanks to Erik for the consistently interesting articles!

    I'm off to check out Hashoff's research on my own (why no link straight from the article?).

  2. Erik Sass from none replied, May 18, 2017 at 8:07 p.m.

    Good point, I have updated it with a link!  Thanks!

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