• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 20, 2018

Despite stricter FTC regulations and platform policies, social influencers are thriving, new research suggests.  

Last year, micro-influencers (or those with 1k-5k followers) and macro-influencers (with 50k-100k followers) saw an increase in engagement rates on branded content, per Mavrck.

Among other fortuitous events, Instagram platform updates seem to have had a positive impact on engagement rates with branded content -- especially for macro-influencers. Macro-influencers experienced a more than 300% increase in engagement rates, last year.

The Boston-based influencer-marketing platform believes Instagram is rewarding macro-influencers because they are actively building businesses and getting paid by brands to create content.

Last year, micro-influencers earned average engagement rates of 6.84%, and branded content engagement rates of 5.95%.

Instagram audiences engaged the most with Retail & Fashion and Food & Beverage influencer-generated content.

For Mavrck’s report, engagement rates were determined by calculating the average number of engagements per Instagram post versus an influencer’s audience size.

The data in the report represents a sample of 35,131 Instagram posts published from 6,540 influencers’ Instagram accounts with somewhere between 1,000 and 500,000 followers, throughout 2017.

As Mavrck note, the greatest opportunity for generating consumer engagement on Instagram is to harness the power and efficiency of Instagram influencers. They drive high engagement rates among their audiences to create compelling branded content.