POST 1: THE LIFECYCLE OF THE SUN

ANALYSIS OF ENGAGEMENT

The first post “The Lifecycle of the Sun” performed exceptionally well on instagram. Though only yielding 51 likes and 11 comments within the first week of posting, it was the top of the three Instagram posts. For this post, we aimed to entice the audience into reading more from just the first slide of the post. This slide was simple but had an eye-catching animation, and the rest were straightforward with large images and diagrams and short text frames. This format clearly worked in engaging the audience. Specifically, within the first day after publishing, the post yielded the most likes (+35) and comments (+11). Further, between the second and third days, the post yielded +12 likes. Beyond this, the engagement was mostly consistent in the number of likes increased per day and yielded no additional comments.

This initial spike in engagement was mostly from the post promotion on our part. However, 30 hashtags were used to engage the algorithm, picking up few user interactions beyond our sharing; Giannoulakis & Tsapatsoulis (2019) discuss the use of hashtags on social media platforms, including Instagram, to allow other users to locate relevant posts and how this is a flawed system since only approximately 20% of Instagram hashtags are related to the post they accompany. This inconsistency of relevance of the tags could be a contributing factor to the lack of algorithm attraction for this post, despite having the most engagement.

POST 2: THE SCIENCE OF ANT-MAN

ANALYSIS OF ENGAGEMENT

The second post “The Science of Ant-Man” had much less engagement than the first post but was on par with the third post. Yielding only 14 likes and 3 comments after the first week, this post had the worst performance of the three. This was unexpected since the topic of the post is very prominent in the media and we anticipated the most interaction on this topic. The approach to the post had a minimally animated front cover and more text heavy slides. This inclusion of more text than images could definitely have been a contributing factor to the lack of engagement on the post.

Further, after one week, the post had been viewed by 61 different accounts and has now reached a total of 72 accounts and 13 shares, with 93 impressions (the number of times that the post was on screen). Of these impressions, 38 were from hashtags and 5 were from the explore page: 46% of total impressions. This is a considerable number of the interactions on the post being from the Instagram algorithm. This interaction on the post from the algorithm was likely due to the popular topic of the post, since the Instagram algorithm tracks external online user activity such as shopping, browsing, streaming and more (Cotter, 2019). Comparing the total unique accounts that liked or commented (18) to the number of accounts reached (72), there was a 25% interaction rate for those who saw the post.

POST 3: WHY THINGS NEVER ACTUALLY TOUCH

ANALYSIS OF ENGAGEMENT

Yielding 17 likes and 4 comments within the first week, the third post “Why things never actually touch” performed as expected in comparison to the first two posts. Performing second best during the first week of publishing and comparatively well to the second post overall, this post was approached slightly differently: the cover slide was not animated and outlined exactly what was discussed in the rest of the post. In the subsequent slides, there was a mix of text and images, leaning more towards the text heavy side. This inclusion of both text and images produced the expected result of an intermediate response in comparison to the other two posts, which individually demonstrated the image and text heavy sides of the posts.

This post reached 66 accounts total, 53 of which were within the first day of posting. With 75 total impressions, this post had the least number of views compared to the other posts. However, the quantity of impressions from the algorithm was on par with the second post: 34 from hashtags and 8 from the explore page. This indicates that there was relatively more algorithm engagement for this third post: 56% of the impressions were from the algorithm. Further, comparing the total unique accounts that liked or commented (19) to the number of accounts reached (66), there was a 29% interaction rate for those who saw the post. This increased interaction rate and algorithm impressions compared to the second post is likely due to this post being the third and the account having more followers than before; the Instagram algorithm works towards promoting posts with more engagement from followers (Cotter, 2019).