Instagram is one of the most popular mobile apps for shooting, editing and sharing photos. It was revamped last week with a new video mode which, along with some spiffy new filters and a stabilization feature called ‘Cinema’, was clearly developed to curb Vine’s growing success.
Nitrogram, meanwhile, is an analytics service for companies and professionals that use Instagram as part of their job. Businesses and high-profile brands have already flocked to the service in order to target new customers and communicate with their existing fans, but it’s often difficult to analyze the performance of specific images and campaigns.
The company, which already enables its customers to track specific accounts and hashtags through a browser-based dashboard, is announcing a new part of its site today called Nitrogram 50, which offers a number of comprehensive leaderboards detailing the most popular brands and accounts on Instagram.
It’s a rare insight into the importance of hash-tags. The leaderboard displays a basic ranking system based not only on the number of followers that an account has, but also the number of photos that other users have uploaded with their name in the caption.
It’s interesting that a number of companies with a low follower count have managed to conjure up significantly more tagged photos. Converse is a telling example, with 370,475 followers and 3,094,209 photos uploaded with the brand’s hashtag. Users like to share shots of their new kicks, it would seem.
The leaderboard can be filtered to show results based on the last month, week or 24 hours. Fifty results are shown on each page, although it’s possible to go down to rank 422 using the tabs at the bottom of the screen.
Companies working in a specific field such as media, sport or apparel can also filter the leaderboard so that it only shows brands from their industry. It’s a simple, but valuable starting point for companies to figure out how they can improve their presence on Instagram, as well as who their toughest competition is.
Now that Instagram supports video, its importance as a marketing platform will only grow. Nitrogram is still one of the few tools to really delve into the data behind the service, and the new Nitrogram 50 site is a perfect way to track which firms are maximizing its potential.
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