According to the newly released 2017 World Leaders on Instagram study by Burson-Marsteller; a leading strategic communications and global public relations firm, showed that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over the former 44th U.S. President Barack Obama’s position as most followed world leader on Instagram with 6.8 million followers followed by the current U.S. President Donald J. Trump in second place with 6.3 million followers.
Both leaders; Modi and Trump combined have fewer followers than Obama who left office on January 20th, 2017 and now has 13.8 million followers.
Pope Francis is in third place with 3.7 million followers, White House account in the fourth place with 3.4 million followers, and Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo came in the fifth position with 3.4 million followers.
“Burson-Marsteller’s second installment of the World Leaders on Instagram study demonstrates the popularity and effectiveness of visual communications in the public sector,” Don Baer – Worldwide Chair and CEO at Burson-Marsteller, said in a press statement.
The study analyzes the activity of the 325 Instagram accounts of heads of state and government, and foreign ministers over the past 12 months using aggregate data from Facebook’s CrowdTangle tool.
As of April 1st, 2017, the accounts combined a total of 48.7 million followers and published 61,281 posts in the past 12 months which have garnered a total of 371.7 million interactions (comments and shares).
Modi, who has only posted 53 photos during that period, is also the most effective world leader on Instagram, considering that each of his posts receives an average of 223,837 interactions followed by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in second position with 141,454 interactions and Pope Francis in the third position with 138,020 interactions on average.
At 9.67%, the Turkish President has one of the highest interaction rates, which is the total number of interactions divided by the number of posts and the average number of followers over the past 12 months.[related-posts]
World leaders use Instagram to get their messages across in interesting and creative ways, tapping the full range of Instagram features. World leaders create breaking Instagram stories and use grand picture collages; they even post so many videos that now one in 10 posts contain them.
“Leaders around the world are creating online communications that convey global social and political context while also sharing a sense of personality and creativity. Leaders of business and all other sectors can learn from governments’ use of Instagram, Don Baer said.”
source: Burson-Marsteller
