While overconfidence has ruined the best of brands, teams and people, sometimes you just have to admit: When you’ve got it, you’ve got it. That’s the case with PETA’s prowess on social media.
In our Nov. 21 edition we told you about the animal rights group’s chart-topping performance in Q3 on Facebook. Now PETA also has claimed the No. 1 spot for Instagram engagement in Q3 2016 among nonprofits, according to Shareablee data supplied exclusively to PR News Pro.
The news was good for more than just PETA, though. Sector-wide total consumer actions, the sum of likes and comments, rose 34% during the quarter year over year. Also rising was the nonprofit sector’s number of posts, up 14%. As we’ve seen many times, video entries grew markedly. Video posts from nonprofits jumped a whopping 90% vs. the year-ago quarter.
Explaining PETA’s social media philosophy, associate director of online and social media Helena Soh told us the group aims to post content that “otherwise people would not see.” To be fair, PETA barely topped the No. 2 nonprofit on the list, Oceana. PETA tallied some 1.5 consumer actions, up 20% over Q3 in 2015. Video was responsible for 25% of consumer actions taken on PETA posts, Shareablee’s Nathalie Nuta says. Its top post was an image from the tattoo artist Kat Von D, promoting veganism. Often we’ve heard Instagram users put a premium on high-quality pictures. Not this time. The black-and-white image, half dog face, half cow face, seems fairly crude, probably intentionally so, and it garnered more than 14,000 actions, Nuta says.
In some ways, Oceana’s performance was even more impressive than PETA’s. The 1.4 million consumer actions its Instagram posts generated in the quarter was almost 500% better than it did during Q3 one year ago. Clearly its tactics centered on imagery as opposed to video. Consumer action with its video posts comprised just 4% of engagement. Its top post was an image featuring Pacific Northwest Orca whales.Other top posts included pictures of seals and baby turtles.
The Humane Society, 19 on the list, deserves kudos. Its year-over-year growth in consumer engagement rose 517%, more than any other brand on this list.
