INSTAGRAM - Top Fashion Brands (Sorry GAP)

I previously wrote a posting looking at the drop in GAP Inc's Revenue over the past year. There are a number of things that are going wrong with the GAP, but I showed that they have been trying to use influencer's and social media campaigns to engage with their potential customers. Looking at Instagram data from last May 2015, there is a direct correlation between their struggling social media and GAP struggling sales for all of 2015. Today I'm going to show you those reports from last May and show how they are doing now.

 First we want to understand the Instagram Audience:

• '300M+ - Monthly active users
• 75M+ - Daily active users
• 41% 16-24 Years Old
• 25% 25-34 Years Old
• 70% Users are outside the US' (Socialbakers.com)

Other facts that are good to know about Instagram from Socialbakers.com:

• Brands receive 110X the engagement with Instagram vs. Twitter 
• Celebrities receive 3X more engagement than Brands and Media
• Connecting your Brand with an Influencer or a Celebrity can massively improve your brand exposure, awareness and image

Looking at the Numbers below, you can see that the Fashion industry gets the 2nd most interactions by industry. So if you are a brand in this industry (like Gap), then a significant amount of resources should go into making a strong presence in the space.

(Socialbakers.com)

I looked at GAP's followers on Instagram this week, and a year later GAP still has just over 1MM followers (1.25MM). I'm not sure what they had a year ago... but their competition has been taking off:

• Victoria Secret : #38.8M Followers up from 16.4M
• H&M: #14.1M Followers up from 7.2M - 
• Have an H&M Home #202K Followers
• Forever21 - #10.2M Followers up from 6.8M
• Forever21Men - 114K Followers
• Forever21Plus - 90K Followers
• LouisVuitton - #10.2M up from 5.1M
• Michael Kors: #7.8M Followers up from 4.5M

All the Gap's competition is showing significant Growth in the instagram space, and the GAP should have been making strides to try to catch up with the competition. The Gap is just as big of a name as anyone of the brands listed below and should have been working on getting more of a social footprint.

(Socialbakers.com)

(Socialbakers.com)

I showed above that most of these company's saw growth year over year of 100%, some even more... which is incredible.

(Socialbakers.com)

Going forward, GAP needs to look to see what the Brands are doing on Instagram and try to put there own spin on whats working for other brands. The steps below are what SocialBakers suggest folloing when looking to grow an audience. The GAP is a big name in the retail space, but they are losing steam as far as sales and need to become more relevant. Increasing their Social footprint should help them accomplish that.

(Socialbakers.com)

If the GAP didn't see these numbers last year, I hope they see them now, because they have already let themselves fall massively behind their competition in the Instagram space.

What Is your favorite fashion brand to follow? What do you think GAP could do on Instagram?