Brands are posting more often to the image-focused social network than Facebook. That’s largely the result of Facebook’s strategy of limiting how many free brand posts users see; Instagram doesn’t filter the content.

For the first time, brands are sharing more content on Facebook Inc.-owned Instagram than they are on Facebook itself, according to a new report by marketing research firm L2 Inc. and social marketing vendor Olapic.

The report finds that brands posted an average of 9.3 times a week to Instagram in the fourth quarter, up from 7.5 posts per week during the same period in 2013. During the same time window, they shared 8.8 posts per week on Facebook, down from 11.1 posts per week in 2013.

Instagram’s growing popularity among marketers comes as Facebook curtails the organic reach of brands’ posts in a push to drive them to pay for ads, the report says. Indeed, Nicolas Franchet, the social network’s head of retail, e-commerce, global vertical marketing, recently told Internet Retailer “The paid products we’ve put out are really the way to run campaigns at scale.”

Unlike Facebook, the content that brands share on Instagram isn’t filtered. Even as Instagram has become increasingly crowded—it recently passed more than 300 million monthly active users—marketers have found that they can cut through the social network’s noise by posting as much content as possible, the report says. That’s despite the fact that post frequency and average engagement rate are inversely related for most brands; only a handful of retailers, such as Free People, Urban Outfitters and Aeropostale have managed to avoid turning off consumers with multiple messages.

If—or when—Instagram introduces an algorithm similar to Facebook, brands likely will pull back the volume of content they post to the platform, the report says.

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“In the short term, marketers should continue to embrace this era of unwalled access to followers with a ‘test-and-learn’ mentality—determining exactly which types of content results in engagement (and, to the extent it can be attributed, sales),” the report says.

Examining Instagram posts that drove the most engagement, the report found:

  • 65% included a product image.
  • 43% featured a lifestyle image.
  • 29% included an “influencer” or celebrity.
  • 14% tied in an event or holiday, such as Valentine’s Day.

The survey examined 250 large brands during the fourth quarter. 

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