Instagram is growing like crazy. Still.

Resort follower/fan counts on Twitter and Facebook are, as much as the word fits this situation, “maturing” with growth that is very similar to one another and very conservative even for the rapid way social media continues to filter through our society.

But Instagram, that’s another story. They recently passed Twitter for total monthly users, and today, well, today might be an important milestone for ski resorts.

The Prediction
I’m actually writing this on February 4th – a full month before you’ll read it – but by my calculations (which are usually wrong), somewhere around today is when there will be more people following ski resorts on Instagram than Twitter.

And that’s with about 20-25% fewer resort accounts.

In other words, the day when resorts will have – on average – more Instagram followers than Twitter followers has long since come and gone.

Changing of the Guard?
But it’s more that total followers, lets look at the engagement for resort posts so far this season. For Twitter’s two main actions, it looks like this since Nov 1, 2015:

• Avg Favorite Rate: 0.10%
• Avg Retweet Rate: 0.06%

And for Instagram?

• Avg Favorite Rate: 8.7%
• Avg Comment Rate: 0.4%

Looking at the only common action between the two – favorites – resorts get almost 90x as many favorites on Instagram than they do on Twitter. Even when you look at photos posted to Twitter:

• Avg Favorite Rate: 0.18%
• Avg Retweet Rate: 0.10%

It’s not even close and the Instagram photo still gets almost 50x as many favorites, a gap that gets even bigger when you look at the last year across multiple resort types instead of just the last few months.

Shifting Focus
I think Twitter will always have a place in the social marketing lineup, but Instagram is growing too quickly and getting too much engagement not take much more seriosly.

Even if I’m off by a few days, and there are still more resort followers on Twitter than Instagram, it’s only a matter of time until they switch places in the pecking order.

When you look at the results, we shouldn’t be surprised.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.