National Geographic’s 89m Instagram fans make it the biggest (non-celebrity) brand on the platform — and NatGeo’s cross-platform storytelling has made it the top brand on social media for 4 years in a row.
NatGeo’s 420m followers (across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) generated 1.5B fan interactions in 2017 alone — not bad for a print mag that’s existed since before color photography.
The hottest star on Instagram? Selena Gomez, born in ’92. The hottest brand on Instagram? NatGeo, born in ’88 — that’s 1888.
For brands, the competition is not even close — with 78m, Nike trails NatGeo by more than 10m followers. Last year, NatGeo posted the most popular video on the whole ’gram (a jaguar battling a caiman).
So how do they do it? Easy: sweet photos — oh, and a genius cross-platform social media strategy.
As other magazines struggle to stay afloat, NatGeo is sailing full-speed ahead — offering a case study on how to adapt old-school storytelling to modern digital audiences.
Rather than pushing against Instagram and Facebook, NatGeo leveraged these new formats to add layers to their print and online storytelling — using behind-the-scenes content and photographer cross-posts to expand its audience.