CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos gestures as he addresses the Amazon's annual Smbhav event in New Delhi on ... [+]
A picture is usually worth a thousand words.
In this case, it’s worth $10 billion.
Recently, Jeff Bezos announced a major new climate change initiative that will seed funds into climate change research. In an Instagram post, Bezos explained how saving the earth is the one thing we all agree about. He pledged $10 billion in grant money he will start releasing this summer. (The post didn’t explain the amount of each grant.)
“We can save Earth. It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations, and individuals,” he said in the post.
What is surprising to me is that he chose Instagram.
Lately, the richest person in America has relied mostly on Twitter to make big announcements. He usually creates a static image with the text to avoid any character limitations (and possibly to make it harder to copy the text, alter it, and repost it). When he posted about a personal crisis last year, he used Twitter.
So why Instagram? The post has over 337,000 likes, and there’s a big picture of Planet Earth that goes with the caption. On his Twitter feed, Bezos recently posted about the Super Bowl but not much else.
It’s about more than the photos, though.
Bezos has attracted over 1.4 million followers to his personal Instagram account, surpassing Twitter by about 100,000 people.
To use Twitter language here, Instagram is trending. It’s still a rising star of social media and has grown steadily over the years. While last year the growth fell to about 6.7%, that’s still impressive. Twitter has mostly remained stagnant.
However, the real reason he posted on Instagram is a bit more nuanced.
He likely isn’t that interested in seeing any commentary. It’s big news, but there isn’t much more to say or discuss. Instagram is ideal for making a statement when there is an image involved, and it’s an ideal branding platform. When you want interaction, it’s better to post on Twitter.
If we borrow from the world of media, Instagram is more like a press release and Twitter is more like a call-in radio show. Both have value. For a social media strategy to be effective, you have to use every channel available. When there is a visual element and you want to communicate mostly in one direction — such as an announcement to your followers — Instagram works best. When you want an audience to comment, interact, and re-share, then Twitter makes more sense.
So where does that leave Facebook? In many ways, from a social branding standpoint, it’s for both purposes. People don’t like to see too many Facebook posts — I usually recommend four or five per day at most. They will see and click “like,” and some will comment. It’s both visual and interactive, but it’s also a closed network meant for followers to interact. It’s not great for a public statement.
The important point here: Bezos obviously thought about where to post in terms of audience, relevancy, feedback loops, demographics — and he won on all counts.
