Scroll, stop… tap?

I have been thinking about consumption behavior on Instagram recently. I think most heavy users of the platform have very similar scrolling habits; you flick your thumb up, let it hang for a moment and then stop it over the next post. Flick, stop, flick stop. I went around the office and watched some of our employees scrolling and it looked like they spent about 1-2 seconds on each post before moving on. That means you have one second to convince someone to spend more time on that photo; to expand the caption, to swipe through the carousel, and to hopefully like or comment.

For brands and influencers, it’s pivotal to strategize how to best get the influencer’s audience to pause on that post, because without the pause you’re going to have a hard time getting your key message across.

Work with someone “loved”

For influencers, this means you. Your most engaged followers will always be interested in what you have to say, they pause and read the caption, tap for tagged brands or save the photo. For me, this is friends and family, yes, but also people I respect, think are smart, funny or weird.

Standout visual interest

A photo can be interesting enough that it makes users say “I want to know more about that,” and without thinking about it you stop to investigate more. I believe it’s why people like Tezza are doing so well, because the photos are visually quite different than most people’s feeds. Feeds that I consistently pause on due to this are Quyen Mike, Aaron B Hall and J. Mitch.

Something new

We get so used to seeing a certain type of content from the people we follow that getting outside of that norm can help to drive curiosity. This can be an influencer who never looks directly into the camera doing so, someone who doesn’t post themselves laughing in full belly laugh, someone who is private about their relationship posts about that. Influencers: experiment with new kinds of images every now and then to get your audience to stop and read to what you have to say.

The reality is that many posts will only get one second of pause time, so brands and influencers need to consider how to get their stories across in that one second. In traditional advertising, they talk about the “DVR” effect and brands started making ads where, at the very least, the brand name would be communicated in fast forward. Brands, think about that when briefing an influencer and ask:

1. What can I do to get viewers to hit pause and not fast forward?
2. If they do breeze by, how can I still get value out of this post?

— Fohr CEO James Nord

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