Insta-famous…almost

DemolitionNews is now the biggest demolition-dedicated account on Instagram.

About a year ago, my youngest son was mocking my social media aptitude. “You’re doing it all wrong. Twitter is dead, and Facebook is for children and for mums wanting to snoop on their children,” he insisted. “Instagram is the place to be if you want to be relevant.”

Of course, part of this was to have a sly dig at my advancing years in much the same way that he talks about bands (many of which I swear he has invented) just to demonstrate how out of touch I have fallen. But his comments regarding Instagram resonated.

At the time, we had less than 2,000 followers on the photo/video-focused platform. We’d only been on Instagram for about six months and – if I am being entirely honest – I didn’t really get it.

It was also daunting. There were several demolition-related Instagram accounts that had 10,000 followers and one in particular that had 15,000+; surely we had arrived at the party too late; surely we had missed the boat.

Apparently not.

We focused a considerable amount of time and energy onto raising our Instagram game. We uploaded daily, seven days a week. We edited and enhanced photos to within an inch of their lives, and we used exclusive video content wherever possible. And we started to see some growth.

We quickly passed several long-standing and well-respected accounts as if they were standing still; and we started to close in on the big names in demolition which by now had grown to 20,000 followers or more.

Along the way, our growing Instagram profile has afforded us the opportunity to work with brands such as Dr Martens; brands that would likely have been entirely uninterested in a traditional demolition website.

Last week, we passed the 20,000 followers milestone which pushed us into second position in the global demolition Instagram league. Our growth continued right through the weekend (and is still climbing), allowing us to surge into first place and to claim the crown as the world’s biggest demolition-dedicated account on Instagram.

To ensure that we retain our crown, we are stepping things up still further. We are going to be producing more Instagram-only content; we are going to make greater use of Instagram Stories to deliver news, views, polls and a host of other industry-related content; and we are going to be working with our fellow Instagram users to help them reach a wider audience.

And so we have produced a new Social Media Kit to allow other companies to access our reach, engagement and leverage. All the prices are based on our Social Blade profile. You can access that kit here.

“Instagram is now a key part of our strategy and has allowed us to access an entirely new demographic,” says DemolitionNews’ founder Mark Anthony. “While LinkedIn is excellent for engaging with business leaders, Instagram tends to attract a younger audience. Most of our followers (90 percent) are male and the vast majority are in the 25 to 35 year old age bracket.”

You can learn more here.