Engaging content on Instagram. Best filter choice for the increase of photo views and likes of sport and leisure interested users (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 7,6, Stenden University, course: Bachelor of Business Administration/ Bachelor of Art, language: English, abstract: The social media world has increased fast and people become overwhelmed with information. Since images play an important role in the social media world, organizations have the opportunity to create a profile at the social media network Instagram to post filtered and non filtered photos, to engage its users to view, like and comment those. Photo filters that increase warmth, exposure and contrast get more likes and comments because they elicit feelings of arousal and excitement. This theory can be attributed to the filters colours, since red, orange, and yellow lead to states of arousal and excitement. Next to that, sport fans enjoy images in black&white and sepia.

The sport company S is a client that has wished an Instagram profile from the company 12s. For that reason, the management did send many sport related photos to the media firm, which they can post at their profile. However, the employees who are responsible for the Instagram profile are not sure if they should keep the images original or edit them with filters. If they edit photos, they can choose between filters, what makes the choice harder, since they do not know which filter viewers like. For solving that problem, a research was needed to give recommendations to the organization 12s for the best filter choice by analysing appealing colours and filters of lively Instagram users that are interested in sport and leisure via an experiment.
For the experiment, two groups were randomly chosen, which were as similar as possible. All participants had to be interested in sport&leisure. One group had to answer questions about original photos and the second group about edited photos. 16 images were posted in original and edited at the Instagram profile Bachelor_Workout, to see which photos receive more likes.

The outcome shows that participants prefer photos edited. Approximately, edited photos receive min. 20 per cent more views and likes compared to original photos. Furthermore, participants like warm colours filters such as Hefe and Valencia and the colourful filter Clarendon. Especially men do like the black and white filter Moon compared to women who prefer the filter X_Pro_II.

To engage Instagram users who are interested in sport and leisure, 12s should edit photos with warm colours to reach the target group of the sport company S. If they like to reach more men, they can use the black and white filter Moon and if they concentrate more on women with a photo, they should use the filter Rise.